I do not understand the mentality of the guys that want to have long distance relationships right out of the gate. I get that you may end up with a long distance relationship because of circumstances (college ends, military service, etc.) but you should never start a relationship with her living more than 30-40 miles away, maximum.

By the way, for you college or military guys, you have to consider the distance factor too. Once college ends or you're deployed overseas, are either of you moving? I'm not saying it's impossible, but since dating turns into relationships you have to understand if she will move with you or move her separate way since the end of the relationship can mean pain for you.

Back to the guys that are just starting out with a girl. Guys, you should always think of dating local women because otherwise you are setting yourself up for failure.

First of all, how often do you think you can see her? Anytime you are dating women and you have to make special arrangements to see the other person, that is not conducive to a long-term situation.

You might think it is just going to work itself out at some point. You might have been brainwashed by Hollywood watching one of those sappy movies where the heroes of the story fall in love and have a whirlwind cross country romance.

Your friends, especially the more optimistic ones (I really wanted to say delusional instead of optimistic but I'm trying to be nice) are telling you things like "if it was meant to be, then it will happen."

I tend to take a more cold view of things. For example, if you sold mid-sized family sedans, would you look for prospects that lived down the street or would you go 150 miles away? Sure, you may sell a Buick LeSabre to a woman 150 miles out of town, but most likely you've lost the sale to one of the other 15 GM dealers that are much closer than you are.

You see, dating women is like sales in that you need to give yourself the best odds right from the start. The odds say that dating a woman 150 miles away is likely to lead you to be knocked out of the box by one of the other "dealers." We have guys call our dating women radio show that have an idea that they can succeed if they're not dating local women but we always throw cold water on them. Starting out with bad odds usually results in a bad outcome.

Secondly, there is another thing we haven't talked about. You can't work challenge when you're so far away and challenge is a big part of attraction for women. Without going beyond the scope of this article, challenge is something that every guy needs to learn. You always want to make her wonder about you and what you're up to. When you have to share your full schedules so early on, you absolutely kill challenge.

Remember guys, as we always say on our dating women radio show, dating local women is the way to go. Leave the long-distance relationships for the movies!