I've never done online dating, but first of all, I have a book

In the marketplace of modern courtship, a singer speaks with a seasoned calm: “I’ve never done online dating, but, first of all, I have a book out called ‘Make It Last Forever: The Do’s and The Don’ts’, which led me to do the online dating thing. Many respect my relationship songs, so they can pretty much trust me.” Beneath the easy cadence lies an old covenant dressed in new garments: authority earned in one temple—song and counsel—now admitted into another—screens and swipes. The voice says, in effect, that wisdom is portable: if it can keep a promise in melody, it can keep a promise in method.

The ancients would recognize the structure. A people choose guides by their proven fidelity. The minstrel who soothed quarrels at the fire becomes the arbiter when lovers falter at dawn. So when the maker of relationship songs writes a book of Do’s and Don’ts, he is binding art to instruction, lyric to law. The title Make It Last Forever is not only a brand; it is a vow: that love is more craft than accident, more kept garden than wild rumor. And when that vow steps into online dating, it refuses the false quarrel between old and new; it says that technology is a road, not a destination—character is still the vehicle.

Mark how the saying orders its claims: first of all, the book; then the venture. Counsel precedes campaign. This is a priestly sequencing, as if to insist that rules are not chains but rails that keep the train from tumbling in the night. The Do’s and Don’ts are not scolds; they are guardrails—practice forgiveness, name your boundaries, tell the truth when it is small so it will not crush you when it grows. Thus the singer argues that the heart’s old disciplines can steward the heart’s new arenas.

Consider Ovid in ancient Rome, who set quill to parchment and gave the city Ars Amatoria, a manual of love—tactics, cautions, theater and truth. The verses were playful and, to some, perilous; their very influence drew the ire of power, and Ovid was later exiled. Whatever the politics, the lesson endures: when a culture trusts a voice on love, that voice bears consequence. Counsel about desire is never merely entertainment; it rearranges evenings, marriages, futures. So, too, a modern author of a book like Make It Last Forever enters the same lineage of responsibility, knowing that readers will test his counsel where it matters—in the fragile liturgy of two.

There is a quieter, humbler parable as well: the way elders once wrote to Dear Abby, trusting an unseen counselor because week after week she answered with steadiness, humor, and care. Trust was not conjured; it was accumulated—like rings in a tree. So when the singer says that people “respect my relationship songs,” he is not boasting; he is naming the ledger from which he spends. Refrains that taught patience, apologies sung without vanity—such works create a credit of credibility. It is from that credit he proposes to guide the bewildered through online dating without losing themselves in its carnival.

Yet the quote also carries a warning wrapped in ease: do not mistake applause for authority. A golden voice can carry a crooked map. The true test is fruit—do people become kinder, braver, more honest by following your Do’s and Don’ts? If yes, the passage from studio to screen is blessed. If not, return to the well. The ancients judged a teacher by apprentices, a captain by landfalls. In the same way, judge a romance guide by the homes made sturdier, not by the clicks made louder.

Take, then, the lesson and its rites. (1) Before you enter online dating, write your own Do’s and Don’ts—three promises you will keep to yourself (truth, pace, boundaries) and three graces you will extend to others (curiosity, clarity, courtesy). (2) Test advisers by their fruit: read a page, then practice it for a week; keep what bears peace. (3) Make Make It Last Forever your rubric, not your slogan: ask in every exchange, “Does this habit help love endure?” (4) Let relationship songs be more than mood; treat them as mirrors—what do they praise, what do they warn? (5) Remember that trust is a slow fire; feed it with small consistencies—on time, honest profiles, clean exits. Do these, and you will braid the ancient way to the modern road, carrying a heart disciplined enough to find joy, and tender enough to keep it.