Confessions of a Love Doctor

by By Sherry Amatenstein

My bank account once again decimated (eight years later, I’m still waiting for repayment), I still didn’t question my taste in men. After all, talk shows were calling Woman’s Own to seek my input on topics such as “My Fiancé’s a Flirt.”

I was a natural, from the beginning. I would spend mornings distraught over a promising date that had morphed into a silent phone, yet once the TV-camera lights glowed, I’d quip, “Crying over a man who doesn’t appreciate you is as wasteful as buying retail. Cut your losses and go for the true bargain.” I wasn’t sure what that meant, but since my host would chortle appreciatively, I came to realize it wasn’t the soundness of the advice that mattered, but its entertainment value. After one Good Day New York appearance, in which I was introduced as “Sherry Amatenstein, relationship expert,” a former boyfriend’s mother, chancing upon the program, scoffed, “Expert? That’s David’s ex-girlfriend!”

I rationalized that I wasn’t doing harm because the dilemmas I “solved” were relatively lightweight. How much damage could I inflict telling well-meaning mamas on a “Mom’s Pushing Me to Marry” segment to “butt out or risk creating reverse Romeo-and-Juliet scenarios for their altar-shy kids”?

But I craved integrity, and resolved never to exaggerate my credentials. When Montel came calling, I warned his producers not to let the irrepressible host call me a shrink; I was a “relationship writer.” (I never voluntarily wore the “expert” tag.) The day before the taping, I received a 15-page fax containing preinterviews from the troubled guests. My stomach sank; this was tough stuff. (Dominica: “I don’t want a boyfriend to be faithful; he’d want me to be faithful.” José: “If my woman no be faithful, I sleep with her best friend.”) The producers requested that I be “fun.”

Borrowing from the shrink Bob Newhart played in his first TV series, I role-played with the couple: “To be more empathetic, you need to put yourself in the other’s shoes. Dominica, pretend you’re José, who values fidelity. Now imagine how he’d feel to discover his woman had cheated …” I was cookin’—until Montel scolded his rambunctious studio audience to “Let the doctor speak.”