If you’re single in the lead-up to Valentine’s Day the pressure is on to do one of two things: declare the day a fake mass-marketed holiday and resolutely ignore it or bite the bullet and ask the object of your affections out.
If you opt for the first then there are plenty of alternative things to do, but if you decide to go for the latter and put yourself out there there is some help at hand.
Meet the dating doctor who can tell if it will be love at first at first bite just by looking at your date’s fridge.
Refrigerator dating expert John Stonehill’s ground-breaking philosophy works out if you should give someone the green light or cold shoulder based on the contents of their white goods.
Since launching his blog in autumn, John has been inundated with women and men sending pictures to him of a potential partner’s food chiller.
John, 42, decided to launch his site checktheirfridge.com after 20 years of dating and checking his own date’s fridges since he was at college.
Now John, who married in 2012, has become a dating sensation with scores of would-be lovers asking him to rate their date’s or even their own fridge.
Top fridge crime on John’s list is dirt and grime but it’s closely followed by no-no’s like an entire dead animal, a picture of the ex, any type of bodily fluid and certain generic products.
John said: “If you can’t afford the extra 80 cents for Heinz ketchup, move back in with your parents.”
John, from California, has now toured the US with his love guru skills and thinks UK fridges could be just as easy to read.
WELL BALANCED: Light, bright and healthy-looking fridge
He said: “In my mid-20s I dated a doctor. She was so cute, so preppy, very normal studious looking but the moment I got back to her place I opened her fridge and it was so stinky, I told her it smelled like s**t’.
“She asked me to leave because I hurt her feelings but as I’m waiting for the elevator, she said ‘I don’t want you leaving like this’ and 60 seconds later she was jumping my bones.
“As I’m thinking to myself, ‘this girl is crazy’, that’s when I had my fridge epiphany: oh my God, her fridge told me all I needed to know.
“What normal-minded person lets their fridge get so foul smelling you can’t open the door?
“This girl was clearly wacky pack and, as we all need a little drama in our 20s, I ended up dating her for a couple of months.
“In the end, she was having 3am arguments with my answer machine.”
John, who went to Syracuse University’s campus in London, met his wife Rachel in 2010 and said her fridge told him she had serious potential.
He said: “She had an upmarket GE model fridge, a nice bottle of champagne, a bottle of wine, a couple of high-end condiments, bottled water and some cheese.
BOOZY FRIDGE: The owner of this fridge loves having cool libations to hand
“I love people that have champagne in their fridge – it’s all about spontaneous celebration.
“I didn’t know if she was the one, but I knew she was financially independent, social, fun and would never cook for me.
“Because she had a water dispenser on the fridge, I knew she probably exercised because she could get water from the dispenser and the bottled water must be when she was on the move.
“I also knew she must eat out a lot because there was no food, and to this day she has never cooked for me.”
“On a personal level I’ve been doing this with fridges for 20 years. I launched the site just in the autumn, and it has really resonated more than I could have ever imagined.
“Even in college, if I was with a girl I would always open her fridge, as nothing says who we are more than what we eat and what we drink. You are what you eat as they say.
“And the most common dating activity we do is eating and drinking and it says so much about who we are.
“A fridge can tell you about finances, how much we exercise etc. What I can say is, if you’re single you’re probably eating better than when you’re married with two kids.
“If we look at that fridge, we can tell if someone looks after themselves. If you can’t take care of yourself now, you probably won’t later.”
YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT: John examines the contents of hundreds of fridges
John said since he launched his site women were the first to contact him and even asked what their fridge said about them.
He said: “Definitely more women contact me – the thing that has resonated so well with checktheirfridge.com is that we’ve all dated, and we all ask about what my fridge says about me.
“Women are more obsessed about that than men are, you only have to look at tarot parties and things like that to see that woman are more interested in how they appear or who they are than men.
“I have had a couple of submissions from guys they are usually more like ‘hey I just shagged this girl, she’s just in this shower, what does this fridge say about her, is she crazy?
“I feel like there isn’t a middle ground with dating experts and checktheirfridge.com fills that space. There has been the guides which are like how to sleep with the most people and then the other guides are more complicated and not really related to real life.
“We all love talking about sex, we talk about it with our girl pals, with our male pals, and I talk about it with my wife.
“But a girl will ask her friends what is this guy thinking and she’ll get 50 different answers from them about what he is thinking.
“When I look at fridge signatures I always stick to there’s a good chance it means this, there’s a good chance it means that, we’re all different, but nothing is black and white.
“When you see a fridge and it’s really messy, then I say – chaos in one’s fridge equals chaos in one’s life.”
To follow John visit http://checktheirfridge.com/
Story and pictures via Mercury Press and Media
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