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When I recently picked up the phone to talk to my girlfriend, we both thought we'd get engaged when she visited from 2,000 miles away. By the time I'd hung up on her, neither of us knew if we'd ever speak to each other again. Though I'd need a Zapruder film to figure out who'd assassinated our romance, I'm pretty sure two gunmen—both of us—were firing.

I knew from friends that to be 42 and uncoupled in Minnesota was to wish the State Fair still allowed freak shows so you could 1) find work the general population deemed appropriate, and 2) eventually pull up stakes and go to a place where most people don't seem to be married by 21, making babies by 23, and comfortably settled by 25.

Now, to avoid what seemed the heinously inevitable—going on actual dates—I decided to question some women about the biggest yo-yos they'd encountered recently, then to behave the opposite, find Princess Charming, and live happily ever after. I consulted half a dozen experts—all smart, self-aware, single Minnesota women not suffering from a major disorder listed in the American Psychiatric Association's diagnosis manual.

"Do you hold a guy's previous mistakes against him?" I worried. Several years ago I'd had a starter marriage that was equal parts Fatal Attraction and Mad magazine. Thankfully, I was told, in these counter-intuitive times, this was proof that I could commit.

Commitment talk led directly to the discussion of the vicious dating predator known as the "toxic bachelor." The term was coined by Candace Bushnell in Sex and the City, her best-selling, non-fiction account of Manhattan's relationship wars that is now an HBO series. "Toxic bachelor" has entered the popular lexicon as a commitment-phobic man who encourages women with an über-charming shtick that never leads anywhere.

Not news to single women who maintain an informal list of available Twin Cities men who can be categorized as hypnotically poisonous as cobras. The most obvious of these toxic bachelors are the midlife-crisis gang. A major bankroll earned with a big job during a bad first marriage is often the key that starts their new Porsche, customized with driving gloves, a Cuban cigar the diameter of a baby's fist, and, most importantly, a hood ornament girlfriend, often bearing new breasts suggested and paid for by the guy with the hair plugs. "He definitely has the right car, and he takes you to romantic restaurants where no one else but other toxic bachelors can get reservations," says my friend Jessica.

That's the appeal? Too-cool wheels and a meal? "No," she says. "They're such good liars, you believe them when they tell you over and over that they want exactly what you want: a real relationship, marriage, kids."

But what happens when nothing happens? "Toxic bachelors have this sixth sense of when to pull the perfect romantic gesture to reel you back in," says Jessica. "One day he won't pick you up at the airport; the next he's making you a four-course dinner or whisking you away for a romantic weekend.

"It's not until you realize he's trying to sleep with every woman in town that you say, 'Go to hell.' "

How can this kind of weasel thrive? I asked my pal Judith, who sighs every time the name of one the most notorious men on the list is mentioned. "He's balding, the worst name-dropper in history, and every time I've seen him, his face seems surgically conjoined to a different 23-year-old woman. Besides, he's a geek," I reminded her.

"It's the way he looks in your eyes, all drippy-like," she explained, "and then how he shows he isn't afraid for you to see he's taking all of you in."

The younger brand of toxic bachelor usually considers his bible to be The Tao of Steve, director Jenniphr Goodman's acclaimed film about Dex, a beer-bellied, dope-smoking kindergarten teacher of 32. The gone-to-seed Dex still gets all the girls, combining the spirits of Lao-Tzu and Steve McQueen into a three-rule philosophy of seduction: "Rule one: Eliminate your desires; a woman can smell an agenda. Rule two: You have to do something excellent in her presence. Rule Three: Retreat."

Ann, a one-time philosophy major, thought this over. "Yeah, I can see how that might work," she told me. "Heidegger wrote, 'We pursue that which retreats.' "

But Heidegger didn't have to be single in Minnesota. I don't have time to retreat and I doubt that I can rid myself of the desire not to die old and alone while cooking consommé on a rooming-house radiator. My only recourse was the old dating variable that is as reliable as it is impossible: Be yourself. Nervously, I picked up the phone and tried to think of a non-idiotic opening line. I heard, "Hello?" "Uhm," I said, "I don't know if you remember me, but I'm the jackass who hung up on you not long ago..."

Neal Karlen is an award-winning author based in Minneapolis.