Dating? Here's some advice on balancing your significant other and your friends from the book "How to Survive Dating" (Hundreds of Heads Books, www.hundredsofheads.com, $12.95), straight from people who've done it:

“When you start dating someone, your first reaction (due to the butterflies that begin to accumulate in your stomach and perhaps filter to your head) is to spend all of your time with that person and basically drop your close friends. Don’t do it! Maybe the relationship will work, maybe it won’t. Either way, you will need those good friends to get you through it, whether you want to kill him and need help hiding the body or you need bridesmaids for your wedding!”

“In one relationship that I had in college, I got so caught up in my boyfriend that I ignored all of my freshman year friends. Looking back now, I know that my boyfriend and I were far too serious. He was also very jealous, even with my female friends. By my junior year, my friends were tired of me dissing them. I regret that now, because I don’t have those friends anymore. They wrote me off.”

“When you’re young, it’s easy to become consumed with the person you’re dating. My daughter was once so head-over-heels with a boyfriend that she lost touch with many of her friends. It’s better to have distance. If you get too consumed, you forget about your friends. Or if you have a weaker personality, you latch on far more than is healthy. It builds strength in your relationship to have friends. Plus, if the relationship ends, it’s your friends who will help you pick up the pieces.”

“When I started dating my boyfriend, I stopped spending time with my friends. So did he. We didn’t plan to ignore our friends, but we only wanted to be with each other. Eventually, my friends stopped calling and inviting me out with them. My parents warned me that I would need and miss my friends even if I married Tom. I didn’t listen to them, but they were right. I lost a lot of good friends because of my foolishness. And I sure missed them after I got married. I needed my girlfriends to talk to!”

“Friends are forever but men come and go. I’m in a long-term relationship now, and the way we keep it going is to value our other friendships as much as we do each other. If you’re not careful to keep your friends, you’ll lose them. The fact that we hang out with our friends separately gives us both a sense of our own identity in the relationship.”