A 55-year-old British divorcee stood on a sun-drenched street in Nashville, Tennessee, heart racing, and jogged between moving cars to stop a woman he had never met. He told her she was breathtaking. She turned away within seconds. It was over before it began. But for Steve Crook, it was only the start of a three-day journey that cost him thousands of dollars.
Crook is one of a growing number of men enrolling in intensive dating boot camps run across the United States, where coaches charge anywhere from a few thousand dollars for a weekend session to $20,000 (£15,200) a year for elite membership. The camps promise to teach men how to approach women, hold conversations and shed what instructors call 'nice-guy tendencies'. But what participants often find goes far deeper than dating advice.
