I Didn't Know I Needed This: The New Rules for Flirting, Feeling, and Finding Yourself

From TikTok star Eli Rallo, an irreverent, laugh-out-loud funny, and searingly honest take on modern dating and romance with tips, tricks, and survival-guide style rules.

I Didn't Know I Needed This is the dose of confidence every girl needs to live their life on their own terms. Eli Rallo is a social media superstar, a Carrie Bradshaw for the TikTok age, a true romantic at heart, and the best friend every young woman wishes she had. As someone who prides herself in feeling fully and deeply, Eli is on the ride with you, kissing the frogs, sending (and deleting) the risky DMs, climbing down frat house gutters, making the friends you'll have for life, all while finding love and falling in love with yourself and learning that everything will be alright. In this earnest and vulnerable look at what it's really like to date as a young woman in the modern world of dating apps, rotating rosters, and social media snafus, Eli gives her rules for each stage of the game-tried and true tricks of the trade.

I Didn't Know I Needed This follows the natural lifecycle of dating, starting with being single, flirting, and navigating the apps to going on dates, having sex, falling in love, and managing relationships, to finally dealing with heartbreak, finding closure, prioritizing your friends, and honoring your life. Discover the rules that have worked for her, and garnered her more than a half million TikTok followers:

• prep for a first date like an athlete before a big game
• try a person out in different settings before committing to them
• plan the second date while you're out on the first
• find your perfect "eff me sweater"
• flirt with your partner, no matter how long you've been together
• give yourself a set mourning period to wallow after a breakup, and then stick to it
• always (always!) communicate your needs, wants, desires, and boundaries
• find little ways to love your life and treat yourself

With touching stories of her own adventures and mishaps, Eli helps you navigate dating in a way that's frank, honest, funny, and relatable, giving the advice that you didn't even know you needed.

ELI RALLO is a social media star with massive followings on TikTok and Instagram. She is the host of the Miss Congeniality podcast and a graduate of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance. When she isn't writing or TikTok-ing, you can find her at piano bars in the Village belting out show tunes.