Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I was going to try to crank out one last post before I went home for the holidays, but, well…I ran out of time.

Thank you to all the readers and commenters who made this blog more than me just writing into the ether for the past ten months.    Enjoy your time with loved ones, your vacation time (you of the non-retail jobs), and let go of any bitterness ESPECIALLY TOWARD THE OPPOSITE SEX for at least a day.  Jesus didn’t come to this world so you could nurse grudges, but rather so you could be freed of them.

Finally, [insert Christian holiday platitude here].  (You know I mean it.)

See you in ’11!

Steve Harvey says that men and women can’t be just friends.

While promoting his new book, comedian/author Steve Harvey tells CNN’s Frederica Whitfield that men and women can’t be just friends because, a la When Harry Met Sally, men want to have sex with their female friends and are only “friends” because the woman has LJBFed them yet they are still hopeful that there will be a chink in her LJBF armor at some point.

For the most part, I think this is true, but then how do you explain men with chubby female friends?  Is this implicit confirmation that men like chubby girls, despite all the manosphere screeching to the contrary, or do men just like to keep a “safety” handy in case of sexless emergency?  Maybe what we really need is definitions of “chubby” and “friend” that everybody agrees on.  There’s just too much wiggle room for those terms.  Also, is a woman who doesn’t really have any male friends yet is not getting asked on dates de facto unattractive to men (the logic being that if she is attractive, men will try to be her friend if they’re too scared to ask her out)?

Other questions that women might have about this topic that the men here can answer:

• You have a male friend who considers himself progressive, straightforward, and Unlike Other Men.  He insists that you and he are, and will only be, Just Friends.  Is he lying?
• You have a male friend who insists that you are a wonderful woman with many amazing qualities, but he needs to Pursue Jesus right now.  Is he lying?
• You have a male friend who likes to have long, deep, one-on-one conversations with you, but he never asks you for a date.  Is he attracted to you?

HT to ONTD.  For good times and, um, ~insight~ into the mindset of single, college-age, non-religious, liberal millennials on this topic, read the comments.

Do you have a type?

In the last post’s comments, the subject of “having a ‘type'” came up, with the dual assertions that (a) men don’t stick to “types” because they find many types of women attractive, and (b) women DO stick to “types” and refuse to date anyone outside of the parameters of the favored type.  Of course, these assertions were from men.

Based on my observation, I think men are more likely to marry their type, but women are more likely to date their type.  This is because men can grow a woman’s interest, whereas women are pretty much stuck with the yay-or-nay of a man’s first impression.  So, while a woman will hold out during her dating years for her ideal, a non-ideal man could slip in and start flirting with her until she decides he’s cute enough to marry.  Men, on the other hand, will only target the women who interest them, and for many men – NOT ALL; do you hear me, INLTs? – this means a type.  (See:  Bruce Willis – his current wife is a total Demi clone.  Or Rod Stewart’s wives:  all interchangeable blonde models.  Or the Sister Wives guy:  his wives are all, um, plump Caucasians.  Okay, I’m sure there’s a better example out there….)

Before the comments get rolling, I think it’s worth defining what a “type” is.  I have always thought of it as more of a suite of physical characteristics along with some personality traits, e.g., “tall, smart, athletic.”  I’ve gotten the impression, though, that men in the manosphere define “type” as the woman’s 463-bullet point checklist, which includes job, salary, car make and model, hairstylist, and feelings about soy.  Most women are not that picky.  If you’re running into this kind of woman, who will advertise this list to all those around her, you’re probably in a bar or on a college campus, and the woman is either quite young or divorced and bitter against her ex-husband.

It’s also worth repeating that “type” is an ideal and often is just what knee-jerks attraction, not what sustains it.  I prefer men with full heads of hair, for example, but a full head of hair is not what’s going to love me when I’m old and shriveled.

OT: Seeking HDTV/Blu-Ray opinions

I don’t like to go off-topic on the blog, but I figured that this would be a good place to get some advice due to the male-oriented readership (or at least male-skewed commentariat).

Here’s the sitch:

My DVD player of almost 10 years died this past week.  (Sony, you done good.)  My television is a 28″ tube TV going on 12 years old.  Because the TV is so old, and because TVs have really advanced beyond where they were even a few years ago, I decided that it might be time to upgrade everything instead of just buying another DVD player to replace the old one.  I’ve been researching options for both HDTVs and Blu-Rays and would love to get further opinions.

My needs/desires:

• I am looking to stay in the 40″-42″ range and not break the bank.  (Breaking the bank is what husbands are for.  …KIDDING!)
• Picture quality matters – I will notice if something looks flat, pixelated, etc.
• Sound doesn’t have to be top drawer, but I would like it to be robust.  Will not be hooking it up to a stereo system.
• I do not have cable and just use OTA signals with an antenna.

If you have any advice/personal experience you would like to share, please do.

Reasons women don’t approach.

Whenever I bring up the topic of meeting members of the opposite sex, the male commenters here inevitably strike up the “OMG WOMEN MAKE IT SO HARD I WON’T APPROACH ANY WOMAN WHO DOESN’T HAVE A GREEN LIGHT WITH MY NAME ON IT PASTED TO HER FOREHEAD” song and dance.  Their position is understandable, but women are instinctively programmed to put the man through the paces in order to get to her.  This is because (a) women know that men want the most bang for the least buck, and (b) women want to be worth more than a buck.  Women who make themselves extremely available to men have very little way of telling if the man liked them specifically, or if the man was merely taking advantage of convenience.  Making a man work for it is a way of differentiating the warm body seekers from the specifically me seekers.

This is the general reason that women don’t approach men.  Most of the other reasons are situational and personality-centric, as I discuss below:

• She’s shy. Some women are terrified of talking to anyone they don’t know.  Clearly this leads to glowing results when women who are petrified of strangers and men who are petrified of women mix.
• She’s intimidated. This is a little different from shyness.  Shyness is more of an inner timidity, whereas intimidation is externally based.  A woman who is not usually shy may become intimidated depending on the situation, such as:
  • She feels he’s out of her league. Contrary to what the majority of the manosphere thinks – that all women are entitled landbeasts who wear XXL “head bitch in charge” T-shirts over their industrial strength bras and blast men for not being able to “handle them” – many women will balk at initiating interaction with a man they feel is markedly superior to them in looks, popularity, intelligence, socioeconomic status, etc.  A woman will think to herself, “A man like that could have any woman he wants, so why me?” and as a result, either outright ignore the man or only give furtive little glances when she hopes he’s not looking.  (Exception:  women who attend fan conventions and pay for pictures with their objects of affection.  The exchange of money and experience of waiting in a line make it okay to approach, giggle, praise, and sometimes sneak a grope.)
  • He’s surrounded by bros. Much like men grouse that women can never be found alone, women also find men surrounded by a posse intimidating.  Little Susie Sweetheart, pounding heart in her dry throat, will be much less likely to approach Hal Hotness if Hal is surrounded by five bros who are all slapping each other on the back while grunting about the manliness of Tom Brady’s hair football.  Same goes for Susie approaching Tom Tron and his five engineering buddies who are discussing their latest Halo 3 strategies.  Too many bros, especially if one of the bros is a class clown type who is loud and attracts a lot of high-energy attraction, says to a woman that the man doesn’t want to be bothered.
  • He’s surrounded by attractive women. While some women will be motivated by preselection competition, most women are not self-confident enough to cold approach a man who is constantly surrounded by other women, especially if the other women are good-looking, or at least popular (the good-looking vs. popular Venn diagram doesn’t always have the greatest overlap), or THINNER.  Susie won’t want to deal with the competitive shunning by the women, and she will also ask herself why Cory Cubicle would talk to her when he’s already got his hands full with some nice stuff.
  • He has never shown any previous signs of acknowledging her existence. A hurried “thanks for holding the door” at the elevator at work, followed by pushing the button and zero conversation, doesn’t count.  Non-communicative inertia just begets more non-communicative inertia.  There’s little more humiliating than attempting conversation with someone six months after seeing the person every day, and having that person look at you like they’ve never seen you before.
• She’s a creature of habit. Some women (and men, too, for that matter) settle into a rut of existence and find it immensely difficult to break out of the daily grind.  I don’t know if it’s that they find it too energetically taxing to vary their routines, or what, but there are just some people who habitually refuse to stray from the path every once in a while, even if it’s at the cost of meeting new people.  This means that if you’re not currently on the schedule, you might never be.
• She’s not interested. Yes, sometimes this is the reason women don’t initiate contact.  It usually means that the man hasn’t done anything to make himself stand out as someone to consider.  He hasn’t demonstrated any personality, any leadership or expertise, any sense of humor, any smidgen of fashion sense, any physical fitness, any special talents.  If you are the definition of drab, you’re stacking the deck against yourself.

I’d say that intimidation and interest are the most easily solvable issues.  So if you’re a man and you’re frustrated that women aren’t cold approaching you, understand that just as, if not more, difficult for women to do than men, and then check and see if you’re doing things that make it even harder.

If I like him, he can do better.

I met today with a couple of female friends, and, as is usually the case when two or more female friends gather, conversation turned to dating and male/female relationships.  At the moment, none of us is dating anyone nor has any prospectives in the pipeline, so whoever out there thinks that “good girls” get snapped up like cake at a Weight Watchers meeting, think again.

One friend mentioned how she had gone to a recovering addicts celebration/gathering at another local church and had become annoyed by the fact that as she was walking to the venue from parking, a very good-looking young man was walking not far behind her yet did not attempt to strike up a conversation even though it was evident that they were going to the same place.  Eventually they were forced to stop at a light, whereupon my friend took it upon herself to start talking to this guy, and they chatted all the way to the church.  Tonight she was planning on returning to the same church with some hopes of seeing him again.

After hearing this story, I said that I almost never talk to men who I think are good-looking because I assume that I will not meet their minimum standard of attractiveness and they will act like they would rather have their teeth drilled without Novacaine than talk to me.  I’ve had this happen before.  The man will give half-hearted, simple-sentence responses, never look you in the eye, act agitated, and generally give the impression of someone who is silently cursing his upbringing as he tries to tolerate your substandard presence for the minimum time required to feign politeness.  It is a simultaneously depressing and infuriating experience and is a huge waste of time.

My friend expressed great surprise at this revelation and quickly assured me that I could have anyone that I wanted.  I immediately shut down that possibility, citing, well, my life to date.  My friend told me that I needed to stop thinking this way.  I pointed out that life experience made it pretty difficult to.  My friend then said something that surprised me:  that she talks to men assuming that they will be interested and that men’s standards of attractiveness are not actually very high so long as you act smiley and bubbly.

I suppose, on the one hand, that to have success, you first have to have a successful attitude.  Surly warts do not win hearts.  On the other hand, the laws of the sexual marketplace are pretty immutable, and the likelihood that you will be the one to defy them successfully is pretty low to nonexistent.  I just know, both through reading and from experience, that if I find a man attractive – especially if he is objectively good-looking – then lots of other women will think the same.  And given the statistics of it all, the likelihood that I will be better-looking than all of the other women who are interested is probably going to be more or less zero; in other words, he will always have more appealing options than myself.  There is always going to be someone who laughs more at his jokes, who thinks he is smarter than I think he is, who wears a smaller clothing size than I do, who has a prettier face, who has a better body, who is more charming than I am, who is less opinionated than I am, who is willing to get in psychological turf wars with other women in order to get the guy, who is willing to make herself more sexually available, and – the older I get – who is younger than I am.

So whose approach is better – the optimist’s or the rationalist’s?  I don’t know.  Probably the best thing is to find someone you think is good-looking that no one else thinks is good-looking* and who honestly thinks you’re the best he can do even if it’s not true (if he’s good enough for you, he can probably do better than you).  I think it’s pretty rare, though not quite as rare as finding a unicorn or a chupacabra.

*The guy I had a massive crush on during my freshman year of college is someone I thought was fairly textbook tall, dark, mysterious, and handsome (AND A GOOD DANCER. AND SMELLED DIVINE), but my friends all made eww faces when I said I thought he looked great.  Of course, he ended up marrying the annoying girl from our dorm.  Oh, well.