Taking the house.

I was thinking about the thread that will never die, which made me think about the following exchange from Ocean’s Eleven.  Danny Ocean has just been released from prison, and instead of commencing a morally upright new beginning, he tracks down his old partner Rusty to help him mastermind a robbery of  three prominent Las Vegas casinos.  Rusty, however, thinks this is a huge mistake.  Danny is determined, though, and turns on his powers of persuasion.

RUSTY:  I need a reason.  And don’t say money.  Why do this?

DANNY:  Why not do it?  Because yesterday I walked out of the joint wearing my entire wardrobe and you’re colddecking Teen Beat cover boys.  Because the house always wins.  You play long enough, never changing stakes, the house takes you.  Unless, when that special hand comes around, you bet big.  And then you take the house.

It occurred to me that this is the mating strategy that Rebecca St. James followed.  As is well-known, she was very vocal about her virginity and her intention not to have sex until she was married.  She became the poster child of True Love Waits, cut a purity crusade anthem called “Wait for Me,” wrote the foreword to IKDG, and in general became an evangelical darling.  Which was great and all, but no one could have predicted that Rebecca would go on to spend something like 16 or 17 years publicly waiting.  Even among Christians, I think, there’s a point at which admiration turns to UM, WHAT’S YOUR PROBLEM?, especially for someone who has beauty, wealth, and access to presumably high-quality men.

But instead of cashing in her chips and getting out of the game with a respectable profit, Rebecca bet big on 7-Card Spinster and took the house.  She waited, and waited, and waited…and ended up with a Beefcake Missionary who now has the good fortune of being in a band with a mainstream hit single, and who is both good-looking and gentlemanly enough to have old college acquaintances looking him up and vouching for his gentlemanly beefcakiness.  Were there really NO other godly men Rebecca could have loved and who were willing to marry her in the last 17 years?

I expect that as a result of waiting and winning, Rebecca will continue to be a role model and inspiration to many single Christian women around the world, as she is now living proof that waiting and trusting in God brings big rewards…eventually.  My question is this, though:  is this a strategy that single Christian women at large should follow?  I ask this because I feel that it IS the strategy that single Christian women are being encouraged to follow:  don’t settle, don’t compromise, trust in God’s perfect timing, and He will answer the cries of your heart with more love than you can possibly imagine.  You are His dear, precious daughter whom He loves passionately!  Which is true, and yet…

…most churches have plenty of single women in attendance and few, if any, Jacob Finks in attendance.

So where does this leave most single church girls?  Holding all of their chips, waiting for that special hand to come around, hoping that they’ll be the one to beat the odds?  Or beating themselves up in the belief that if only they were more spiritual and “together,” God would finally send them the man of their dreams?

It’s just hard to see any other strategy catching any kind of fire, for a couple of reasons.  One, American culture is all about going for the brass ring, shooting for the moon, believing that you’re the exception that can defy the odds.  Two, this mindset colors everything we do, including dating and marriage.  Churches these days are all about God wanting The Best For Us.  God’s Best.  God’s Blessings.  Showering, Raining Down, Covering You, Wrapping You In His Arms, etc.  It’s not that most churches are preaching prosperity gospel (at least, I don’t think they are), but it’s not an uninfluential mindset.  Third, most young women are taught that they “deserve” a “great guy.”  It’s all over the place in the media.  Single female characters on TV and film who are looking for love are consistently told by friends that they “deserve” someone great (someone who’s going to be worth all of your own greatness, someone who will appreciate you just as you are, someone who won’t treat you like crap like the last jerkface you dated…).  Anyone who disagrees with this probably is a misogynist.  What young women want to hear that God’s Best for them might include a husband who’s mediocre-looking, bad at sex, and only wants to watch sports on TV?

Still, would it really be better to tell women to cash out early and forget about waiting for the special hand to bet big on?  That’s horribly unromantic.   Most women wouldn’t go for that, and most men would be offended and/or devastated if they suspected that their wives didn’t think the husbands were the best they could get but the wives just didn’t want to wait around forever.

So where does a single woman find the sweet spot between waiting for her “great guy” and settling for what’s available because the “great guy” is never going to come and find her?

DON’T TURN THE COMMENTS INTO A WOMAN-BASHING SESSION.  THERE ARE PLENTY OF OTHER PLACES TO DO THAT.

You are a delusional Christian if you think you can have a very long courtship and/or engagement and not have sex.

A post at Athol’s from July got me all fired up on this topic.  (So I wrote a post and then sat on it for several weeks.  ANYHOW.)  A mid-20s Christian reader wrote to Athol asking for advice about his relationship with his girlfriend of three years.  Christian Guy hasn’t had intercourse with his girlfriend yet because she wants to wait for marriage, so they’ve decided that guilt over handjobs and occasional oral sex is a more tolerable way to have a relationship.  Most recently, the girlfriend has stated that she wants to cut off ALL sexual contact so she can be sure that CG truly loves her.

Athol’s advice to CG was that he should just go ahead and bang his girlfriend because cutting off sexual contact was her sexual rejection of CG and that a future marriage would not suffer from premarital sex due to their being each other’s first sexual partners.  Additionally, girlfriend’s rejection is a shit test because she wants CG to alpha up and just go for it.

Obviously, as a Christian, I disagree with this advice even though I can understand the reasoning behind it.  (And I do agree that the girlfriend’s rejection is a shit test.)  But that doesn’t really address the underlying issue here, which is why are CG and his girlfriend waiting so long to get married in the first place?  They’re both in their mid-20s, have been together for three years already, and are succumbing to sexual sin in what sounds like an unhappy cycle of hopelessness.  Athol’s blog article doesn’t mention any extenuating circumstances such as abject poverty, or someone is waiting to get out of prison, or someone’s gender reassignment surgery is not yet complete.  And yet CG and his girlfriend are not on schedule to get married for another TWO YEARS.

Does ANYONE in their right mind think that this is a plan for success?!?

The thing about sex is that it only goes in one direction, and it is only designed to have one ending point.  In other words, once you start going down the physical road with someone, it becomes nearly impossible to back up to an earlier point; the only solution is to stop associating with that person completely (i.e., a breakup).  And the ending point of sex is intercourse.  A prolonged stay in Hand Job City or endlessly cruising down Blow Me Bypass is sexually dysfunctional for a healthy couple.  It’s like an Olympic diver climbing to the top of the high dive, bouncing up and down on the springboard, and then…not diving into the water.  Repeatedly.  And convincing yourself that this is a cool way to get close to the water without getting wet.  At some point you’ll either fall in in a way you never intended to, or you’ll psych yourself out when it’s finally time to dive (after two years of training yourself to stop at the end of the board).

I think the church has done a real disservice to its young men and women by going along with the cultural flow of delayed marriage rather than promoting young marriage.  Expecting the vast majority of young Christians to keep their clothes on and hands off for 15-20 years after hitting puberty is ridiculous.  By age 25-ish, a lot of young people are just going to give up on waiting if they don’t see imminent light at the end of the tunnel.  They’ve already waited a decade or more, and the prospect of waiting another decade has the pallor of death.  Besides, all of their friends are doing it and lightning hasn’t struck them yet, plus the church has abortion and homosexuality to worry about.  As long as there are genuine feelings of love and no one gets pregnant and no one gets a disease, is it really that big of a deal? (whispers Satan’s Hamster.)

That said, I think a bigger problem is long courtships and engagements.  When two people are sexually attracted to each other but committed to not having sex until marriage, a four-year courtship followed by a one-year engagement sounds like insanity to me.  Once you’ve gotten the big issues out of the way, like faith, money, character, and goals, and you know that you enjoy each other’s company and are attracted to each other, and others whose opinions you value approve of the match, how much longer do you really need to decide someone is “the one”?  What more could the other person possibly do to prove to you that you should spend the rest of your lives together?  For people who are beyond college-age, I think it’s entirely possible to go from meeting to married within a year to 18 months.  Extending the timeframe longer than that is just setting yourself up for failure, not to mention a lot of gnashing of teeth (as it were) due to having to repress a great deal of your physical desire for each other.

By the way, shorter courtships mean more intentional dating.  You can enjoy the company of a whole lot more people than those who are serious marriage material.  Limit your dating pool to marriageable prospects, and you will give yourself a leg up in the decision-making process.  (Plus, you will help yourself avoid the temptation to get physical with someone you have no intention of marrying.)

Mrs. Lorelai?

Those who have read this blog for a while (or have read most or all of the posts) probably know that I was a fan of Gilmore Girls when it was on TV.  What’s weird about my enjoyment of the show is that I thought the two titular leads were pretty insufferable.  Single mom Lorelai and her daughter Rory were presented as a courageous, witty, attractive mother-daughter duo whom we were supposed to love and root for, but the more I watched, the more I thought, “Holy MOLY does Lorelai ever think the world revolves around herself.  And does she ever SHUT UP?!”  Yet I generally thought the storytelling on the show was good.  Go figure.

Recently the show popped into my head again, and I got to thinking – would any man in the real world consider Lorelai marriage material?  During the seven years that the show aired, she had sex with five different men, yet I think very few fans of the show would consider her promiscuous.  Let’s break it down:

Max – Rory’s teacher at a prestigious prep school.  Seemingly brought together by animal magnetism, Lorelai and Max were on and off until Max, in a fit of frustration, proposed marriage as a way to remain together.  This prompted Lorelai to give a speech about how proposals should be Events.

LORELAI: No, it has to be planned. It should be magical. There should be music playing and romantic lighting and a subtle buildup to the popping of the big question. There should be a thousand yellow daisies and candles and a horse and I don’t know what the horse is doing there unless you’re riding it, which seems a little over the top, but it should be more than this.

Of course, Max did just what Lorelai demanded suggested, and she accepted…

…only to cancel the engagement after calling Rory’s dad (with whom she had already had an impromptu one night stand with on the balcony of her parents’ house during one of her breakups with Max) during her bachelorette party and realizing that she didn’t really want to be married to Max.

Christopher – Lorelai’s high school boyfriend and Rory’s estranged dad who starts the series as an irresponsible screw-up and ends the series as a wealthy man (gotta love inheritances).  In addition to having sex with Christopher during a breakup with Max, Lorelai also had sex with him again on the eve of her best friend’s wedding, after finding out that Christopher and his live-in girlfriend were on the outs.  The only problem was that the next day, Christopher found out that his girlfriend was pregnant, and he decided to go back to her so he could be there for the child.  (But wait, there’s more…)

Alex – A hunky, personality-free guy Lorelai dated briefly.

Jason – A guy Lorelai knew (and used to make fun of) from childhood who went into business with her father.  Quirky and persistent, he finally got Lorelai to go out with him – although she insisted that their relationship remain secret.  Lorelai finally broke it off with Jason after she found out that he was suing her father for screwing him over in business.

Luke – The gruff diner owner with the good heart who pined for Lorelai for a decade (even while briefly married to another woman after a drunken whim on a cruise ship – !!!) before he finally listened to some self-help tapes and realized that Lorelai was the one for him.  After dating for several months (minus a month-long breakup), Lorelai spontaneously proposed to Luke (in order to “feel better” after Rory was arrested for grand theft of a yacht).  Luke accepted, but Lorelai put a halt to their wedding plans, stating that she couldn’t get married without Rory being a part of it (the two became estranged after Rory’s arrest and subsequent dropping out of Yale).  When Rory and Lorelai reconciled, Lorelai went ahead with planning the wedding, but then it was Luke’s turn to postpone, due to discovering he had a pre-teen daughter by an old girlfriend, and wanting to establish his place in his daughter’s life – without Lorelai’s involvement – before getting married.  After months of feeling marginalized and unloved, Lorelai finally gave Luke a tearful ultimatum to elope.  He refused, and Lorelai ran off, right back into the arms of…

Christopher (again).  Christopher had become a single dad after his wife had left him for a prestigious job opportunity in Paris.   He had also become very wealthy due to an inheritance from a deceased relative, and began paying for Rory’s schooling, which brought him back into Lorelai’s life.  After Luke rejected Lorelai’s ultimatum, Lorelai went to Christoper for comfort and ended up having sex with him.  Then the new writers for the show took over and made Lorelai and Christopher begin dating again and seem like a functional couple until they eloped in Paris, after which Lorelai started exhibiting buyer’s remorse but being completely surprised that her husband would notice and feel hurt about it.  After Lorelai wrote a character reference letter for Luke’s custody battle for his daughter, Christopher found it and interpreted it as his wife still having feelings for her ex-fiance.  Christoper confronted Lorelai about the letter and stormed off, refusing to answer any of her phone calls for 24 hours.  Unfortunately for Christopher, Lorelai’s father had a heart attack during this time, and when Lorelai couldn’t reach Christopher, she decided once and for all that he could never be depended on and that they had made a mistake in getting married.  After they separated (with Christopher apologizing to Lorelai for “pressuring” her into marrying him), Lorelai began incorporating Luke into her life again, and realized that he really was the one after she found out that he worked all night to give Rory a going-away party (in the series finale, she leaves to work on the Obama campaign).  Of course, Luke was ready to take Lorelai back with open arms, stating that he was willing to give her “all the time she needs.”

My feeling after Lorelai had sex with Christopher after giving Luke the ultimatum was that Luke would have to be CRAZY to take Lorelai back, especially after how things ended between them.  How could any man with even a smidgen of self-respect take back a woman who ended their relationship with a crazed, overemotional ultimatum and having sex with her ex who happened to be the father of her child and with whom she had had a number of one-offs?   And then – the storytelling debacle of the final season – turn around and date and marry the ex, then split after a couple of months because, oops, she wasn’t thinking straight and she really still did have feelings for her ex-fiance?  At the time, before I had even heard of Game, I thought the reasoning behind this plotline was completely bogus if Luke and Lorelai were truly supposed to be together at the show’s conclusion.  I remember reading articles where the showrunner said that Lorelai needed to explore what might have been with Christopher and realize that hopes/wishes were not the same as actually making a life with someone.  Okay, fine – but did she really need to marry and divorce him over the span of a few months to figure this out?  According to the show, the characters had known each other for over 30 years!  Moreover, if Lorelai still had this burning need to figure out if she and Christopher could make a life together, then what was she doing ever getting engaged to and planning to marry Luke?!?!  It just made Luke look like a placeholder and an enormous CHUMP for taking her back at the end, acting as though Lorelai’s actions were just a tiny misunderstanding to be waved away now that time had healed all wounds.

Truthfully, the show was in a pickle after the ultimatum/sex.  The original showrunner and primary writer left the show after that, leaving a new crew of writers to resolve the storyline in what turned out to be the final season.  The show’s fans had oneitis for Luke and Lorelai as a couple, so the show had to end with the two together, yet the original showrunner had, in my opinion, rendered that logistically impossible.  So, while the writers didn’t exactly make lemonade out of the lemons they were left, they did make…something.

Anyhow, I’ve gone completely off track with my original point, which was whether any men in real life would consider Lorelai wife material.  Clearly I’m overinvested if I’m still having fits over the storyline even though the show has been out of production for several years, but the show’s transgressions were so egregious that they will forever remain irreconcilable.  I can suspend disbelief for quite a bit of things in a fictional story, but defying basic human nature isn’t one of those things.

 

~Realistic expectations~ part 2.

~Realistic expectations~

(Unbunch your britches, people.  I’m doing a female one, too.)

World magazine: “Christian Boy Meets Christian Girl.”

Back in June, World magazine (a biweekly politically conservative evangelical newsmagazine) did a cover story on the problems Christian singles are having finding someone to marry.  The viewpoints espoused by the interviewees sound nearly verbatim to opinions I’ve encountered (both online and in real life).  Among them:

• Guys don’t know how to pursue in a manly or godly way
• Too many rejections
• Fear of divorce
• Dating scene crippled by IKDG – pressure not to date unless reasonably certain the other person is “the one” or at least realistically could be
• Too much focus on group activities
• Women don’t want to ask men out
• Women feel men are content with apathy towards dating and women
• Men feel women are too picky and only want to be asked out by certain men
• Men are overwhelmed by choice and keep holding out for someone better-looking, more spiritual, more intelligent, etc.
• Churches don’t do anything to help singles

Did the article miss anything?  (Well, other than pointing out that everyone in America is just too darn fat and dresses like a slob.)

There’s also a sidebar one-page article called “A Man’s World,” in which (once again) the sexual economics of college campuses are discussed and (once again) the conclusion is reached that women are the losers and men are the winners.  Of course, without discussing the alpha/beta distinction among men, this isn’t exactly an accurate depiction of the reality of the SMP of the college and singles scenes.

His churchly dating status: a table.

How the average churchly single girl sees her options.

“Can I get him?”: breaking it down.

Evaluation process of the average girl who hasn’t had a lot of dating success.

She freaked out when he did not read her mind.

Boundless put up an article today that further demonstrates why church dating is so difficult.  In “How Not to Freak a Girl Out,” Martha Krienke shares a letter from a reader wherein the reader describes that after knowing a guy for two weeks, he asked her out with Boundless-style intentionality, explaining that he saw her as “marriage material.”  Reader promptly FREAKED OUT and rejected the guy.  Then her hamster went into overdrive, culminating in the letter to Boundless.

I’ll admit that the guy made the mistake of destroying any mystery he may have possessed by laying all of his cards out on the table at the get-go.  He also, I assume, made the mistake of proceeding without enough (any?) IOIs from Reader.

But Reader’s letter to Boundless was so hamsterrific, my eyes boggled, and it speaks to Boundless’s disconnect with the realities of the SMP that Krienke didn’t rebuke Reader.  Reader writes:

I know that Boundless and many circles are beginning to promote guys becoming pursuers and moving purposefully toward marriage. But I’d like to promote that there needs to be more caress, creativity and sensitivity in this area. “Putting the ball in her court” too early may drive a godly lady to emotional turmoil. She may need time to marinate in his light affections and attention before having him express in words his intentions and affections.

The idea that Reader wanted to be wooed rather than told “I’m looking for a wife, and you seem like wife material” – I can understand that.  Especially after only knowing a guy for a couple of weeks and probably not having much one-on-one interaction with him, it probably came off a little like the guy was going shopping and she looked like a good deal.  But then all of Reader’s purple prose about marinating and “emotional turmoil” betrayed entitlement:  that she expected this guy to read her mind and know exactly how she wanted to be pursued.  She continues:

To be poetic, I describe my “feelings and affections” like a flower that grows. We gently, and in good amounts for the specific type of flower, give it water and sunlight. [In relationships], the water and sunlight are the “pursuit/flirting/feeling the water.”  The flower represents the “relationship.” And the growth of the flower represents the “feelings and affections.”  The blooming of the flower represents “commitment.”

I think that for this particular flower, there was too much sunlight and water too early. The flower was not ready to bloom yet. It had not grown enough in the right conditions to be ready to bloom.

Church guys, if you would like to be successful in acquiring a woman who seems like “wife material,” adhere to the above instructions…if she’s not already attracted to you.  What reader is ignoring is that if this guy had already been attractive to her, she wouldn’t be going on about watering, stems, and blooming, or needing to “marinate.”  She would have jumped at the opportunity to go on a date with this guy and would be reading Passion and Purity to try to keep her hormones in check.

The major problem with the Boundless approach to dating is that Boundless doesn’t believe in/hasn’t discovered the alpha/beta divide.  It assumes that all men are starting from the same place and therefore need only apply the same steps to get where they want to go.  But because some men are alphas and even more are betas, a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work, and it only leads to results like the one chronicled by Reader.  Telling men to “man up,” “be intentional,” and “stop jerking girls around” is only useful for alphas.  Telling a beta to man up and be intentional leads to freak-outs and rejections.  By omitting the critical step of gauging female interest (and responding accordingly), Boundless dooms many men to dating failure.

Reader concludes:

I’m hoping that I might have a chance to start over. To get to know each other as brother and sister serving together. To get “pursuitive hints” without being faced with an expression of intentions. To get to grow in my own affections before being asked to commit.

[In my final refusal toward him,] I never actually meant that I didn’t want to be pursued. I guess I just wanted to be pursued in a lighter, slower and building sort of way.

I would say that Reader is in the “neutral” zone with the guy, otherwise she wouldn’t have expressed interest in “get[ting] to know each other as brother and sister serving together.”  Having rejected him, she wants the option of having him back so she won’t feel like she made a big mistake if he turns out to be a catch.  If he were truly repulsive to her, she wouldn’t have wanted to get to know him in any way.  That said, it’s pretty clear that he’s not super attractive to her – a woman invoking brother/sister comparisons, even if it’s brother/sister in Christ, is not a sign of burgeoning attraction.  Overall, Reader’s letter just seems to be a politely-worded complaint that she wasn’t pursued in the desired manner.

Still, Reader’s situation does shed light on the dating situation that most singles will face in the church, mainly because most people are not automatically attractive to vast numbers of the opposite sex.  Most church guys will still need to learn some game and learn to read IOIs.  Boundless keeps neglecting to mention (because it doesn’t distinguish between alphas and betas) that intentionality alone is not enough.  Most church girls will have to accept dates requested in a less than ideal manner, with guys who are not super attractive to them at the time of the asking.  Alas, Mr. Darcy doesn’t go to your church.  Neither does Megan Fox.  But on the upside, you’re probably not Chunk from The Goonies, so take comfort in that silver lining.

 

Why women are afraid to pump up men’s egos.

The privateman, in his most recent blog entry, wrote,

“It’s remarkable but I wonder how many women resist or completely reject such advice [to make a man feel good] because of feminist, ideological grounds (“it’s wrong to make a man feel good”)  or their own sense of fabulousness causes them to stick their heads in the sand.”

The answer is:  a lot.

The reason that women resist and reject advice to flatter men is basically an issue of power.  You wouldn’t know it from reading manosphere sites, but men, especially if white and educated, get the majority of perks in the world.  They get the best jobs.  They occupy the top of pretty much every occupational field, fields of women’s interests included (fashion, beauty, cooking, media).  They make the most money.  They’re more implicitly trusted in matters of business.  They get to have sex with tons of people and receive very little judgment for it.  They get to marry women young enough to be their daughters and have kids at age 70.  They get to be funny, outrageous, outspoken, and wild, and people just chuckle affectionately.  (Women who are funny, outrageous, outspoken, and wild, on the other hand,  just get called bitches, sluts, and bulldykes.)  They get to do most of the exciting and interesting things in this world, and they tend to think they know everything about everything.  And generally they don’t pay much of a social price for getting fat and dressing dumpy.

Meanwhile, women are expected to be quiet and have babies, always be up for sex, never gain any weight, and never have an opinion that contradicts a man’s.

Given these circumstances, it’s pretty easy to see why a modern woman balks at making a man feel good about himself.  In her mind, he already has the world’s oyster in his palm.  Giving him MORE sex, MORE compliments, and MORE deference is only going to inflate his ego even more than it already is and make him feel even more entitled to the things society has already given him.  And what, exactly, has this man done to earn any of these things other than be born with a penis?  Furthermore, if a woman flatters a man’s ego, he will just take her for granted and feel he has the ability to make unqualified demands as well as the right not to be of any help to the woman.  Women can’t see how treating a man well (i.e., like a ’50s homemaker) for no reason other than that he is a man can result in anything good for themselves.

Additionally, every woman either has a friend or knows somebody who got a boyfriend and then turned into a Stepford wife who has to get permission just to go to the mall, and while she’s there, her boyfriend will be constantly checking in on her and demanding to know all the details of what she’s doing.  And the friend will insist that he’s just doing this because he loves her.  No sane woman wants this to happen to her or be seen as weak and controllable, so that’s another reason that women tend to be resistant to giving men what they want.

Some of this attitude stems from hypergamy.  Women all want the best men for themselves, but women know that those men have options and in many cases have no compunction about straying.  A woman could treat such a man as a king, and she still runs the risk of his cheating.  So in a defensive measure, the woman will do what she thinks will earn her greater respect and shore up her power, which is to deny the man what he wants or thinks he is entitled to.  Then the man won’t feel quite so secure about walking all over her, because now he knows there is a price to pay.

Another reason is the American culture of meritocracy, where we take pride in earning things for ourselves and much American lore is centered around people who Did It Themselves, as opposed to getting something because of who your dad was.  This attitude extends to mating, as well.  It’s hard for women to be taught that everything they know about how the world works apparently doesn’t work in romantic male/female relationships, and it’s not like any major media is out there promoting this, anyway.  (It IS kind of ironic, though, that men who will rail against the evils of affirmative action will be happy to receive affirmative action praise from a woman.)

I can hear the cries rising up from the peanut gallery already, so let me be clear that YES, a lot of this modern female attitude is a response to alpha males and WAH WAH WAH MOST MEN ARE BETAS DOOMED TO LONELY SEXLESS LIVES WHILE ALPHAS HAVE ALL THE FUN WAHHHHH MARRIAGE 2.0 CAROUSEL NO GOOD WOMEN LEFT ON THE ENTIRE PLANET EXCEPT IN THAILAND WAHHHHHH.  But at the same time, women instinctively don’t want to dish out praise and coddling to men they don’t respect.  Sorry, Pushover Pete.**  And sorry, Slob Sam.  A lot of times women see men as overgrown children who seem barely able to take care of themselves.  They live in sties.  They think the Value Menu is cooking.  They would rather turn their underwear inside out than do laundry.  And women think to themselves, “I’m working a full-time job and still living respectably, but I’m supposed to tell this guy how wonderful he is and bring him his slippers?!?”  (Boundless:  “MAN UP!”)  It’s the “people like to help people who can help themselves” meritocratic thinking at work.

So what is the solution?  It’s not castigating women and screeching that everything is their fault.  (See:  Garden of Eden.)  Explanations of the differences between what motivates men and what motivates women are all fine and good, but you can’t undo generations of dogma raised to a level of canonical faith to go bye-bye with a few sarcastic zingers and alpha posturing.  Demonstrating praiseworthy characteristics is the best way to go, especially if done with confidence and good humor.  Greatness is irresistible, so show some greatness and the admiration will come forth naturally.  (If it doesn’t, you might be swimming in a poisoned pond.  Best to look for fresh water in that case.)

**My brother once told me that when a woman tells you you’re the best at something, you’re walking on air for a week.  I goggled at him like he’d just said that 2+2=5 and asked him, “But what if the woman is lying?”  He said that it didn’t matter.  But inside I was repulsed at the idea that a man would so gladly accept unearned praise and that a woman would stoop to giving it just to get her way.