THIS ARTICLE, I can’t even.

The article:  Heavy Issues for Heavy Women.  (So miraculous that NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED.)

The discussion thread:  Miracle on Matrimony Street.

A quote:

We’ve been married for almost seven years now. One child and an additional 35 pounds later [which makes her 290 at 5’3″], my husband is nothing but more attracted to my fat frame. And he gets a little annoyed about the guys who hit on me. Just as God had made some men who prefer brunettes, some who prefer tomboys, some who prefer bookish gals, God has given some guys a deep appreciation for fat women.

Especially in light of Roissy’s post on Why European Girls Stay Thin.

BRAIN GOES KABOOM.

Did you complete the 12/12 Challenge?

I, alas, did not.  (Insert wailing and gnashing of teeth here.)  But if any blog readers attempted, or even completed**, the 12/12 Challenge, please let me know!

I may reinstitute the challenge at some point in the future.  We’ll see.

**If you completed the challenge, you deserve free fries at the fast food establishment of your choice for the rest of your life, or some other comparable lifelong benefit.

The new “I have a boyfriend.”

Everybody knows that women who don’t want to be bothered by men often use “I have a boyfriend” as a deterrent.  The scenario usually goes thusly:

GUY:  Yo, we should hang out sometime in a sexual way. (paraphrasing)

UNINTERESTED GIRL:  I have a boyfriend.  (usually prefaced by “uh” if she doesn’t like you, and “I’m sorry” if she’s trying to let you down gently)

GUY:  Oh, my bad.  (goes home to chronicle failure in blog)

Whether or not the girl actually has a boyfriend is beside the point.  Etiquette dictates that trying to steal someone who is taken (if not legally so) is rude, and so the excuse usually works.

However, thanks to Game, many men now consider “I have a boyfriend” to be a shit test.  The logic behind this assumption is that the woman will forget about her boyfriend if a more alpha male comes around, so the man should be that alpha male if he wants to make time.  Fair enough.  Boyfriends don’t incur any legal obligation of loyalty.

This got me thinking, though…if “I have a boyfriend” no longer commands the same social sway that it once did, then what new excuse can a woman use to politely get rid of unwanted swains?  (“I have to wash my hair” is the “Shout to the Lord” of excuses, i.e., just a little too obvious of a go-to.)

Well, recent comments left on this blog indicated that a woman who dated multiple men concurrently was “undeniably slutty” and unable to be satisfied by one man.  So, in light of that information, maybe the new “I have a boyfriend” should be “I have three boyfriends.”

GUY:  Yo, we should hang out sometime in a sexual way.

UNINTERESTED GIRL:  I have three boyfriends.

GUY:  WHAT OMG WHORE WHORE WHORE WHORE WHORE  (runs away to denounce modern women in blog)

Of course, a woman deploying this technique would have to make sure the situation didn’t backfire on her:

GUY:  Yo, we should hang out sometime in a sexual way.

UNINTERESTED GIRL:  I have three boyfriends.

GUY:  MY KIND OF LAY-DEH!

UNINTERESTED GIRL:  $*#@!!….um, I just remembered, I have to wash my hair.  (runs away to remind girlfriends that men are pigs)

Alternative suggestions:

GUY:  Yo, we should hang out sometime in a sexual way.

UNINTERESTED GIRL:  My dog/grandma/parakeet named Bill just died.

or:

GUY:  Yo, we should hang out sometime in a sexual way.

UNINTERESTED GIRL:  I’m attending my son’s figure skating competition.  The tassels on his costume are amazing.

also:

GUY:  Yo, we should hang out sometime in a sexual way.

UNINTERESTED GIRL:  Okay, but I have to warn you…I didn’t shave my chest this morning.

It’s up to you.  Pick your poison.

Is romantic competition inspiring?

I’ve noticed over the years in my television watching that the most common method of getting two characters together is to introduce romantic competition.  Typically Girl A and Guy B will be in some sort of platonic holding pattern – usually platonic co-workers, good friends, or good enemies – but either one of them has a secret crush on the other, or they both have secret crushes on each other, or they believe they don’t have secret crushes on each other but the audience knows they do.  No one wants to upset the comfortable apple cart, until – BAM!  Romantic competition shows up and swoops one half of the platonic couple.  This leaves the other half jealous and distraught, which leads to shenanigans that may or may not bring our destined couple closer together, but at the very least primes the audience’s pump for a juicy future romantic reconciliation.  Friends exploited this trope over and over and over, keeping the audience’s interest in Ross and Rachel alive for a decade.  Bones is doing the same for Booth and Brennan, as is Castle with Castle and Beckett (which I don’t watch but this is my understanding of what’s going on).  How I Met Your Mother appears to be going there with Barney and Robin, The Big Bang Theory is currently doing it with Penny and Leonard, and one of my favorites, Gilmore Girls, kept up the song-and-dance for years with Luke and Lorelai.

This is all fine and good for interesting television, but does this scenario ever play out in real life?  If you’re a guy and you have a female friend whom you have a bit of a secret crush on, are you going to act if some other guy steps into the picture and starts dating her?  Or are you just going to sit back and ride it out until she’s free again?  If you’re a girl and believe you don’t have a crush on your male friend, how do you deal with unexpected jealousy when he starts dating someone new?  Is romantic competition a motivator for getting out there and fighting for the person you’re attracted to, or does it make you step down and sit it out?  (Please note that these questions refer to singles only.  Married people had better fight if there is a potential interloper.)

Relating to this concept – are people off-limits if they’re “in a relationship”?  In my opinion, any person not married is free game, although in practice, people tend to treat those “in a relationship” with quasi-marital respect, and attempts to break up an unmarried but established couple are considered akin to homewrecking.

I feel silly jockeying with other girls for a guy’s attention, especially if I’m not receiving any preferential treatment, so I tend to withdraw.  But maybe other people are different?

Act interested.

One part of my church’s Sunday service that I would happily do away with is the time when the pastor tells everyone to stand up and greet other people.  It’s one of the most useless ways of forcing people to “get to know each other.”  Most people are horrible at talking to people they don’t know, so just add in the pressure of being forced to do it, and you end up with a lot of really limp handshakes and lack of eye contact.  My church is particularly terrible at eye contact.  Most people I shake hands with, other than all of the old people who are delighted to see a younger person at an early service, are not even looking at me when they say hello and shake my hand.  They’re already glancing off in the distance, probably at their next limp hand-shaking victim.

This got me thinking about interactions with the opposite sex.  If you’re on a date with someone, or even meeting someone, it’s important to make eye contact.  If you’re trying to talk to someone and they’re looking everywhere except at you(r face – boobs don’t count), it’s pretty obvious that the person is not interested and has a bunch of other things they’d rather be doing.  It’s pointless to talk to the side of someone’s face.  I hope that the next time this happens to me, I’ll just walk away rather than politely endure the awkwardness.

A premature proclamation?

Suzanne Gosselin recently wrote an article at Boundless called “Recognizing the One,” in which she recounts that she knew her now-husband was “the one” when the Holy Spirit told her so (which just so happened to be at a moment when Kevin, to whom she was already attracted, was alpha-ly going on about his passions and plans for life…funny how that works).

In the comments, someone named Andrew3 wrote of his criteria for a future wife:

This is my criteria for knowing if a woman is “The One” for me:

1. She believes in Jesus Christ as her Saviour.

2. I can imagine her bearing my children through the method designed by God at the beginning of creation. (Genesis 4:1)

3. She wants to marry me.

That is it! The first woman who fulfills all three of the above criteria will be my wife for the rest of our years on earth.

Now, maybe he really means this, but I highly doubt that these are his only criteria.  What if the woman also…

…had three kids by three other guys?

…pole-danced not for Jesus?

…had $50,000 worth of credit card debt?

…had two ex-husbands?

…had a lot of male Facebook friends who liked to message her?

…liked to post pictures of herself in a bikini on Facebook?

…had no female friends?

…made more money and/or had more education than he did?

Maybe Andrew3 is just really young and therefore hasn’t thought any deeper than his three criteria.

 

You should just kiss her.

I was talking to my brother on the phone tonight and found out that his first college girlfriend had never let him kiss her even though they dated for a (school) year.  This was because she was one of those girls who had decided not to kiss anyone until she was married.  This was also before my brother had read The Game three times and Mystery Method twice.  And this was also in part due to the sterilized Christian college atmosphere of “even the slightest male sexual forwardness is akin to date rape.”  Ultimately, the ex-girlfriend’s unwillingness to kiss my brother led to their breakup.

But, as I learned, he should have just gone ahead and kissed her.  Years later she apologized to him for never kissing him and then confessed that she had gotten drunk and made out with some random stranger and felt awful about it.  I don’t think this made my brother feel better about all those kissless months.

All women, no matter what they say, want the men they’re dating to put the moves on them, or at least try.  If you’ve been dating a non-kisser for a while, and you have good chemistry, and you’ve just had a really great date, you may as well go for it.  She may honestly believe that she wants to save her lips for “I do,” but what her subconscious really wants is to know that the man she is dating finds her so irresistible that he can’t help but kiss her.  Irresistibility is key, though.  Anything less will seem calculated or lustful.  Another caveat:  bring your best game in case you get rebuffed – not so that you can then con her into changing her mind, but to show her that her refusal to kiss you does not affect you.  (If you have really wicked game, you should let her know how attractive you find her, and then inform her that you will not kiss her under any circumstance.  She will be dying for you to kiss her.  Hey, it worked for Rhett Butler.)

I’m not writing this to try to get men to get women to abandon their kiss-free standards.  Some women are very resolute and sincere and do make it to the altar with unbesmirched lips.  I commend these women.  But I think that a lot of young women adopt a kiss-free stance in a fit of idealistic romanticism, rather than as a result of sober contemplation.  It’s the idealistic romanticizers, therefore, for whom no-kissing often amounts to a sanctified shit test – a test that men should recognize and treat as any other.  The truth is that under amenable circumstances, a woman will kiss whom she wants to kiss.  Very, very few women can fight off the hamster for long when it comes to kissing the men they are deeply attracted to.

P.S.  This blog post should not be interpreted to mean “ASSAULT HER WITH YOUR SLOBBERY, OVEREAGER LIPS JUST BECAUSE THERE WAS A SPLIT-SECOND PAUSE IN THE CONVERSATION.”  Timing is always of the essence.

Online dating dilemmas: the superbeta.

I finally reached the “eHarmony mail” stage of eHarmz with a 45-year-old superbeta who, shall we say, has lost the bloom of youth and looks not well-poised to recover any droplet of it.  Today he sent me the most beta-ish of beta greetings conveying his hope that I had a “happy Monday,” compliments to my family (I have an extended family photo posted) and my smile (what can I say, I have great chompers), questions about what I did during the weekend, and information about what he did on his (he went for a hike and rode his bicycle).  He then said he would “be in touch” and wished me “sweet dreams.” It was pretty much a 66-word clinic in Coma-Inducing Nice Guy-ism.  In the previous stage, where you ask three questions that the person can write in the answers for, his answers totaled 199 words.  Mine totaled 44.  I think you can see where this is going.

At what point, then, is a woman justified in writing off an online match before even meeting, provided he doesn’t offend basic principles of sanity and morality?  If a guy comes off as a lonely, middle-aged superbeta in writing and photos, what are the odds that he will be more impressive in the flesh?  Should a woman feel obligated in spending time with someone she is 99% sure she will not be attracted to?  Should a woman keep her options open in case he falls into that 1%?  I think that all single women can hear their mothers screeching in their ears, “You need to give nice guys a chance!  He might be a great husband for you!”  (My mom loves to say this about mild-mannered computer programmers.  Never mind the fact that she basically married my star athlete dad because he was hot.  Oh, and from the same denomination.  Very important.)  In the other ear are screeching manosphere men, with the mutually contradictory orders to give nice guys a chance and stop being an entitled princess, and to stop leading men on and just be honest for a change, you fat entitled whore princess who will just end up with a small army of cats.

Sometimes I think women just can’t win.  Exercise any choice, and you’re too picky and will end up alone with cats.  Be too open and you’re either disingenuous or a big fat ho.  O, the glories of the lose-lose situation.

Half of me is tempted to send this guy a link to Roissy, especially that one post at Roissy’s on why you should always write less than the woman, and say not to write back until he’s read a month’s worth of posts.  But I think I lack that measure of kindness, cruel woman am I.

 

More anecdotal evidence that men don’t care about virginity.

So, in an effort to scrounge up twelve dates by May 10, because nobody I know knows any single Christian men, I finally forked over money to eHarmz.  The level of psychological pain this action incurred was comparable to my feelings when I see how much of each paycheck I lose to taxes.  Since starting eHarmz about a week or so ago, I have been matched with close to a couple dozen men and am in the early communication stages with a handful (they initiated contact).

In these early stages, you can send five pre-scripted, multiple choice questions to the other person.  One of the questions is “what are your feelings about premarital sex?”.  The answer choices range from “totally against” to “very much a fan” (paraphrase).  One of my friends always uses this question as a sort of litmus test for the man’s spiritual commitment, so I figured I would, too.  So far none of the men who have answered this question have answered “totally against.”  And in my preferences, I have matches restricted to the highest level of religious commitment as well as to primarily conservative Protestant denominations.  So on the anecdotal level, the idea that supposedly committed Christian men believe that sex is only for marriage is bunk.

Even more telling, though, is that NONE OF THESE MEN HAS ASKED ME THE SAME QUESTION.  If virginity/restriction of sex is supposedly so important to men, wouldn’t they be very interested in my feelings about it?  Yet so far nobody has sent out this question.

Then again, one of my other questions is “what are your feelings about gender roles” (with answers ranging from “get in da kitchen and make me mah DINNUH!” to “halfsies on all chores!”), I haven’t gotten matched with anyone who believes in traditional gender roles, and a number of the men have chosen the “we should define gender roles for ourselves” option.

I’m trying to keep an open mind, but my apathy is rising.

First date tips for dudes.

A male reader wrote me to describe a recent date that he went on.  He thought it went great and noted the various IOIs she sent out, but when (four days later) he asked her to go out again, she shut him down with the “we didn’t click” excuse.  I have a feeling he’s not the only dude out there who’s experienced this very scenario, so here are my (expanded-upon) thoughts that I sent him about common first date dealbreakers that men often unknowingly fall prey to – especially when they are trying to apply game and maintain alpha frame.

Before I get into these things, men should keep in mind that while all women are the “same” in that they all have a certain set of emotional needs and desires, not all women are going to respond to the same strength of tactics.  Women who are used to attracting a lot of male attention (whether they’re beautiful or just kind of slutty) need harder game run on them than women who are shy, conservative, and/or don’t go on very many dates.  Bar kittens and unadventurous, dutiful church girls are a chasm apart in terms of what will get a positive response out of them.  Bar kittens usually need to be taken down a peg, whereas church girls need to be reassured that you have honorable intentions (well, unless you assume the role of supplicating beta).  They both want male leadership and confidence, but the way in which those qualities should manifest themselves is going to be different depending on the girl.  Also, a certain amount of what works on any girl is going to depend on the girl herself.  This is where having some social intuition comes in.  Just as there’s no one approach that works on every single girl, not every single church girl is going to respond to exactly the same game, either.

Okay, with that out of the way – here are some basics.  Yes, I know, NAWALT, so there will always be some exceptions to what I’m about to say.  You may have bumped up against one.  But by and large, especially when dealing with “good church girls,” the following hold true.

(1) Always pay. If she was the one who asked you out, offer to pay anyway.  It may sound petty, but not paying on the first date, unless the woman insisted on going dutch beforehand, is a dealbreaker.  (Even then, you should still offer to pay.)  If the woman liked you a lot and you didn’t pay, her friends will still tell her that you’re a loser for not paying, so no matter what, the well will be poisoned against you.  So just suck it up that you’ll have to pay.

Note:  EVEN IF THE WOMAN OFFERS TO PAY, YOU MUST STILL INSIST ON PAYING. In your head you may think, “Oh, she’s being fair and modern,” but ten bucks says that a church girl (and pretty much every other girl with a drop of femininity in her) will secretly be offended that you permitted her to pay and did not put up genuine resistance.  (However, if she keeps fighting you on it, let her.  But then cheekily tease her about being a feminist if she does pay.)

(2) At the end of the night, say you had a good time – IF you genuinely had a good time. Otherwise, just thank her for the chance to meet her, get to know her, and spend some time with her.  I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary to tell her that you’ll call or that you should hang out again sometime – it’s too easy for men to say that and then not call or not ask for another date, which exasperates women.**  It’s better not to create expectations that can easily be dashed.  (But if you really do want to see her again, it’s fine to say that you should go out again.  If the girl isn’t interested, she’ll probably give a nebulous response like “Yeah, maybe sometime.”) Also, I don’t think it’s a good idea to ask for another date immediately at the end of the first date.  I’ve had this happen before, and it really puts the woman on the spot if she’s not sure if she’s attracted to you.  (**Roissy-style players can use exasperation to their advantage, because if you stiff her on a phone call, she will definitely have you on her Ish List and will be more likely to respond when you do finally call.  But that only works if you generated enough attraction in the first place.)

(3) It’s important to be respectfully playful. Gentle teasing works well on most women. Strength of any teasing/negs must be in proportion to how much romantic male attention the woman is used to getting.  Also, the teasing needs to be OBVIOUS.  Sometimes guys play teasing too deadpan, and the girl can’t tell if he actually means it or not and may feel insulted.  (Of course, sometimes it’s just that the girl has no sense of humor, which is something that’s outside of your control.)  A little bit of playfulness can go a long way in reassuring the woman that you’re safe to be with, have a good sense of humor, and aren’t overly invested in the success of the date.  Too often men fall into the trap of treating a date like a job interview, where she’s the boss they’re trying to impress, and they start trying to be walking encyclopedias about every topic they discuss.  It’s too business-like, doesn’t focus on the woman enough, and can even be alienating if the woman doesn’t have any interest in the topic.  So injecting a little playfulness into the date can alleviate a lot of the seriousness that sometimes occurs when men are trying hard to impress.

(4) Sometimes there just isn’t any chemistry. You can both be nice people but just have nothing to say to each other.  It’s not a failure on either part when that happens.  Don’t feel bad that you couldn’t squeeze blood from a stone.