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.

Holding out for an alpha like dad.

It is often said that girls marry men like their fathers.  I think this is due partly to familiarity; dads are the primary source of a girl’s understanding of what a man is, so it makes sense that in seeking a man for herself, she will seek one like her father.  (Likewise, men often marry women like their mothers.  One of my brother’s friends is living proof of this.  His mother is a domineering battle axe.  Guess what kind of woman the friend married and is apparently quite happy with?)

So what happens when a girl’s dad is an alpha male?  Doesn’t that make it ten times as hard for her to settle down with a beta?  If she’s used to a man who makes decisions and doesn’t back down, who lovingly teases her and her mom, and is clearly in charge of the family, why would she ever want to settle down with a man who is too petrified to ask her on a date, who dithers over decision-making, who defers to her every whim and strives to make her happy at all times, and who apologizes for himself all the time?  Even if she did fall for a soft, sweet beta, the bloom would probably not be on the rose for too long, and she would soon be gritting her teeth as she clung to the remains of her attraction.

I think that another reason the daughters of alphas want alphas themselves is that she wants her husband to be able to hold his own with her dad.  What kind of woman can admire and love a man who shrinks in the presence of another?  Especially when the man is the girl’s father – if he can’t command her dad’s respect, how can he have her respect?  If the point of marriage is that a man and woman marry and form their own family unit, then having a dad who is still the top alpha in the woman’s life doesn’t bode well for the success of the marriage because the new husband and wife aren’t really their own independent family unit.  The woman will end up deferring to her father, not her husband, because her dad is the one with the true authority.  (See:  Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey’s ill-fated marriage.  Nick couldn’t overcome father-in-law Joe’s overwhelming presence and influence over Jessica.)  The issue just gets compounded when alpha brothers factor into the scenario.  If a girl grows up surrounded by an alpha dad and alpha brothers, who know how to handle her, her mother, and other women, she’s going to even more expect her future husband to be at or at least near their level.

Personal alpha dad anecdote from this weekend:  my dad was going to bed and gave my mom a peck goodnight on the lips.

MOM:  Excuse me?  That’s it?

DAD:  That’s all you deserve!

And he didn’t give her a better kiss and sauntered off to bed with an SEG on his face.  (Note:  some nights when she says this, he does give her a better kiss.  Gotta keep the wife on her toes. :))

P.S.  I saw both Harry Potter and the Never-Ending Camping Trip Deathly Hallows Part 1 and Tangled over the weekend.  If any readers are interested in a discussion post (or posts), let me know.  Tangled in particular has some interesting gender dynamics discussionables.

Harry Potter got it wrong.

In honor of the release of the second-to-last cash cow film in the Harry Potter franchise, I figured now would be a good time to get soapbox-y about J.K. Rowling’s inability to write believable romance.  Please be aware that spoilers for the series follow.  If you really don’t want to know, now is the time to turn back.

For those who need a refresher/primer, the Harry Potter books revolve around the titular character who discovers at age 11 that he is not just a normal, everyday human (or Muggle, as the books call them) but a wizard.  And not just any wizard – he is the sole miraculous survivor of an attack from the greatest dark wizard ever, Lord Voldemort, who killed Harry’s parents (themselves a witch and wizard).  The books then chronicle Harry’s adventures at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardy, a British boarding school for those with magical abilities.  During his time at Hogwarts, Harry becomes best friends with Ron Weasley, a good-natured boy of modest magical ability from a very large, very poor wizarding family, and Hermione Granger, the class brain whose parents are Muggles.  Each book increases in scope and complexity, as details about Harry’s past are revealed and Voldemort’s return becomes an ever-increasing threat.  The seventh and last book of the series climaxes with Harry’s final confrontation with Voldemort.  (Harry wins in the most anti-climactic ending ever for a supposed epic villain, and I still think that Rowling was using some pretty shaky logic to get to that ending.)

Anyhow, as the characters age – the series starts when they are 11 and ends when they are 17 – romance naturally enters the picture.  Harry ends up with Ron’s younger sister, Ginny, and Ron himself ends up with Hermione.  (The epilogue of the final book has both couples at the train station, sending off their children to Hogwarts.)  It’s all very tidy and sickly-sweet.  Orphan Harry gets to be a part of a big, jolly, loving family, and the Weasley family gets to be progressive and open-minded by embracing Muggle-born Hermione as one of their own.  (Muggle-born vs. “pure-breds” is one of the ongoing themes in the books and is one of Voldemort’s motivating factors.)

Which characters would pair off was a subject of hot debate among fans.  Some fans felt that Harry would end up with Hermione, who was always Harry’s biggest supporter and Girl Friday.  Others noticed Ron and Hermione’s constant bickering and guessed that it would be Ron and Hermione in the end.   Since the books were written from Harry’s limited third person point of view, there was no way of accessing the other characters’ thoughts, nor actions apart from Harry.  It wasn’t until the sixth book was released that the debate was settled once and for all:  Harry suddenly notices that Ginny is popular, gorgeous, athletic, magically gifted (unlike her brother Ron), sassy, and bold, and he spends the majority of the book lusting after her.  Meanwhile, Hermione sulks because Ron hooks up with the class bimbo.  If that didn’t make it clear enough, in the final book Rowling actually had Harry say that he had only ever thought of Hermione as a sister.  Your objections are denied!

As someone who favored Harry and Hermione, I resented Rowling’s psychosocial gymnastics to put the two couples together.  I never understood what Hermione, a highly accomplished and perfectionist witch, saw in Ron, who was completely average in every way and tended to be subordinate to Harry in their friendship.  In fact, I’m not sure Rowling ever knew, either, considering that she gave Ron a very hasty injection of athletic ability in book 6 and heroism and magical ability in the book 7 so that Hermione could finally admire him for something.  Okay, so Ron was a late bloomer.  It happens in real life, why not in books?  Well, not only was Ron up against his own mediocrity, but I still have no idea how he could have believably overcome Harry’s pure status game.  Because Harry was the only person who had ever survived an attack by Voldemort, he was already famous in the wizarding world and entered Hogwarts a celebrity.  Additionally, Harry had exceptional athletic ability – he was invited during his first year to be the seeker for his house’s Quidditch team, an almost unheard-of honor.  He was also rich – his parents had left him mountains of wizard money at the bank.  And he was humble about it, too, never flaunting his status, athleticism, or wealth.  Oh, and he was adventurous – always taking risks, always embroiling his friends in a new adventure…and always relying on Hermione for help.  How could any of this not be intoxicating to a young girl?

I suppose that’s part of why Rowling worked overtime in the sixth book to present Ginny as an alpha female uber alles.  She had to make it inconceivable that Harry could possibly end up with anyone else, not when such a choice babe was in the building.  The glamming up of Ginny – who up until then had been a tertiary character with a girlish crush on Harry that left her speechless whenever he was around – essentially forced Hermione into the role of Harry’s beta orbiter – and we all know that loyalty and devotion are never rewarded with romance.

To be fair, Rowling never wrote Harry as acknowledging any possible attraction to Hermione, other than being surprised at how pretty she looked at a school dance, and in hindsight you can see her dropping hints for Ron and Hermione in the earlier books.  Still, Hermione was extremely loyal to Harry, even more loyal than Ron, and deeply admired Harry, and the two shared some intense emotional experiences over the years.  Sometimes just proximity is enough to trigger an attraction, and who was more proximate than Hermione?

The more I think about it, though, maybe Rowling followed reality after all.  Harry and Ginny were the Hot Ones, and Ron and Hermione were the Not Ones.  Occam’s Razor, ho!

Men and smart women.

A reader emailed me a blog post suggestion with the following comments:

You sometimes complain (not exactly the right word) that men avoid smarter women.  You should expect this, shouldn’t you?  Don’t you believe that, all else equal, a) a woman a man can’t credibly “lead” can’t be happy with him, and b) a man can’t credibly lead a woman who is markedly smarter than he is, due to “the truth-extracting powers of time and familiarity”?   Maybe guys  know enough to avoid things they can’t (by definition) appreciate anyway.

Hmm.  Yes and no.

I think the key here is that a woman can’t respect – and therefore can’t feel romantic passion for, and therefore has no interest in being led by – a man of small intelligence relative to her own.  If she feels that he is a dunderhead, there’s no way she’s going to put her life and well-being (and those of her future children) in his hands.

However, a man does not need to possess book smarts in order to be impressive in intelligence to a woman.  Here is why:  book smarts aren’t as important to women as street smarts/people smarts.  A woman will be more attracted to the guy who got all Cs in high school but is resourceful, witty, and well-liked than to the guy who was valedictorian but can’t leverage his intelligence into social currency.  It follows, then, that very bright women can be attracted to (and naturally soften themselves for) men who aren’t Einstein but are socially savvy and quick-witted.  The key typically with smart girls is that the guy must have some aspect of intelligence that the girl admires.  It doesn’t necessarily have to be book smarts.  As long as the man can parlay his brainpower (in whatever form that may take) into increased social dominance, many a smart woman will be happy to follow such a man.

Obviously, there are some limits to how big an intelligence gap can exist in a couple.  Educational level and socioeconomic status are reasonable proxies for determining this gap, though not absolute.  For example, I’ve found that a lot of people with bachelor’s and graduate degrees, both men and women, may have “smarts” but not really much intelligence.  Really, though, the “dunderhead test” is probably the most reliable.  Dunderhead-ism kills admiration and respect, the two crucial ingredients for a woman’s attraction and voluntarily submission to a man’s leadership.

Finally, yes, I think that men tend to avoid women they perceive as smarter.  Most men assume that they will have a hard time being impressive to such women and therefore bail without even trying.

Is virginity even relevant past age 30?

As I’ve discussed before, the church sends out different messages about sexual purity depending on what age group you fall into.  If you’re still in high school, Sex Is Bad.  (It’s Good if you’re married, but since you as a high schooler have no hope of being married any time soon and since most of you are going to college for four or more years during which you will not get married, Sex Is Bad.)  If you’re out of college, then abstinence is rarely mentioned, with the sort of implicit understanding that everyone understands that Single People Don’t Do It.  Not that I’ve ever seen anyone hauled in front of the church to be disciplined for fornication, other than mostly regretful single male worship leaders who were saying goodbye because they got caught.  I would bet good money that in churches with lots of people returning to the fold (you know, the loving, nonjudgmental churches), there are regular attendees aplenty who are fornicating with delight, with many even openly cohabitating.  But let’s not be harsh, because we don’t want to give anyone the impression that legalism still mars the church.  God will convict their hearts in His own good time.  Besides, if I point a finger, someone might point a finger back at me, and that would be unpleasant and rather unedifying.

In the manosphere, there is a constant to-do about a woman’s “number” and a woman’s history of riding the “carousel.”  As far as I can tell, there isn’t a specific “number” beyond which a woman becomes a carousel rider, but it seems generally agreed upon that a woman’s “number” must be three or lower to qualify as “good.”  I’m not sure if this means the husband is number three or number four, but it does seem that most men who are shopping for a wife definitely get uncomfortable beyond five.  Even if a woman has always only ever had sex with men with whom she is “in a committed relationship” and has never strayed, six is just too many.  Even if it was a decade ago and she’s been living like a nun since, she’s still likely to be branded damaged goods.

Committed Christian men are even more hyperobsessive about the almighty “number” because (if they’ve been 100% pure themselves) marriage is their one and only shot at finding a sex partner, and no one wants to marry the town bike.  It’s understandable that the idea of treading where a score of other men have tread before is not a particularly appealing one, especially when one has tread nowhere oneself.  Still, with the age of first marriage being so high, and living in a sexually permissive culture where many Christians do not adhere to traditional sexual morality, it becomes increasingly unlikely that a Christian will be able to or even be able to expect to marry a virgin, especially after, say, age 25.  It’s not that it can’t be done, it’s just that in many cases, it won’t be.  By the time someone is 30, hoping for virginity in a future spouse is like hoping to see a unicorn.

So is virginity, in a practical sense, really even that relevant after the “prime marrying years” are past?  I think most Christian men beyond college age would agree with the “three is a magic number” approximation.  So if you’re an attractive 32-year-old Christian woman who’s had sex with two guys and haven’t had sex with anyone in the past five years because you’ve rededicated your life to the Lord, are most single Christian men going to say, “Um, sorry, not a virgin, bye.”?  I doubt it.  A lot of those men won’t even be virgins themselves, and since the woman is still under the magic number, she’s still marriage material.

I’m not condoning fornication.  God’s rules are God’s rules.  As the creator of sex, God knows what He’s doing in setting boundaries.  Paul says, “‘Everything is permissible’ – but not everything is beneficial.”  This is one of those “rubber meets the road” areas, where “faith is being certain of what we do not see.”  As I get older, I’m not sure that I see that there’s much personal benefit in getting married a virgin vs. getting married somewhere under the magic number, but as I also see the societal havoc (and personal devastation) that fornication has wrought, I am reassured that God is, as always, infinite in his wisdom.

Hot and cold.

Can some of the men here please explain this phenomenon?  Typical scenario:

Man and woman meet at a social gathering (church, house party, bar/club, online).

Man and woman hit it off.

Man starts to call woman every day and sends dozens of flirtatious texts.  This goes on for weeks.  Woman raves to friends about “chemistry.”

Man and woman finally go on a real date (or just have an official one-on-one “hanging out.”)

It goes well.  There may be kissing.

Woman does not hear from man for days or even weeks afterward.

When woman finally screws up the courage to ask the man what’s going on, he says that he’s been “busy” or “has a lot of personal stuff going on.”  (Or HAS CANCER.  This actually happened to a friend of mine, who had dated a guy for a few months.  She thought things were going well.  Then he went completely AWOL.  When he finally resurfaced, he told her that he had been dealing with CANCER.  That was the end of their relationship.)

Woman wonders what went wrong/puts man on lifelong hate list.

How can a man go from hot to cold so fast?  Women interpret pursuit, especially consistent pursuit, as a sign of romantic interest.  For most women, feelings don’t turn off and on light a light switch, so when men flip-flop instantaneously, it throws women for a very confusing, and sometimes heartbreaking, loop.  Note that the younger and more inexperienced the woman, the harder this kind of flip-flop is to take.  It’s still hard for older women to take, but they usually have enough life experience to know that they have to harden their hearts and move on.

Male IOIs.

Happy Election Day, Americans.  (At least I hope it ends happily for me, which, living where I live, is an iffy proposition. We few, we happy few…. But I soldier on, pen in hand, mighty as the sword, or at least a plastic butter knife…)

I have some thoughts percolating about “fat bigotry” in light of the recent Marie Claire ~scandal~, but until I get them organized, I thought a post about male IOIs might be a good pasttime.  I suppose this will end up being a discussion appealing mainly to the ladies here, since persons of one sex find their sex’s IOIs extremely obvious.  For example, I can always tell when a woman is trying to attract a man’s attention, but quite often the man may as well be wearing a bag over his head.  (Then the man goes home and complains that no women like him.)

These are the IOIs I usually recognize from men:

• Staring
• Prolonged eye contact
• Attempts to isolate
• Attempts to monopolize time/attention
• Standing too close
• Overly earnest compliments about my appearance
• Overly earnest questions about myself
• Upper arm touching
• Seeking me out

Feel free to add/subtract/correct me if I’m wrong.  I think a lot of confusion arises for a woman when she feels she is receiving IOIs but they don’t translate into dates.  Then she is stuck with the dilemma of whether the man is just being friendly* – does he treat all women this way? – or whether there is something wrong with her that he won’t make a move.  For a woman, context is key, so if she doesn’t feel she is getting a clear read on the situation, she will spend too much a lot of time, usually with girlfriends, analyzing each situation for clues to the man’s mental state.  This is why He’s Just Not That Into You was such a watershed moment for a lot of women.  It gave women the freedom not to waste time and emotional energy analyzing men’s motives.  It’s a great relief to have a more or less bright line test for men’s interest:  if he asks for a date, he’s interested; if he doesn’t ask, he’s not interested (or at least not sufficiently interested).  Not that asking for a date means that he thinks he is developing feelings – he could just be trying to get sex – but it’s a much more concrete move, at least.

* How to know a man is not attracted to you at all and considers you well beneath his standards of attractiveness for even association:  he will act like you do not exist.  This means never making eye contact, never saying hello, never making small talk.  This is why reasonably attractive men who are also genuinely kind and friendly have so many women nursing crushes on them.  Even the smallest amount of attention is manna from heaven.

Crush control.

Since my last post, I’ve suffered from the dilemma of too much choice of what to write about.  Too many topical write about-worthy things have happened – Glee‘s two most prominent female stars Britney Spears-ed themselves up for creepy pervo photog Terry Richardson; Famous Women with talk shows Disapproved of said Glee stars; an EW.com feminist Disapproved of the Famous Women’s disapproval; Boundless had another post with comments full of Christian female projection about what men find attractive and shaming of the “number rating” system; Boundless also had a post on international/interethnic marriages, which of course prompted dozens of comments reeking of the superiority of Christians who marry outside of their nationality; a personal experience that added another notch to the “all the good ones are taken, gay, or taken and gay” column; various other experiences that made me wonder if most women overrate their looks/SMV; and a message board post from a girl who is living with her ex-boyfriend and is very upset that he is getting involved with another woman, a situation whose stupidity makes me want to bash heads against the wall, not the least of which is my own.  Choosing from any of the above is tough, so I’m going to go with another Dating Thread scenario, one which is exceedingly common these days.

I think I’ve discussed male/female friendships before, but it’s a situation that tends to cause a lot of heartache and grief, so it’s worth discussing again.  Here’s what happened:

Esmeralda is a graduate student who has a massive crush on a fellow student, Phoebus.  Esme and Phoebs are inseparable and hang out together all the time.  When they’re not together, Phoebs constantly texts Esme.  They are so tight that Esme’s roommates mistakenly thought that Esme and Phoebs were dating.

Recently, Esme and Phoebs met up with some other students in their program and went to hang out at the house of Esme’s arch-nemesis, Morticia.  They all ate, drank, and made merry.  Then, needing more alcohol, Esme, Phoebs, Phoebs’ roommate, and Morticia headed out to the bars and met up with some other friends.

Now, if Phoebus had been looking for an opportunity to make a move on Esmeralda, this would have been it.  Fueled with liquid courage, she was more than ready for the taking.  Instead, this happened:

Phoebus danced with Morticia and made out with her.  They left a couple minutes later.  Ten minutes after that was last call, and Esmeralda felt incredibly awkward passing Phoebus and Morticia outside and exchanging hellos.

Esmeralda now feels devastated/angry/humiliated/still in love with Phoebus.

I hear about or read about scenarios like this all the time.  The daughter of one of my mom’s good friends had something very similar happen to her a couple of years ago.  (In her case, she met a nice Christian boy and hung out with him all summer; he told her he wanted to marry someone like her; they went their separate ways when school resumed in the fall; she flew down to Florida to surprise him; she then discovered that he was dating someone else.)  Candice Watters’ own history with her now-husband, Steve, very much resembles Esmeralda’s plight.  (In Candice’s case, she confronted Steve and told him she would cut him off if he didn’t want to date her.  Months later he decided to give up his Southern belle ideal and date Candice after she lost some weight and grew out her hair.)

It’s almost useless to offer any advice to women in Esmeralda’s situation, because the woman will rationalize away all reason.  This guy is different, not all guys are like that, you can’t make generalizations, I’d rather be his friend than not at all, etc.  Pretty much all you can do as a friend is just tell that person you don’t want to hear about any more of their self-inflicted melodrama.

A more effective solution is just not to get into such a situation in the first place.  This means not having a male friend as an emotional confidant.  This also means not having a male friend with whom you spend a lot of free time, especially if it’s one-on-one.  This includes non-stop texting.  If a male friend wants to send you regular texts checking up on you or sharing details of his day or confiding his feelings in you, he’s crossing the friendship line and should not be surprised if his female friend starts falling in love with him.  Most women, even the most strident feminists who think that abortion is a self-evident human right and that rich white men should pay for everything for everybody (unless they’re on a date), want to feel emotionally taken care of, and will start falling in love in a typical feminine fashion if they sense that the man is willing to care for them that way.

A good litmus test for whether or not you’ve crossed the line is the one that Esmeralda failed:  do your friends/roommates think you are dating this guy or that for all practical intents and purposes, he is your boyfriend?  If there is any ambiguity, you should take a step back.

As for Phoebus…I think men who act the way he has are selfish jerks.  Yeah, yeah, it’s the woman’s fault, she let it happen, she should have known, blah blah blah.  Her lack of knowledge or self-control doesn’t make his actions any less selfish.  It’s the equivalent of a woman dressing slutty, letting men shower her with attention and gifts, going home with the man she likes best, getting naked, and then saying she’s saving herself for marriage and she never intended to have sex with him.

Basically, don’t get emotionally intimate with a friend of the opposite sex, and don’t spend too much time together, unless you’re pursuing a romantic relationship.  Otherwise one person tends to develop unreciprocated feelings for the other person, and a lot of heartache can ensue.

 

Man as a mirror.

I wasn’t going to write about Karen Owen and her, uh, list, figuring I’d have nothing new to add to the conversation, but I had an experience over the weekend that changed my mind.

I had arrived at Borders to meet some female friends for our weekly Bible study.  While two friends went and got coffee, I held down the table.  Having just awakened from an out-cold nap just about 30 minutes prior, I was still feeling a little groggy and trying to snap out of it.  I tried to telepathically will my friends to hurry back to the table so that I could order my own overpriced cup of coffee.  Tragically, my telepathy failed.

A large, hairy, possibly somewhat Armenian-looking guy with cornrows dressed in the drab guy uniform of knee-length shorts and an enormous T-shirt sat in the armchair to my right with his beat-up MacBook and headphones.  I didn’t really notice him until he got up and went to unplug his power cord near my table.  As he passed behind me, I heard him talking out loud.  I think he was trying to be lighthearted and jovial and attract my attention that way, but I was still groggy and didn’t care what a large, hairy, badly dressed man wanted to say to me if he wasn’t going to engage me directly.

I guess he also figured out that his indirect approach wasn’t working, so when he sat back down, he spoke to me directly, using my shoes as an opener.  He asked if they were Burberry.  I said no, they were $14 from Payless.  He said they looked like Burberry because of the plaid pattern.  I said that the plaid was the reason I liked the shoes.  He then asked if I was there for a Bible study.  (He must have seen my Bible with its gilded page edges.)  I answered affirmatively, and he went on to ramble about how he think it’s good to read the Bible, even if you don’t believe, because there’s good stuff in there with good morals and Jesus had a lot of good things to say, etc. etc.  I nodded a couple of times and agreed with him but didn’t encourage the conversation to continue, all the while trying to decide if this guy was legit or weird and wondering if I was being a bad Christian for not asking him where he thought he would spend eternity if he died tonight or doing other Christian Outreach Moves especially when he clearly had a positive attitude about Christianity and my goodness I REALLY needed some designer coffee or food so I would be more pleasant and awake.  Finally he concluded and decided to leave, and we bid adieu.

Later on that night, I thought about what had happened and concluded that I would have snapped to far greater attention had the guy who approached me better-looking, better-dressed, more articulate, or wittier.  I would have acted more interested and possibly even thrown out some charm if he had been more in line with the type of man I find attractive.

Then I thought about Karen Owen and how her List only featured athletes and how most people believe she was only discriminating in reporting her adventures, not in having such adventures in general.

I’ve read before that men consider the looks of their wives/girlfriends to be a reflection of their own quality as men; that men do think of women as arm candy, and the better-looking the woman, the higher-status he must be.  In a way, a woman is a mirror back to the man of the type of man he is.  I think the inverse is true for women as well, that the status of the man or men they’re associated with is a mirror validating their beauty and worth as women, the logic being that high-status men choose high-status women, therefore if a high-status man chooses me, I must be a high-status (read: beautiful, sexy, alluring) woman.  For someone like Karen Owen, an attractive but not pretty girl, the drive to secure a mirror that reflected what she wanted to see was pretty all-consuming.  That she apparently picked and chose who made it onto the List supports this theory, since a girl who gets the best must be one of the best herself.  A lesser man’s inclusion on the List would only have lowered her value in her own eyes, and in the eyes of her friends.  If men typically go only for what they think they can get, then it’s pretty depressing if the only men who are coming after you are unimpressive, because that means you must be unimpressive, too.

So to bring it back around to my experience with Big Borders Guy, on the one hand I tried to feel flattered that this guy was doing a daygame cold approach – and I am not approached very often, much less cold, so I should have felt extra flattered – but on the other hand, he was not the reflection of myself that I wanted to see at all, and I think it would take a toll on my ego if BBG-types were the only ones who approached me.  The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Or, perhaps more accurately, the spirit is reluctant, and the flesh is weak.

(Also, let this be encouragement to men to dress better.  If you look like you just rolled out of your parents’ basement and you try to approach women with minimal game, it’s probably not going to go in your favor.)

Feeling free to flirt.

It has been my experience in the church that flirting is implicitly frowned upon.  Growing up, I never heard a youth group sermon denouncing flirting, but in advice columns and articles written to youth and singles, flirting is usually cast in a negative light.  Although flirting at its purest is a natural way for two people to express chemistry and attraction, it often leads to confusion, manipulation, and drama.  Women naturally interpret a man’s playful attention as romantic interest, and when that doesn’t result in a date, hearts get broken.  Men likewise can get their hopes up when a girl flirts back at their overtures, then crushed when the girl says she just wants to be friends.  Not surprisingly, the church would rather have its young people avoid all of the emotional turmoil, and so we end up with exhortations to “man up” and “take the lead” (for men) and “be available” (for women).

This advice sounds solid, if a bit staid (I always imagine an unsmiling man somberly informing a woman, pre-selected for her pristine Christian character, that he would like to court her for the possibility of marriage, and the woman gravely agreeing.  Then they both wanly smile off in the distance, content in following God’s Will For Their Lives).  It’s a complete picture, just one stripped of color.  But how does this work in practice?

Consider the following scenario:  Regular guy Mario attends a hip, modern church called The Pillar.  (It used to be called Sandals until someone realized that that was the same name as a Caribbean vacation company.)  Mario starts noticing that an attractive young woman attends the same Sunday school group.  Mario finds out, through strategic eavesdropping, that the young woman is named Peach.  After a few weeks of observation and finding Peach to pass muster, Mario begins talking to Peach on Sundays.  Peach is friendly but doesn’t give any obvious IOIs.  Mario wants to date Peach.  What should he do?  If he shows “initiative and leadership,” he could be LJBFed.  If he waits around for clear IOIs, he will be accused of lacking initiative and leadership.  Mario decides that LJBFing is a fate worse than death, so he doesn’t ask Peach out.  Peach, meanwhile, has her own conundrum.  She likes Mario, but she wants to avoid a reputation for being a flirt, so she doesn’t overtly encourage his attentions.  She also thinks that Mario might just be friendly, and flirting with someone who is not interested back would be embarrassing.  She decides to wait for a more clear-cut signal.  Mario and Peach continue in their holding pattern, at least until bad-boy Wario shows up, flirts up a storm with Peach, swoops her away, and leaves Mario grumbling that Wario is stupid and ugly and Peach is a jerk-lover like every other girl.

But what if Peach had flirted with Mario, only to turn him down when he asked her out?  Why would Peach send such mixed signals?  Well, it’s possible that Peach saw Mario as someone “safe” who would never ask her out.  I don’t know what it is about the feminine psyche, but a lot of times it’s much easier to flirt with someone you have little interest in romantically than to flirt with someone you have a crush on.  Maybe it’s because you usually feel more self-conscious around a crush, and you also don’t want it to be too easy for the crush to get you, because otherwise, how do you know if he’s actually interested in you?  Plus, again, women don’t like feeling like they are chasing the guy, and Approaching + Flirting = Chasing.

So what is the answer?  I don’t know.  I think it’s wrong to deliberately dangle the carrot in front of someone you have no intention of feeding it to, but at the same time I don’t think it’s a good idea to be so unreadable that no one figure out what you’re thinking.  Alas, there is no foolproof way to avoid bumps and bruises on the road to love.