One for the ladies

Alright ladies, it's time to get real here. Your magazines have largely failed you. Sure, cosmo has a list of 5,000 moves to make your man shoot semen from his eye sockets if you so choose, but yet you keep ending up in unsuccessful or boring situations with men. You get guys with no backbone. Guys with no motivation. Guys with no clue how to please you. Guys with so much of a clue of how to please you that you don't feel like you can give him the same pleasure. Men who mock you, berate you, make you feel dumb. Men who cheat. The list can go on and I've probably already hit a nerve. I'm sorry gals, I know you're neurotic (honestly one of your redeeming qualities in my eyes). Really, I would wager to say that every single one of your problems with men either comes from not understanding how a man thinks, or from not understanding how YOU think. I'm hoping by the end of this, I'll have shed some light on the subject and you can move forward into a better dating life.

What a man thinks of you.

It's really astonishing what we don't know about one another. Ladies, you know how terrified you are right before the first time you have sex with a new guy? How you wonder if you waited long enough, whether you picked the right guy, if you look good enough naked, etc? Even if you don't have that feeling anymore, I'm sure you had it at one point or another in your lifetime. Get that stomach-churning fear locked into your mind. This is what approximately 99% of men feel before they walk up and say "hello" to you. Even the loud mouthed assholes have this feeling. That's why they psych themselves up and put on a front of being a jackass: better to barrel in than think about it. I'm sure this probably seems silly to you. You know what? The feeling you have before sex is silly to us. In fact, if you told a guy about that feeling, it would blow his mind. We have NO fucking clue about that.

Why do I bring this up? Because this feeling that men get (commonly called "approach anxiety") is probably the #1 thing keeping you from getting with a guy you'll dig. Let's say you're a typical woman. I don't know if they pulled you aside in kindergarten, or if your mom had a talk with you, or if they mailed you a pamphlet after you had your first period; but you probably employ the "play hard to get" angle. You know, the guy is supposed to come over and talk to you, he's supposed to make the advances, he does everything. I'm not faulting this strategy, this is how our mating ritual has stood for hundreds of years. The problem is, these days, instead of men getting pulled aside in kindergarten or having a talk with dad or getting a pamphlet with this info; men are instead given an anti-sexual harassment lesson. This creates a problem. See, we are basically told any advances toward a woman are always unwelcome and make you a strange weirdo perv. Now don't get me wrong, some guys get the talk from their dad or brother to straighten this out. Maybe the pamphlet only goes to some households? Anyway, the bottom line is men really don't know the right way to do the old fashioned thing.

So basically, you only go on dates with guys that you choose based on a pool of men who had the gumption to approach you. And let's be honest, you know the guys who typically approach you. Some Guido with a freshly waxed chest and gold chains. Either that or you throw a bone to the loser guy you keep around who begs you for a date off and on in a fit of desperation. Either way, we're not picking from a great pool of specimen.

So where does this leave us?

I'm sure you're saying to yourself "But Walt, I practically send men a golden hand-written invitation on a silver platter!" Well, I'm here to tell you that even if you are, the invite is in Chinese to men. Most guys don't know your stupid code language. We don't know that you holding eye contact and smiling is an invite. We don't know that you playing with your hair is a green light. Hell, we don't even know that if you laugh at some stupid shit we say is tantamount to saying "let's do this". No, instead we just focus on the fact that you're a hot girl. Maybe you're a hot girl who smiles. Maybe you're a hot girl who plays with her hair. Maybe you're a hot girl who laughs. None of these statements get followed up with "...because she's interested in me" in our minds.

Now trust me, I know you've been burned approaching men you like. They don't take the hint or they don't make a move and then you end up feeling TERRIBLE. I NEED you to understand that in the majority of cases the guy is just clueless or didn't work up the courage to ask you for your number. And even if it was a flat out rejection, you'll save a great deal of sanity by just assuming he pussed out.

Truthfully, I think you'll have better luck going for the guy who seems a little nervous and filtering from that list. A lot of times a guy just needs one good signal to make him realize what's going down here. They might have ambition and backbone and all that shit you love, you just have to help them over that first hump. Men are pretty frank beings, we can handle a strong dose of honesty. If you two are flirting and he doesn't ask for your number, a playful "hey dumbass, this is the part where you ask for my number" will do the trick nicely. The funny thing is the man would get such an ego boost from you liking him that he'll be happier than a pig in shit.

I just can't find a good man anywhere!!

I hate to say it, but some women just pick the real winners. Something went wrong in their DNA and they like guys on roids or who are cheaters or whatever. To these women, I say try dating a guy you have no immediate attraction to. Go outside of your "type". Let him show you his world. It's just a date or two. Obviously, if you're doing the same thing and getting the same result, it's time to try something new. Pick up a hobby you're not immediately interested in. Maybe you love to dance but every guy you meet at dances is a tool. Try taking a painting class. These are just general ideas. The big picture is to do something completely different and get around a different type of person.

Maybe your problem is you end up with boring men. Unfortunately, as much as you'd like to, you can't fix a man. The best thing you can do is put a little bit of work in on him and send him off to the next girl a little better than you found him. But when you get out of that relationship, think about how you got with John Q. Paintdrying. Where did you meet him? Work party? Some place lame? Did they drag him out of his living room couch to come out in the first place? You're not going to find interesting people if you're not doing interesting things yourself. And taking a cooking class at the community college isn't interesting. Useful? Sure. But it's something boring people do to try to be moderately less boring. Think of something that sounds like an adventure to you then do that. You love thrills and romance anyway, right?

Wow Walt, you're a regular Hemingway here... nice word count!

Thanks! Hey...wait a second... Don't sass me! I'll have more info for you ladies later. Digest this bit of introductory info and we'll get on to more advanced topics later. Leave comments and I'll fill in any specifics you may want.