Thursday, July 21, 2011

How we lie

People lie.  Not just to others, but to themselves.

Everyone knows that men lie about sex.  Recently I heard an updated version of an old joke.  The version I heard was:  "To figure out how many women a guy actually slept with, ask him, cut that number in half, then subtract 3."  I wondered what happens when a guy says an odd number (9 people = 1.5).  How do you sleep with half a girl?  Are we talking Necrophiliac, or maybe he just got a BJ?

The real problem is that some men are actually honest.  In fact, the lower the number, the more likely it is to be true.   The number of women I have slept with be counted on one hand - assuming you are using Bill Clinton's definition of sex.   Even if you use a prosecutor's definition, that number is less than half my age.   When asked, I usually say 5, as in my mind, the strictest definition is more in keeping with my character.   

The entire myth of men bragging about sex comes from a relatively small subset of men.   There are lots of honest men out there.   If you want one but can't find one, then your personal standard for dating needs to be upgraded.

Usually when men lie about their sexual conquests, the only people they fool is themselves    There is a incredibly silly scene in Cocaine Cowboys II, where drug dealer Charles Cosby claims to have slept with a legal assistant who was prosecuting him.  When you find out later the legal assistant blew a big case because of sexting with someone ELSE, you realize why this idiot thought he could get away with such an obvious lie.   I doubt anyone except Charles Cosby was stupid enough to believe his tale of being seduced.



Men claim to have sex with women that wouldn't touch them.  But women claim that they are not shallow and don't care about appearances. 

There is a web site called OK Cupid, and they track what their members do.  It found among other things (Source), that women rated 80% of men as 'below average' attractiveness.   Keep in mind that they were rating attractiveness based on a picture, without easy access to height or job information.   Men on the other hand gave the expected bell curve, with about 50% being below average and 50% being above average.

This is because most women do not understand what makes a man attractive.   They know what they personally like, and lie to themselves, saying they don't care about appearances.  At heart, women still think that the general societal view of male attractiveness is "Male Model".  But the typical Male Model is "Pretty", not Handsome.   They are chosen not to appeal to women, but to appeal to gay men.  So the women rated the men on how close their face was to "male model pretty", and found that 80% of men were less than average 'male model pretty',  and they did not care that much about 'male model pretty' when it comes to who they email.   Male "below average" were in fact more likely to get mail than "average", using the women's score of attractiveness.



It reminds me of a scene in "How I Met Your Mother" (HIMYM).  They are discussing how in every relationship there is always a more attractive person and the other person is 'reaching'.  Marshall (Jason Segel) asks Lilly (Alyson Hannigan) and eventually gets her to admit she thinks she is more attractive.

First of all, let me state that I am a big fan of Alyson Hannigan.  In my personal opinion, she is a 9 (10 if she dresses up as Vamp Willow - but that's just my inner kinky geek).  But in HIMYM, they downplay her attractiveness to make Robyn (Cobie Smulders - a 10 who does not actually need the help) look better.    So while Alyson deserves at least a 9 for attractiveness, Lilly earns an 8.

But Marshall Eriksen is just about a perfect 10 when it comes to the average girl's first impression.  He is 6'4",  corporate lawyer that is not stuffy, has hair, and is in good shape. 

Marshall is clearly the 'more attractive partner', at least from the shallow perspective, but Lilly doesn't know it.  Why?  Because she (like most women) thinks that attractiveness is found in the face of male models, and Marshall does not look like that.

Note, it should also be noted that in HIMYM, it is demonstrated that Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) that we know sleeps with a lot women - lies about sleeping with women.   Women lie about not being shallow, men lie about sex.   It is a very realistic show. 

The average woman does not like male models, they like: tall, successful, men with a full head of hair and more muscle than fat (but not body-builders).   The average man does not sleep with very men women.  Unless of course you are in good shape and are either very famous or very  rich.

So women claim they are not as shallow as men.   Simultaneously, men claim they can get laid as easily as a woman can.  Neither claim is true. 

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Chemistry

Chemistry is short hand for "I'm attracted to you".

When someone says they don't want to date you because there was no chemistry, they mean "I can't imagine having sex with you without a lot of alcohol", but are being polite.

Politeness is a huge mercy, so don't get upset with them.  But if this happens a lot, you may need to lower your expectations of physical beauty, and raise them for deeper things.  That is, stop trying to hit on the hottie with the body but no brain, and look for someone smart enough to want to get into your pants/dress/kilt/mumu, etc.

On the other hand if you keep going on dates where you are the one feeling  'no chemistry', then you may need to start asking out the smoking hot guy/gal.   This goes for women too.  I assure you, any man worth dating will be happy if you make the first move.  But remember that guys that get 8 rejections out of 10 tries are doing pretty good, so don't get discouraged when you are turned down.  Guys are easy, so chances are you will probably only get turned down one out of two tries, not 8 out of 10 - as long as you are asking out people that are 'in your league'.

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Anger Management

Anger is natural.  It pumps you up and gets you going to do something physical.    If you are facing an invading army, it is the perfect emotion to feel.    If you are facing a loved, liked, or even tolerated one, anger is the worst thing that can happen to you.   Anger makes you want to hurt your target.  This works fine if your goal is death.  Not so much if you don't want to actually kill them.

Anger makes people win the battle but lose the war.    The mechanism is fairly simple.  Anger gets you to over-commit your resources.  If you spend too much on one battle, you won't have enough to win others later on.

This works for relationships as well as wars.

When dealing with something that makes you angry, my advice is to first go some place and calm down.  Then start thinking about how to achieve your goals WITHOUT hurting anyone you care about. 

It is not a good idea to convince your husband to give up Sunday Football and go shopping with you if he will resent you for it.   Even if he hides the resentment.     It is not a good idea to convince your wife to try a threesome if she doesn't want one.  Even if she orgasms. 

It is better that neither person gets what they want if it means the other is resentful.  You need to find ways to compromise so that BOTH sides end up happy.  Part of that is accepting that your partner may get happy from things that you don't like.  Even things you hate.     To quote Dan Savage "If cake play is what a man needs, his wife should give it to him; if she can’t bring herself to, then maybe she should allow him a chocolate-frosted excursion with another woman." (This was in response to a man who simply wanted his girlfriend to slam a chocolate cake into his face - cake play meant playing with cake, not a euphemism.)

Sometimes you will be in a situation where someone is going to end up resentful no matter what.   One person has family in California and wants to stay there, the other gets a great job offer in Texas.  The trick there is for one person to bribe the other till they think it is worth it.

Maybe offer to use a lot of that extra money to buy a Motorcycle for the one that wants to stay in California (even though the Texas bound person thinks they are too generous).

Note, these techniques also work well in other types of relationships.  Amazing what simply staying calm when talking to an airline can sometimes do.   Of course it requires that both people be reasonable, not always the case.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

How many phone numbers should a single person get/give?

One of the things that shy people do is focus on one single possible date.  They pick out the best person and only concentrate on her/him.  Unless you are Gisele Bundchen /  Jude Law, this is obviously a bad idea.

Note, I am not talking about being a player and sleeping around.  If you want to do that, it's another topic entirely.   Instead I am talking about when you are between relationships, not sleeping with anyone yet.

I try to have 3-4 potential dates lined up at any one time.  In my personal experience, about 2/3 of them will not work out.  They won't call you (or call you back), they will flake out and cancel, etc. etc.   Often they thought about dating you, but found someone (or thing to do) they thought was better.  You were their "safety" pick.  It took me a while to understand this, as I don't make safety picks and rarely if ever cancel.   If I say I will call you, I generally do.  But I am an exception.   Other times real life gets in the way - they get sick, work gets busy, etc.  In either case, sometimes they are rude and don't call/call back, other times they have the courtesy to tell you on the phone.


The remaining third are not always winners.  They may show up for the date, but it turns out to be a bad date.   Recently I dated someone who, despite repeated attempts at my part to explain the difference, thought Salsa and Tango were the same thing.  At this point I realized that perhaps she was not the girl for me.

So when I am on the prowl, I try to get about 3 new phone numbers each week.  I expect one to use voice mail to ignore me, another to cancel (perhaps with a reschedule - but not always).  That leaves one person to go on an actual date.

In a successful week, I have a second date and a first date planned.   I don't stop asking additional women out until a relationship has progressed to sex.  Once that happens, I stop dating other people till I see if the relationship works out.

But sometimes a date progresses faster than you realize.   Which of course leads to the situation of what do you do if you had another date planned already/promised to call someone but you just had sex.   As a guy I like to keep the other dates.  So far, every time this has happened the other dates have not impressed me enough to give up the existing relationship and I don't ask them out again.  I call this "dating without intent".

But I am a guy who usually pays for dinner - even on second dates.  That means that when I "date without intent" ,  I am buying a women dinner "under false pretenses".  Buying a dinner is very different than accepting dinner 'under false pretense'.    I don't really know what I would do as a woman.   That might be why I get many more cancellations than I give out - but I myself would never do that.

My advice to women that are in this situation is to call up the new guy and tell him you would go on a date with him again if he let you buy him dinner.    If he refused, explain that you are getting serious with another man and don't expect him change your mind.  Worst case scenario call and cancel.  

Never leave a guy hanging  - he might be keeping date night free in case you call him back.  Yeah, this is kind of sad - but don't kick a guy that is already down.