Category Archives: Relationships and Sex
What I Look For In A Girl
I’m not picky. As long as she’s smart, pretty, and sweet, and gentle, and tender, and refined, and lovely, and carefree…
-Sundance Kid
Modern Love
It’s strange how the phone is the next step in social connection these days, as if that is somehow more serious, more personal, more dangerous than, say, letting someone into your daily thoughts and photos.
Too Old
I had a discussion with a friend about whether one ever gets too old to stay with a friend instead of getting a hotel. I made a comment that I thought I was reaching the precipice where I would no longer feel comfortable when visiting a city to ask a friend if I could crash on their couch. I felt like I am at the point where I should just pony up for a hotel room.
She expressed that she thought any reason to visit friends is welcome, and she would love to have anyone stay with her. I have to imagine there comes a point when this is inappropriate. I suppose it comes down to the reason behind the trip. If it is to visit the friend, of course I would feel comfortable staying with them. If I’m just passing through town though, I’d feel like I was burden.
That got me thinking about roommates. When is too old to have roommates? You probably can’t still be living with roommates at 50.
I’ve noticed a lot of my friends getting married lately. It seems I get a save the date every month now. While also helping me develop a complex about being the last single person of my friends, I also wonder if perhaps roommates are just proxies for spouses. You split costs and household responsibilities, share events together, discuss problems and happenings in your lives, and your social circles start to meld together. On the surface, the relationship seems very similar.
The Pleasure of Uncertainty
There is an old saying about “playing hard to get” or being coy. How does it hold up in reality? Do we really enjoy the chase as much as the catch? Or, would we rather know that the person we desire is just as into us are we are into them?
Turns out, if you want to grab a girl’s attention, don’t pay her attention at all. Or, at least come off a bit mysterious.
From the Huffington Post, a report on a study out of UVA about female reaction to men’s attraction in them.
The results were clear, and a bit surprising. As described in the online version of the journal Psychological Science, the women were more attracted to the men who liked them a lot — much more attracted than they were to men who were lukewarm in their feelings. This isn’t all that surprising, and it lends support to the reciprocity principle. But — and it’s a big “but” — the women were most attracted to the men whose feelings remained unknown. They found these mystery men even more attractive than men who openly declared their attraction.
So, women liked guys who admitted to liking them. It made the women feel comfortable and safe. However, “nice guys” the world over know that girls may say they like all that, but what they really love is uncertainty, the bad boy. Girls love drama. And being able to spend time wondering “does he like me, or like me like me” is like catnip for women. Now, before you scream “sexist!” – it’s science.
The researchers asked the women how often they thought about the different men — how frequently they “popped into their head” — during the time before they made their ratings. The women spent more time musing about the uncertain men than the others, suggesting that having a man in one’s thoughts can increase attractiveness. These women — the ones contemplating a mystery man — were also in a better mood than the women who had been flattered or deflated.
If you really want to dig into this, girls like proving they are good enough for a guy. I’d argue the girls wanted the opportunity to impress the “unsure” guy. The guy who is already won over – probably a shallow player or a loser to be smitten so quickly. The disinterested one – screw him, he doesn’t know what he is missing. But the unsure guy… I’ve passed the initial tests (yay gym membership!) but I’ll really win him over with my personality! I wonder why he doesn’t totally love me? Maybe he dates supermodels and I’m just not up to his standards. What a catch he would be! (and so on..)
Finally, in general there is also the fact that anyone mysterious is attractive. The stranger you flirt with on the subway could be anyone. You can make up all these fantastic back stories about them to fulfill your wildest dreams and escape your mundane life. The person you know already is just boring. You know their personality flaws and how often they do their laundry. Not exciting.
Lesson: Say less. Be on the fence. Disappear without explanation. Flirt with other girls in front of her. Treat her like your sister.
Successful Women Encourage Hook Up Culture
A new study about relationships was discussed on Salon this past week. The theory is that female successes in education and the workplace is making casual hookups without relationships more common.
Women outnumber men on college campuses, they are making great strides in the working world. This is good. However, everyone wants to date someone equal to them in intelligence, income, status, etc. No one really likes to date down. (I think this is especially true with women. You rarely see the male equivalent to a trophy wife.)
It’s not that young educated women don’t marry — in fact they have the highest odds of getting and staying married — it’s that if you look at the whole relationship scene out there today, more than ever women feel like they’re competing for men. In American colleges, 57 percent of students are women and 43 percent are men. That’s a radical reversal of where we were 30 or 40 years ago. Presuming that people are attracted to people who are like them educationally, it means looking for secure relationships becomes challenging because the sex ratio is so imbalanced.
So, with women succeeding more than Men, the pool of attractive, qualified, equivalent Men is getting smaller. This means the traditional method where guys would court girls is flipped. The women feel like they have to compete for the men because the numbers are skewed against them. The best way to get a guy’s attention? (hint, despite what your mother told you- its not through his stomach) Sex.
The cold-hard truth is that women’s successes have left them with a small pool of similarly educated and financially stable men, they say. As the authors put it in a press release, “It’s created an imbalance that tips relationship power in the direction of the men. Instead of men competing for women, today women feel like they must compete for men.”
So, girls are giving it up easier than they did in the past. They know that if they don’t hook up quickly and without the traditional requirements of a relationship, another girl likely will. Simple economics of supply and demand.
The women wind up competing with each other — not necessarily to marry because they’re not interested in marriage at that point — but they compete with each other to attract men. How do you compete with other women to attract men? Well, sex is the way to get his attention. It’s the opposite of a cartel effect where women would say, “All right, we need to band together and artificially restrict the price of sex and get it high, even if we don’t want to, in order to extract things from men.” It used to be women would shame each other for selling low.
Do you see this playing out in the real world? Do you feel like you have to compete for guys’ attention instead of guys courting you? Or, do you think this entire study is crap, and women are just embracing the benefits of being equals to men, and figuring out that they can have relationship free sex without outdated consequences like getting a reputation?
Charisma Calculations
Tim Ferris has a guest post on his blog where the writer describes how people who are really good at making the person they are talking to feel like they are the only one in the room are really doing three things very well.
You should definitely read the whole thing. He focuses on Bill Clinton as an example, and goes into great detail about each factor.
1) Eye Contact – obviously this lets the person know you are focused on them.
2) Personal Space – the idea is to get close to the person without making them feel uncomfortable. The interesting aspect about this is that it is not just about how close you physically are to someone. There are several different factors.
- Making direct eye contact with you
- Facing you directly (as opposed to standing side-by-side looking into the crowd)
- Touching you (i.e., rubbing elbows in a crowd, patting your back, touching your arm or shoulder)
- Raising their voice
- Talking about you (as opposed to a neutral subject)
3) Being Present – stop thinking about other things. Instead be in the room with the person. If you are distant in quickly becomes apparently in the conversation. If you want to make the person feel like you are focused on them, you must actually focus on them.
The reason for doing this is that you leave a lasting impression with that person, as opposed to the tens of meaningless, forgotten interactions we have daily. You are also much more persuasive. The examples the writer gives involving Clinton show this in detail.
Facebook predicts when you will break up
An analyst has studied Facebook users’ relationship statuses, and determined that people went from in a relationship to single in higher numbers at three specific times during the year. The shocker? Two of them are around Christmas and Valentine’s Day. The other is right before Spring Break. (Less shocking haha)
It seems that there are three periods that feature as the most popular time to tell you paramour that the light has gone out, the love has gone south, and the train is about to leave town: just after Valentine’s Day, just before spring break and two weeks before Christmas.
If you are interested in his entire presentation, you can watch it below.
The follow up question is why? Do people think about relationships more during these times? Do the stresses of the holidays and Valentine’s Day make people freak out?
Lady Gaga, Feminist?
Can one be a feminist if doing so means playing up the very qualities and attributes that guys desire in women? Is that a means of using the tools you have, or a false sexual empowerment?
New York Times Opinion Piece on the current generation of teen girls’ definition of feminism:
The tension in Gaga’s self-presentation, far from being idiosyncratic or self-contradictory, epitomizes the situation of a certain class of comfortably affluent young women today. There’s a reason they love Gaga. On the one hand, they have been raised to understand themselves according to the old American dream, one that used to be beyond women’s grasp: the world is basically your oyster, and if you just believe in yourself, stay faithful to who you are, and work hard and cannily enough, you’ll get the pearl. On the other hand, there is more pressure on them than ever to care about being sexually attractive according to the reigning norms. The genius of Gaga is to make it seem obvious — more so than even Madonna once did — that feminine sexuality is the perfect shucking knife. And Gaga is explicit in her insistence that, since feminine sexuality is a social construct, anyone, even a man who’s willing to buck gender norms, can wield it.
Alpha Female?
There is a much talked about an article from The Atlantic that is being linked to constantly. Basically it points out how women are more successful (especially in this economy), going to school more, have better skills for the fastest growing jobs, and are the preferred choice of gender for new and hopeful parents.
This is a shift from the past when male dominated industries were key to the economy. An unintended bi-product of the shift from manufacturing to service based economies. But it seems to be wider than simply jobs. There are changes in relationships. Through the article there are hints about how women are the “head of the household now”. Perhaps there is a darker message to that Dockers commercial about men not wearing the pants anymore.
I can’t fully describe why- but this scares me at a very deep core level.
Men are described as not feeling adequate enough for their female counterparts. I know, some of you girls are rolling your eyes. Oh, poor boys. The problem is that society has not fully shifted to accept this change. Men are still supposed to play the part of seducer – the chaser, the convincer. However, when women are outperforming us- in income, education, etc – what tools are we to use to gain and keep your interest?
And before you smirk ladies, think about what those consequences mean for you. There is an increasingly smaller chance you will meet that prince charming to sweep your off your feet. The percentage of men who meet your list of qualifications is getting smaller as you read this. Prepare yourself for a life of either being single or unsatisfactorily settling. Hyperbole? Take this example from Japan the article describes:
As the traditional order has been upended, signs of the profound disruption have popped up in odd places. Japan is in a national panic over the rise of the “herbivores,” the cohort of young men who are rejecting the hard-drinking salaryman life of their fathers and are instead gardening, organizing dessert parties, acting cartoonishly feminine, and declining to have sex.
Trembling with anticipation ladies? Perhaps the social balance could shift. Maybe girls will be the pursuers. But, I don’t know if society is there yet.
Perhaps I am just succumbing to angry white male syndrome. Maybe I am comfortable in my position of relative ease and power. I have had it pretty good as a gender. Maybe I am simply uncomfortable making room on the platform for competition and equality? Perhaps I am just scared of an uncertain place in my future?
What do you think of the article? Sure there has to be some level of hyperbole. Masculine focused jobs will return when the economy picks up and manufacturing gears up again. Boys will still go to college. But, are the roles of men and women forever shifted? Have they even gone so far as to swap?
