More (Unsolicited) Relationship Advice
I’ve noticed that there is an increase in ads on Facebook which proudly proclaim their abilities to make you, the clearly inept womanizer that you are, somehow able to seduce women easily and with a guaranteed success rate of 100%. There’s even one that says that you can ‘hack’ a woman’s attention. Apparently, the fact that I use a computer means I am a pathetic nerd who can only relate to other human beings through computer terms. Either that, or the people responsible for the ad thought that Weird Science was a documentary.
I wonder what gives them the impression that I'm a lonely nerd looking to achieve
Enlightenment through fastidious study of "Alternate Health" and MMA?
Overall, I am pretty confused about this whole confusion regarding men who claim to not understand women and women who claim not to understand men. It’s not that hard - individuals are all different: some will like you, others won’t, and you find this out by treating them like fucking human beings and talking to them you dolt. Why, in the year 2012, is this even a thing anymore? How have maladjusted adult-children become so prevalent?
I mean we have an armpit stain of a television show starring an armpit stain of a human being who attempts to teach other worthless people the subtle “art” of insulting women to make them vulnerable enough to sleep with. Yes! Finally, a television show that appears to cater to the coveted “introverted date-rapist” demographic. Because, when I think of good television, I think of an idiot in a feathered top hat telling other idiots how to pass their dipshit genes to the next generation.
So, you know what? Here’s some advice for people who are having trouble with even getting started in a relationship. What are my qualifications? Well, I have two advice columns already, and it’s Sunday evening and I need something good for my Monday blog post. Yes, I’m a procrastinator.
Not only that, but as I mentioned in one of those previous columns, I get along with women more than I do men. But it’s certainly not because I have some sort of innate knack for the female psyche. My sister was my closest friend growing up, so I’m just more comfortable around the ladyfolk. It also helps tremendously that I treat women like the human beings they are as opposed to the objects that some want them to be. I even make eye contact and everything!
So let’s get started. (Indefinite you’s - only take offense if you’re an admitted idiot)
IF YOU CALL YOURSELF NICE, YOU’RE PROBABLY NOT
You may not be ready to hear this, but once you get this through your thick head, it will make things much easier.
I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve heard the beleaguered wails of singles (usually dudes, but hey, there’s some sad ladies out there, too) who cry that it’s not fair they’re single. They’re so nice! They listen! They do everything they’re asked! Why does no one reciprocate with a handjob every once in awhile? People are awful!
Alright, let’s hold up here. Now, I admit, it sucks when friends don’t reciprocate your level of commitment to a relationship. But I don’t go around swapping bodily fluids with friends, and neither should you. If you’re only hanging around the member of your desired gender because you want to get in their pants, well, you’re not really being honest, are you? In fact, you’re actually a huge asshole.
See, for most human relationships, our friends and our significant others occupy different layers of the friendship onion. Do you need to see my highly detailed graph again?
BEHOLD THE FRIENDSHIP ONION
And it could be that you’re in the ‘friend’ level. And you know what? If you weren’t an asshole, you wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, unless it’s further out on the onion skin. Or whatever. This metaphor sucks.
Anyway, the idea here is that you don’t actually want to be a friend, you want to be something more. And they clearly don’t want you any closer than that. But here’s the thing: every moment you misrepresent yourself as being okay with that, you are a lying prick, telling a skeezy prick lie in order to get yourself closer to being in their pants. It’s pathetic, it’s unwelcome, and unless you leave the situation, you’re going to start whining and revealing yourself to be an even bigger waste of carbon than before.
On top of that, there is a really good chance that you think you’re some kind of “white knight” in this situation. Anecdotally speaking, I’ve known a lot of sad sacks who have trailed after a girl with a boyfriend, hoping that there’s some tragedy so he can rescue his damsel. That potential relationship is doomed from the start, because he’s inadvertently making her an unwitting liar. What do I mean by that?
Well, I mean that Mr. White Knight is making the lady in this situation a princess on a pedestal. Instead of appropriately getting to know someone, he’s projecting a completely different persona onto her. He won’t accept that she’s a real person with real hopes and dreams and food allergies - oh, no, she’s everything he wants her to be. And that’s either going to lead to him being miserable as he tries to convince himself the lie is true or he’s going to be an asshat and blame her for not living up to his expectations. She really can’t win, but then again, this little doofus doesn’t want her to. All he wants is for himself to win.
Or there’s the bullshit excuse that the object of affection simply had to have known what your intentions were. They had to have known, and they were stringing you along! Well, boo-fucking-hoo, moron. How is it their fault that your self-esteem is so low that you let yourself be used like that? Because from where I’m standing, all you’ve done is admit that the only reason your sperm won the race to the egg is because it guilted the others into letting it start early. Also, your dad is a premature ejaculator in this joke.
And, after all that, it comes right back around to the fact that, if your accusation is true, how are you blameless in this situation? After all, you are misrepresenting yourself. How about you stop pretending to be an understanding friend when you’re really just a horny fuckwit? After all...
YOU AREN’T OWED A GODDAMN THING
So, you’ve hung around the object of your desire, playing this whole ‘friend’ thing out because a) you’re stupid and b) holy crap, are you stupid. Then suddenly, today’s the day! They just dumped their significant other and now they want to talk! To you! All that work, and now it’s time for payday! Slide in for the rebound/pity sex!
Hold up there and put it back in your pants.
You aren’t owed a fucking thing just because you listened to this person’s woes for the past year and a half. They don’t need to give you anything, and the fact that you think they do is really, REALLY bad. You are literally putting price tag on your time and friendship, and then charging someone for it. That’s disgusting and, if the price is sex, then you’re now a bizarro-prostitute. Congratulations! Your parents must be so proud.
Let’s take this out of this context for one moment. Let’s say a good friend (that you’re not trying to bone) is going through a particularly rough patch. And this is one of those guys who has had your back your entire life, and he is absolutely not in a good place. Like, say, his dog exploded or something. Now, you’re a good friend and you listen to his stories. You check on him every once in awhile to make sure he’s okay. You may even act as a look out when he finds the bastard who killed his dog so he can get some good old-fashioned revenge.
And then, out of nowhere, he gives you twenty bucks and says “I think that squares us. Thanks.” Would you feel good about that?
A few are shrugging their shoulders and saying “Hell, yeah!” simply to be devil’s advocates.
But would you really?
Would you really like all your time spent with a person you care about reduced to a fucking transaction?
Hell, no! You were doing that because it’s what good people do for their friends. You’re not a professional dog-murder-mollifier/revenge-lookout. We pay people we don’t like to do things for us. We don’t pay our friends to be our friends. So you shouldn’t expect ‘payment’ for being a civil human being. Especially when the person is expected to pay you in genitalia.
And hey, while we’re in the neighborhood of genitals (I’m terrible at transitions)...
EQUALITY ISN’T THAT HARD OF A CONCEPT, DIPSHIT
... I mean, really, really terrible. Just the worst at transitions.
Gender roles are terribly limiting for both men and women. And yet, it’s also one of the first things people go running behind when they are failures at interacting with other human beings. For instance, when my ladyfriend Ashlie was building her computer and posted on a certain company’s Facebook page, she was inundated with comments telling her to get back into the kitchen. It’s funny, you see, because women spend their life cycles, from hatching to evaporation, in the confines of a kitchen, making meals for their car-fixin’ husbands.
As you can see, the whole “get back into the kitchen” comment is not an actual joke, it’s something the brain-dead come up with through cultural diffusion to justify being maladjusted scabs on humanity’s lips. Hurray, gender roles!
Some of you may be a little unclear on what I mean by “gender roles”. Well, if you have about fifty minutes to spare, just watch this. Or, if you have a deadline to keep but still want to read through this, I’ll keep it simple: gender roles are the expected behaviors that a person should have based on where their genitals reside. It covers things like division of household labor to behavior in society.
So, here’s the thing: you have to kick this habit right now. Maybe you don’t think you do such things, but if you legitimately needed to be told to stop looking at the object of your affection like he/she is a wastrel/damsel in distress, you clearly have some expectation of what role each of you are to play in a relationship. It’s just as silly as tolerating the “bad boy” stereotype and is just as potentially ruinous for your health. No one is safe from this stuff.
The point with this category is that this is the 21st century. You know what you should be doing? Taking all those crappy bullshit roles and throwing them out. Learn to cook. Learn to change your oil. Learn to clean. Learn to fix a flat. Learn to sew. Expand as a human being, not as the owner of a particular brand of junk. When you’re ready to go looking for a date, you’ll be a much better candidate than the others out there.
You know what, while we’re at it, let’s talk about a sub-topic of this idea.
JUST ABOUT EVERY ADULT LIKES SEX
(STILL DOESN’T MEAN YOU’RE GOING TO
GET ANY)
We’ve kicked you out of your rut. You’re no longer stalking one person, hoping that you win the oral sex lottery one day and, instead, you’re going out to meet new people and, hopefully, god willing, maybe have sex with one of them. But you’re still an awkward, awful mess! “How could you possibly abandon me in my hour of need, Jonathan!?” you scream at the heavens. “WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME!?”
Before I have a chance to respond, you immediately fall back on the only source of comfort and advice you’ve used for years. That’s right: you fall back on shitty comedians.
“Men and women are remarkably different. How witty of an observation, made only by the best of lazy comedians! I mean women with the menstruating and breasts, and men with their penises and inability to do laundry! Amiright?”
No. No, no, no, a thousand goddamn times, no.
As the old stereotype goes, men like porn. And, hey, you know something else? Fifty Shades of Grey pointed out that women like their porn dirty and disguised as a book. Also, pregnancy and kidnaping, but whatever. What, then, is the problem here?
The whole idea here is that women have been shamed into hiding their sex drives for so long that it’s just now, you know, in 2012, becoming “mainstream” (as that article says). This is news to a lot of people, who were pretty sure Madonna invented sex in the 1980's in a freak accident with Dennis Rodman. Historians, however, are puzzled over this recent development, namely because we’ve been finding both genders’ dirty magazines since forever.
The point I’m making is not that women should be ashamed of this at all. Sex, as long as it’s consensual, is totally cool and perfectly enjoyable. And women should be allowed to openly enjoy it, despite what Hollywood thinks. I’m getting at the fact that the shamefully unfunny and stupid comedy acts of decades past are not a great thing to base your understanding of gender relations. People are people. We’re individuals who think and act. Sometimes we’re rational, sometimes we’re not, but we should try to respect that and come at everyone from an equal position of respect.
Long story short, the first step to actually talking to your preferred choice of mate is to recognize that you’re dealing with a fellow human being, not an alien or monster. Also, try not to describe them as ‘preferred choice of mate’ - it tends to freak people out. If you go into a bar or wherever understanding that the people there have lives outside of you, have had days which extend beyond your temporal understanding, and think about the world in similar ways that you do, then hey, you’re a lot better off than you realize.
But there’s one final thing you need to realize here, and it’s a doozy. So before you practice your swagger or whatever it is you do when I’m not spying on you through your printer...
PREPARE FOR A LOT OF REJECTION WITHOUT EXPLANATION
If your mother was good at being a mother, you were probably told that you were a wonderful person and absolutely perfect and anyone who would reject you is simply crazy or stupid. If your mother was terrible, then she probably told you what I’m about to tell you: “There’s a lot of people out there, and most of them will hate you.” (Hi, mom! Please love me again!)
Evil mom and I are right and good mom, although a terrific woman, was lying through her teeth. Just as you will not be able to please everyone at your school, or job, on the street, or in your steel cage match, your chances in love are very slim. I really hate to break it to you, but you are going to fail. Like, a lot.
The sad thing is that media has lied to us, making it seem like finding our “true love” is almost guaranteed. Let me tell you this: it isn’t. There are seven billion people on this planet, most of them hate you, the others like you but don’t like-like you, and even fewer than that are willing to let you show them your fanny-fantastical. And believe me, it’s not them - it’s you looking in the wrong place and time or wrong type of person.
But, hey! Don’t look all sad! I don’t mean to say that you’re going to die alone. I just mean to say that you need to take rejection in stride. Don’t get mad, don’t beg, and don’t threaten anyone with dismemberment. Don’t even ask them why. Smile, thank them or just walk away. It’s not that hard to be civil. Eventually, you will find someone who actually wants that drink, or just wants to talk. At best, you may have met someone who will let you see them naked. At worst, you lost ten bucks. Or, hey, you may even end up with a new friend (and just a friend - no relapses, goddamn it).
But chances are, for at least awhile, you’re going to be rejected without a word as to why. And there’s nothing wrong with that. People have the right to be picky and they have the right to privacy. Make sure to respect that and take it in stride. Above all, pay attention to yourself. You may not be able to change other people, but you can change how you approach them. Confidence and respect will earn you a lot more than pining after someone who clearly doesn’t care.
Long story short, for fuck’s sake, please start treating each other with respect. Losing faith in humanity one day at a time is getting a bit tiring.
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