I can’t get over the weak, wimpy cyphers the young girls in high school go for, get pregnant by and shack up with. They seem to make no effort at all – it’s all the girl’s doing.

But I guess if the boy is dumb enough to get someone knocked up at 16, they probably didn’t have much ambition anyway.

“They get to be the shoulder to cry on without any of the expectations of a real relationship”

Since when was being a kleenex a benefit?

I’ve had friends like this, but I’ve never wanted a relationship beyond friendship with them. All I ever had to do was watch her cycle of self-centered childishness to know I didn’t want to be inside that loop.

I have to disagree totally about the ‘benefits’ you think a guy gets from this. It’s not a benefit, it’s torture. And the sad truth is, on the guy’s side it’s a symbiotic cycle as equally childish as the womans.

What I do agree with your column is, “Guys need to man-up.”

I have found that if the guy is good looking, he can say any stupid thing and get the girl, if he is not good looking, then he has to be a master at the pick up game.

This one brought out a lot! To anonymous that said Doc doesn’t know the whole shy thing…you’re incorrect…she does get it. Shy is a personality trait and/or confidence issue, but not one that can’t be overcome with much effort. If a guy is really into a girl, then find a way to make oneself more in the game.

And to the guy that said there’s no benefit to being a kleenex…I agree, from a woman’s perspective, but seriously, I’ve seen more than one guy getting a huge ego boost out of being the one that “she” could go to and receive comfort. Granted, the guys have been shallow to a point, so it’s not like it was a huge benefit.

rjschwarz,

I agree with you. It is possible to only want friendship and it be a mutually beneficial thing. It seems that relationships are cast as a zero-sum game.

Free in Ky,

All I can say is that I’m sorry this has been the way it is for you. What I have found in my own life is that I tend to bring the energy into it that I’m congruent with. To be a victim of a whole gender is to give women an awful lot of power. By seeing our own part in our life, we take our power back. Just a thought.

Anonymous shy person,

I do indeed understand shyness. I was painfully shy myself, had horrible stage fright that was nearly debilitating (throwing up, blanking out, the whole thing)and generally still prefer to avoid group situations unless I’m comfortable with those in the group. It has taken a lot of work to overcome the shyness. So, I do get it. It is worthwhile to overcome, though, because to stay inside all the time is to miss out.

Anonymous average guy,

Beauty always gives a person an edge, but it doesn’t keep him in the door.

rjschwarz, you hit the nail on the head, sorta. The friends I mentioned are mostly still my friends, but just that. And it is a very revealing learning experience to have a female friend you can talk about anything with without relationship hang-ups. For instance, it helped me learn that they are all, without exception, crazy

I pretty sure though that Rachaels point was specifically calling out guys whining over “why doesn’t she want me” and the type of women they’ve glommed onto. Just being friends wasn’t the issue.

Anon 12:22,

Well, I can only speak from my own experience, but I chose based on neither thing. However, a guy with no potential would be a bad pick, indeed. Why is it cast in a negative light that a woman would want a man who is more than a passive lump? If she is going to make herself vulnerable both personally (health wise) and professionally (career wise) to have a child, why shouldn’t she pick a man with at least the potential to be able to support her and the child?

Now, to marry a man entirely based on his paycheck is superficial and ridiculous. I haven’t met one woman who has done that. I have known women who stayed for a paycheck. To reduce a man to his bank account is as sexist as it is to reduce a woman to her bra size, but there are superficial people everywhere.

Anon 7:23 replying to sts and Melissa –

sts
Shy is a personality trait and/or confidence issue, but not one that can’t be overcome with much effort. If a guy is really into a girl, then find a way to make oneself more in the game.

You clearly don’t understand the shyness issue. Tell me HOW to find a way to “make oneself more in the game” when I feel as if I am under a microscope and cannot even begin to think of the first thing to say when I want to meet somebody. “Hi, what’s your sign?” just doesn’t cut it.

Melissa
I was painfully shy myself, had horrible stage fright that was nearly debilitating (throwing up, blanking out, the whole thing)and generally still prefer to avoid group situations unless I’m comfortable with those in the group. It has taken a lot of work to overcome the shyness. So, I do get it. It is worthwhile to overcome, though, because to stay inside all the time is to miss out.

Since you’re a psychologist you are undoubtedly aware that social phobias have many different manifestations, and that somebody who has stage fright may be perfectly at ease talking one on one with a new person (after all, this is the critical skill in meeting new people, while others (me, for example) can give a speech in front of an audience of a thousand people, but could no more think of something intelligent to say to a stranger (“Hi, what’s your sign?” doesn’t count) than I could flap my arms and fly. I’m sure it is worthwhile to overcome shyness, but simply telling someone who is completely tongue tied that he needs to try harder is simply cruel.

This is old ground.
Look at: http://www.intellectualwhores.com/masterladder.html

for the description of the friend (= intellectual whore) and the jerk and how this comes to be.

Check out: http://www.ladderwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page

for more on ladder theory & how to get girls. You may not like either of these sites, but there is far more truth in them than in most discussions of relationships.

Also, I have a question for many of the female commenters: What makes you think you really know why you are attracted to a man? I find myself at times attracted to women I should not be, and not attracted to women I should be. I can’t figure out why, but have determined experimentally that if the attraction isn’t there, trying and hoping for a spark doesn’t work.

Eric,

It wasn’t my premise that by “getting” a girl the goal was to end up in bed with her that night, the next day or even that week. The goal was to meet a girl that you really like with the potential for a real relationship as opposed to being just “the friend”.

And the last rule was to “have fun”. The process of meeting people should be fun and interesting. Eric, I did, at one time, use those methods, but I’m an old married lady now . I do know they work.

But you’re right, chemistry and the interaction between men and women is complicated and mysterious. There are no guarantees of mutuality. The person we’re attracted to may not be attracted to us. And it can happen the other way. There are no guarantees. We can do some things to help us have more fun and find more success in the process.

I have been meaning to respond to this for several months and I have taken the liberty of doing one at a time

1. Personally I always thought of Chris Kattan as a heterosexually deficient hack that couldn’t act his way out of a high school production of “Our Town”, but that’s neither here nor there. This point goes on to say that this corpulent, gold chained schlub from Jamaica Queens fooled this poor girl into actually thinking his compliment was genuine. From practically any other man on earth, it’s a half-assed attempt to get in their pants. Yet, he “always had women”. P.T. Barnum, please pick up the white courtesy phone, P.T. Barnum, to the white courtesy phone.

2. The last thing a guy like me can afford to do is make eye contact. I’m not going to lie here: Eye contact is inherently creepy. Stalkers make eye contact, too, should men who are in the same predicament I am start purchasing binoculars and video cameras and start following really hot girls from a court approved distance?

Most of human communication is non-verbal. Eye contact is such a communication and I despise it with every fiber of my being. I would get into very spirited debates with my Dad on this subject when I was younger, especially when he would tell me that “you need to look people in the eye.” Not if I don’t want to feel like I have to take a cold fucking shower every time I do it.

3. Actually, you do have to be a complete jackass to be confident. Confidence has a myriad of definitions depending on the context, but one of them reads “a belief in oneself and one’s powers or abilities”. See, what most people euphemistically call “confidence” is egotism, pure and simple. Tiger Woods for example is pretty confident that when he steps onto the 13th tee at Augusta during the final round of the Masters, he’ll crush a drive off the tee past Ray’s Creek and onto the green, safely getting the hole within regulation. But just because he’s one of a select few golfers on the planet that can do it on one of the world’s toughest golf courses and has the ability to do so doesn’t make it any less egotistical.

And the last time I checked, wasn’t pride counted among the seven deadly sins? Come to think of it, it really hasn’t caught up to Terrell Owens yet…

4. That’s great, if you’re a narcissistic, pot bellied jackass from Long Island. For the rest of us–and specifically yours truly–it’s a Trojan horse. In bars, clubs, movie theaters, churches, wherever, there’s a boyfriend, husband, unusually protective brother or cousin, or sometimes the woman herself.

Quick story: when I first moved to Wyoming (this would have been going into my freshman year of high school), I went to a dance to see if I could make some new friends. Not really knowing any better, I decided to ask a girl to dance. This girls name I found out later was Melissa “Missy” Grissom. When I asked her if she wanted to dance her response was “no, I don’t like you”. Wow. I didn’t really have the thought in mind to ask “why the hell not?” but I did have the thought that if the not-so-great Missy didn’t find me kosher enough to have for dinner, then who else would? Even now when I’m at clubs I have to make 10,000% sure that I’m not going to be turned down before I even consider dancing with a girl.

This may have also coincided with the fact that I don’t have the genetics or physique to have any realistic chance anyway, but more on that in a second.

5. In the real world, it’s a lose-lose scenario. Few women have enough spare time (well, enough compared to how much I have) to hang out with me consistently and when it comes down to brass tacks, women as a gender playing with a pair of X chromosomes simply won’t date me. Oh, sure there will be one or two that might, but out of three billion or so, those are long odds. I stand a better chance of hitting a royal flush in a poker game than have a woman show any romantic interest.

6. Let me put it this way: having strangers eyeballing you and wondering what they are thinking and specifically what they’re thinking about you is not fun. Contemplating asking a girl to dance and wondering if there isn’t a boyfriend or husband with biceps bigger than my waist waiting to toss me into the parking lot and assault me is not fun. Having a good 99.997% of women not consider you a person worth dating is not fun.

And it doesn’t have to be perfect? No, it has to be. Even the Bible says “be ye therefore perfect” does it not? When you don’t have a lot to bring to the table, you simply can’t afford to make mistakes. Ever.

Here now is how to get a woman that will actually work.

1. Have money. The more to your name the better. It’s also at the top of the list because this will more than make up for any deficiency you may have with women (which in my particular case is pretty numerous) No woman wants a man that is pushing 30 or 40 and has never made more than $15 an hour at any point in his life. And if you’re expecting a rebate check from your fellow taxpayers in the recently passed economic stimulus package, forget it. Chicks don’t dig government handouts. So make sure your adjusted gross income is somewhere in the high five to low six figures, otherwise you may want to take up a hobby or a Jenna Jameson DVD collection.

2. Have at least some sort of good looks or muscular physique. Calvert DeForest (whom many of you know better as the great Larry “Bud” Melman) was an amazing comedic talent, one of the more underrated comedians of our generation, but didn’t have any significant other, and looking at the poor guy, it’s not hard to understand why. I guess if you’re really desperate enough you could try something like HGH or some of that creatine monohydrate or possibly plastic surgery, but that sort of leads us back to item 1

3. An occupation that involves showing off the aforementioned good looks (i.e.: UPS drivers, firefighters, military personnel, and so on). Mind you I am not putting down these occupations, especially the military, but I am explicating that it’s a line of work that will get you, as my old buddy Todd says “made, laid, and paid”.

4. Become a chipmunk, change your name to Ron Jeremy, and become a movie “star”. (Provided you’re properly “equipped”)

The author here that I just lambasted comes at us with the line “it’s time to man up, guys.” No, ma’am. It’s time for guys like me who don’t have a shot in hell to quit deluding ourselves. If you’re a big fan of Darwin (and I’m really not), we’re (I’m) being naturally selected out of the gene pool, and that’s all there is to it.

I guess I’ll just have to “man up” and deal with that then, won’t I, ladies?