Relationships, A Guy’s Perspective: Entering Relationships

 

*why define something that's pefect as it is?*

 

 

They say that women think about marriage and men think about sex. But that’s bullshit. Successful women think about marriage and successful men think about sex. And there’s plenty of unsuccessful failures out there.

Depending on how you see it, relationships have gone light-years forward or backward in the last century. It used to be that men and women brought real skills to the table and married each other if those skills combined to achieve a survival rate of >75% for their offspring. You can see it in the American History Museum. Skills women brought to the table, like cooking, cleaning, and care-taking were actually skills that could mean the difference between life and death. Food poisoning, disease-ridden cloths, and deathly-ill children were all pitfalls of the man who chose beauty above a woman’s practical abilities. 

Of course, all of these responsibilities have been replaced, or at least diminished, by modern conveniences. First  slaves, then indentured servants, then machines came within the common man’s financial reach to offset the inabilities of his trophy wife so he didn’t have to play the mistress game that nobody wants to play. This led to a drastic reduction in a woman’s responsibilities which directly led to them having enough time to parade for suffrage, equal-rights, and equal-pay. It was great, in a sense, for women to become near-equals with men. But wait a second, if all of their responsibilities have been replaced by machines (add the Internet to that list) in the modern relationship, then we shouldn’t expect many men to line up at the chance to throw half of their earnings at them. 

Of course, this is exactly what we see. Women bring little to nothing (compared to what they used to bring) to a relationship outside of their wide degrees of sensuality (emotional and physical). So should a man get into a relationship? Or should he stop the car and unlock the doors when she asks for too much commitment? 

This decision is a complicated one that I consistently see being made incorrectly.Guys get into relationships they shouldn’t and guys stay out of relationships that would be good to them. At the root of each of these bad decisions is this ridiculous idea that marriage at the end of the relationship tunnel. Guys get into bad relationships because they see this as an opportunity at marriage they will not otherwise get. Guys stay out of good relationships because they see themselves as having many more moonlit adventures before they stand at the cold end of the aisle, watching their buddies sip whisky in the pews, and listening to their groomsmen plan their sexual conquests with the bridesmaids. 

This, as I will show, is a fundamental miscalculation. The “marriage factor” should not be taken into account when entering a relationship, whether that factor is positive or negative. In a modern relationship, you can leave to upgrade at literally any time. In fact, the modern man should view his “being in a relationship” as having little to no effect on his life. If there is any advantage gained by being in a relationship, he should take that immediate advantage and disregard any of the subsequent consequences of this new status that will immediately fill his thoughts. Likewise, if there is no immediate advantage to entering a relationship (these are the relationships guys should not be in), there is no reason to enter it (since opportunity of a single shot at marriage is not a valid reason). Let me clarify with some examples.

Example 1:

John has been sleeping around with the same 3 girls who don’t know each other for the last 4 months. All of them have been casually suggesting at “defining the relationship”, but John has expertly dodged these requests. As a result, the girls are becoming more lukewarm to him than they were before. One way to play this would be to fear the marriage factor and keep dodging relationship requests until it all fell apart and all 3 girls got tired of his shit. A better way to play this would be to get into a relationship with one of them, tell the other two, add in new recruits as they come, and break up with the first girl at the most opportune moment to leave the 2 girls left on the other side of the fence to throw themselves at him. The best part about this is how the first girl, the one you’re in a relationship with, doesn’t even have to exist. A relationship is the most powerful weapon in a man’s arsenal if he can use it effectively.

Example 2:

Joe has not had much luck with girls. He recently met a girl who’s OK, and immediately entered a relationship with her. In the back of his mind, he figures this if he ends up marrying her, it’s not so bad. She’d be a decent wife, so he’ll just move on towards marrying her unless something better comes along. But by taking the marriage factor into account when entering into the relationship, Joe has effectively removed any possibility of anything better coming along. Because now, breaking up with her without a fallback plan is not an option since that will remove his “worst case marriage scenario” from his playbook. She will instinctively sense this laziness and desperation, and push Joe into a deep, dark hole that he will never climb out of. All the while,  Joe is powerless to play the one card he should always be able to play: threatening to break up with her. The marriage factor has trapped him.

This is some new territory for this blog and it’s fun to write about. I’m going to keep writing some relationship topics like “The Anniversary”, “Meeting the Parents”, … there are a considerable number of topics on this. I have a good feeling about this.

Finally, A Dating Website for Men

 

"women in their early 30s desparate for one last shot at glory..."

 

 

You might have heard that AshelyMadison got denied from running a Super Bowl ad, which is almost but not quite as good as getting the ad itself. It sure is cheaper. But whatever, the real issue here is how the service is a goldmine for guys who want easy sex without fucking prostitutes. Married chicks looking for affairs are the easiest of easy. The green circle, wander-eye, bar-parading late-20s girls who want to see if they can dump their current husband, pocket some alimony, and upgrade to another guy crowd. They don’t give a fuck.

So it might be better than trying the other online dating services. At least it would stand to reason. I’d try it if I was still willing to try anything, but being the lazy talking head that I am, I’d be much happier to hear from someone who tried some diamond-cougar hunting (that means married for all the 13 year old readers out there) on AshleyMadison. It seems easy, and I bet the quality on there is higher than the other dating websites.

But really what irks me is how other talking heads are out there trying to eek out some level of outrage about a dating service that caters to affairs. I mean, is anyone really outraged outside of the obvious crowd of single aging girls (SAGs) out there? I know, I just couldn’t resist the acronym. I think by now, most people have a good grip on what a relationship actually is. Or actually, it’s more likely that they don’t. Extremely likely, in fact. 

Men resist them for the committment and women resist them in order to wait for someone better, we all know that. But why? With everything that relationships are now, these fears are antiquated and childish to a Disneyesque level. I can’t speak for girls, but I can speak for men which is why I’ll be running a special feature, starting next post, of indeterminate parts on “Modern Relationships From a Man’s Perspective.” It’s long overdue.

Bourdain, I Love You

chef, adventurer, god: The Bourdain

This is an open letter to my hero of the moment, Tony Bourdain.

Tony,

You know what man, I agree with you. If a country has bad food, there’s no fucking reason to go there. It shows enough probable cause of ‘no culture’ to warrant going somewhere else. I’d say the two main exceptions to this are the U.S. and the U.K. (you’d disagree, but I don’t know, British restaurants have too many ‘colonial’ dishes on their menu to be considered authentic British) who supplant their awful food (then again, what is American food anyway?) with music. Because, in all honesty, music is our food. And they eat it up on every street corner and in every dorm room in the world.

But really, you’re surprising love of Vietnam and not-so-subtle hints of falling for Dragon Ladies in ao dais… wait a minute, we need a moment of silence for that picture. I mean, of all the places, you fell for Saigon. That intrigues me, Tony. I would have expected Buenos Aries, Singapore, Hong Kong, or some other “nice” place with a subtle underbelly. But Saigon? That says everything I need to know.

And how much does it suck to start becoming too popular? If I ever started becoming famous, I’d probably run away from it Chapelle-style right before I made it past the point of no return. And I think you’re shockingly close to getting there. All of a sudden, every one of your books is checked out of the library and I have to settle for reading A Cook’s Tour in Large Type because I refuse to buy it and give the Food Network any money. And please, can you stop kissing celebrity chef ass all of a sudden? “They’re using their star power to get people to eat things they should have been eating all along”? No they’re not. People are just cooking now because they’re all of a sudden terrified of “processed foods”.

But, in all honesty, I love when they show the clip of you slamming Samantha Brown in your promo commercials. You have that network by the balls.

Finally, and most importantly, it’s time for you to do what you know you have to do. It’s time to take your squeamishness of killing animals head-on. It’s time for you to slaughter an animal with your bare hands before cooking it… or become a vegetarian. It’s the only right thing to do. And shooting a rabbit with a shotgun doesn’t count. I’m talking about throat to hand, knife to throat slaughter complete with primal screams. You can’t say “I hate harming animals” and go on to eat them at will. It’s been long enough. Come out and make the statement “you shouldn’t eat meat if you can’t slaughter an animal” and slit somethings throat. I’ve been just as vocal against vegetarians as you have been, and if you do this, I will follow suit and do the same. It’s time for meat-eaters around the world to stand up and slaughter animals by hand to preserve their meat-eating rights.

But yeah man, you’re my hero. Can’t wait for the Cleveland show. Oh yeah, and I totally agree, Greece sucks ass. You didn’t hide your displeasure very well. And you totally did DC the right way with Eden center and the other Arlington ethnic places. The NoVa ethnic is far superior in almost every foreign variety. I have no idea why it’s available on in-Demand right now, it’s supposed to air in 2 weeks according to Wikipedia.

Speaking English to People Who Don’t

Cám ơn

If you travel around, you will often find yourself speaking English to people who don’t speak it very well. There’s a certain art to communicating ideas effectively in this environment that nobody I’ve ever met does as good (sic) as I do. I’ve grown up around people who are terrible English speakers. I’ve befriended them, learned from them, taught them, and worked with them. I know how to speak Broken English to these people.

• Step 1: Find Common Ground

If the person speaks a Romance (Italian, French, Spanish, Romanian, Portuguese) language fluently, you will be able to communicate with Western Body Language (the only body language you know) and common words that haven’t changed much from their original Latin. Words that end in -ant, -ate, -ous, and -ent (I don’t remember what declensions those are) fit this bill more often than not. Examples: apartment, complicate, populous, infiltrate, exodus, expectant… I mean, the list goes on forever. Don’t expect to use Germanic words and be understood regardless of how “simple” they are. You’re better off using “less simple” words with Latin roots.

It’s astonishing how often people will use shorter words in favor of longer, more common words with the thought that the shorter words are simpler for the listener to understand.

If the person speaks a Germanic (German, Norse, Swedish, Danish, Dutch) language, they will most likely speak English. However, if they speak a distant Indo-European language (Greek, Russian, Hindi) you will still be able to find common ground with a little more effort on your part. If you learn some basic nouns (20 can be enough) in their language you can have a meaningful conversation by filling in the blanks with some well-chosen English, which they will know at least some of. This leads me to my next point.

• Step 2: Don’t Speak Complete Sentences

This is, by far, the biggest mistake people make. The beauty of English is that you can put a few nouns together with a verb (wrongly conjugated is fine, go with the 3rd person when in doubt) and communicate a thought. I think an example here will tell it best.

Bad: So, what’s your favorite kind of alcohol?

Good: You drink (make drinking gesture with hand), what is drink you drink for happy? You happy drink… Vodka?

Note that the good version repeats the subject of the question (drink) 5 times including the gesture. Also, it uses two words that are almost universally known: ‘happy’ and ‘vodka’.

If the person knew very, very little English, you could learn their word for ‘you’ and ‘good’ (replace ‘happy’ with ‘good’) and get your idea across with the gesture very easily.

• Step 3: Draw Pictures

Uh, no shit Sherlock.

Appendix:

If we’re going to talk about hitting on foreign girls, it needs to be said that the basics still remain the same. Don’t reveal any information about yourself, especially your nationality. Make her earn the knowledge of your nationality. Ask her a bunch of questions and let her talk. You might understand 10% of what she says, but it doesn’t fucking matter. I learned how little I have to listen to girls by being put in a situation where I couldn’t understand what they were saying. Just sit there with a confident smile on your face and check out the other girls around the bar. Don’t ask for any clarifications.

Going overseas to pick up girls is like a NFL quarterback going to the Pro-Bowl. All of a sudden there are no blitzes, all your receivers are wide open, and you come out in the middle of the second quarter to hit on the Hawaiian cheerleaders.