Lunch is Not a Date

We hear it all the time. “Men are just jerks” and “Women are bitches.” Whenever guys don’t behave the way a woman wants, she or her friends almost always dismiss the guy as “being a jerk.” When a woman doesn’t do what a guy wants, she is a “bitch.” Is it true? Are most of us men “just jerks?” Are women “bitches?” Mostly, no we’re not; the problem is simply a matter of perspective. Ninety percent of the problems in the dating and relationship world stem from failing to consider the other gender’s perspective. And little “expert” advice encourages us to do so.

For all you women who experience this, and there are a lot, pay attention: You meet a guy. He says he isn’t interested in dating anyone. You have a good conversation. He asks for your number. You give it to him. He calls a few times. You have a few dinners. You end up in bed together. This goes on for a while, then after a month or two you start talking about your relationship and he bails after retorting, “I told you I wasn’t interested in dating anyone.” What a jerk! Ah, nope, afraid not; instead of dismissing him as being a jerk, consider his perspective. He tells you upfront he doesn’t want to date anyone. Later, he asks for your digits. You give him your number. In his mind you just told him you are cool with some potential simple slap and tickle. He didn’t lie to you, he didn’t mislead you; he told you exactly where he stands. I know in your head you might be thinking, “Oh, he asked for my number because I am starting to get him interested in dating… now he’s calling… now he’s asking me to dinner… he’s getting more and more interested.” Nope, he’s getting closer to the slap and tickle. If you don’t want that, when a guy says he isn’t interested in dating anyone and later asks for your digits, simply respond, “Thanks but you said you weren’t interested in dating anyone, so I’m gonna pass.” It’s a no-brainer when you consider his perspective.

If you start to consider the other sex’s perspective, you’ll quickly see that we are “not jerks” and “bitches.” For example, a lot of times we men don’t call after sex because you lied and we lost interest. The woman who had green eyes, a 36-C cup, a tight ass, and I didn’t know smoked when we left the bar, just came out of my bathroom naked with brown eyes, a pair of double A’s, a fat butt, and a cigarette dangling from her mouth, now that she had removed her colored contacts, extreme push up bra, and three sizes too tight pair of jeans. We still sleep with you on the spot because… well, it would be rude not to. But don’t expect a call from us, ever. You’re the one who misled us, not the other way around.

Flipping it on its ear, a lot of guys call women “bitches” because when they approach these women and say something witty like, “My friend wants to meet you,” the women tell them they are “lame.” How rude of them. Again, consider the woman’s perspective. She and her friends take time to decide where they are going to go to meet guys. They get dressed up. They carefully choose between a dozen different pairs of earrings, several skirts, and thirty different shoes. In short, they put effort into going out and drawing attention. They want guys who approach to show some effort with some original ice-breakers and to be confident. “My friend wants to meet you?” Ooh, how clever and original, plus your friend sounds like a real confident man, sending you over to talk to women he likes. Score! Sorry to piss on your wet dream but she’s not a “bitch;” she just doesn’t want you cock blocking the guys she wants to meet and that’s totally fair.

Or maybe you buy a woman drinks all night, so you think she owes you her time, attention, and maybe more; please, like you wouldn’t turn down a free drink. She’s not a “bitch” for taking your drinks and then not giving you any action; she’s smart and thrifty.
The more attention you give the other gender’s perspective, the better you’ll relate and the more success you’ll have with whatever it is you’re after—dating, marriage, sex, increasing your Beanie Babies collection, getting a good reference for a job, whatever. And guess what? Dating and meeting people actually becomes fun, instead of a chore.

“Why can’t my girlfriend be ready on time? Why does she insist on always making us late for everything? Why can’t she be ready when she knows days, weeks, or even months in advance that we have an event to attend?”

It’s a complaint many men have about their women, which can quickly become a point of contention between the couple. Again, it all boils down to POV.

In this case, the POV of each sex has a different emphasis. The priority for the woman is looking her best; oftentimes, no matter how early she starts to get ready, there is one more pair of earrings that might look better or a better color of lipstick, or perhaps she didn’t choose the right dress after all. Everything has to be accessorized just so, and changing a necklace could mean changing an entire outfit. The woman believes she is doing the best thing she could do for her guy and that he will appreciate it. She expects him to realize this and be flattered.

The guy? His POV gives an entirely different priority. He is most interested on being on time. While a woman is often embarrassed by not looking her perfectly best for the occassion, a guy is embarrassed by being late, especially in a situation where he is meeting colleagues or a boss. Maybe the restaurant won’t seat everyone until all members of the party arrive. Or maybe they are meeting at someone’s house, then heading somewhere else, so his woman is making the entire group late. The man expects his women to be aware of these factors and to act accordingly. He also infers that his woman realizes that he doesn’t really care what she wears, as long as she looks presentable. He is far more interested in her being naked than he is in her wardrobe.

In short, while her emphasis is on her man, the man’s emphasis is on the event. Want to make it all work? Tell your woman the wrong time. Give her a time for the event which is 30 to 60 minutes before the actual time. You’re not lying; you’re thinking of her and she’ll appreciate it, not be upset.  

As many of you know, this column appears as a Q&A monthly in “The Real Chicago” magazine. May’s issue of the magazine has come out and focused on being single in Chicago. It is full of good articles and ideas. I want to take some time and discuss one of these articles because the writer, who seems like a nice guy, is doing just about everything wrong when it comes to meeting women. In fact, he illustrates wonderfully why I included the advice in God is a Woman.

The article is by Mike Florczak and is entitled “Lose the Attitude.” It should be appearing soon on Real Chicago’s site; which is always a few days behind the release of the latest in-print issue. Mike opens the article, which advises women to check their attitudes at the door when they hit the bar scene to meet guys, with a comment a woman made to him–”That is just an awful an awful line. Are you kidding me?” The woman said this to Mike in reply to his ice breaker to her, said after walking over to her and her table of friends from his own table of friends–”My friend wants to meet you.”

I have a comment for Mike myself. “Are you kidding me? That is just an awful, awful line.” What?! How could I say that? I’m not a bitter woman who hasn’t checked my attitude at the door, so why would I say the same thing as this woman?

What are the two most desirable qualities women seek in men? Confidence and sense of humor. Mike and his friend, like many singles, take absolutely no time to consider those they want to meet. Let’s look at the situation from the woman’s POV, shall we? (We shall because I’m writing this; I have no idea why we writers ask such questions of our readers.)

Okay, now I’m a woman and my friends and I are going to go out on a Saturday night. We often put considerable effort into going out when we want to meet guys. We have to select (or even borrow) the outfit, put on makeup, decide where we want to go (this alone could take hours), and we do a whole bunch of other things I really don’t want to take the time to consider. We hope to meet a quality guy. A guy who is confident, has a good sense of humor, and is attractive. We want that guy to show some effort when he approaches us; after all, we put effort into drawing him over, right? So why shouldn’t he?

Exactly how is “my friend wants to meet you” confident? Clearly, you’re friend is not only non-confident, but he is a coward. He might also be lazy. Here I’ve done all this work and he can’t even get up off his lazy ass to come over and talk to me himself. Not only that, but Mike hasn’t taken any time to come up with something interesting (and preferably witty) to say. These guys haven’t put any effort into meeting us, aren’t confident, don’t appear to be witty, and thus, they have insulted us. They are lame. And we don’t want to waste time talking to them when all they are doing is simply cock blocking the guys we want to meet. When I tell you it’s “a lame line,” I’m really saying, “you’re lame, you’re friend’s lame, and neither of you are considerate and thus not worth my time or my friends’.”

The real point of Mike’s article is to explain why women are ”sick of the bar scene.” He states that it’s because they have not checked their bad attitudes at the door. No Mike. Women get sick of the bar scene because of all the clueless guys they meet. Guys are clueless for a lot of reasons, this is just one of them. He states that he and his friends rarely approach women at the bars; they just kind of all stand around.

Whether you are male or female, the key to successful meeting and dating is to consider who you are trying to meet and date, what they are thinking and feeling, and to act accordingly. This why God is important; it covers all this stuff.

Now let’s take a look at the results when a guy simply takes a little time to take notice and pay attention. The last Saturday night I was out on the town, I had dinner with two friends. We were several tables away from a group of pretty women eating dinner. I couldn’t approach them in this situation, nor did I want to; it would have been rude. Upon leaving, though, we passed them as they were finishing up their drinks. They were actually giving some full glasses away to the table next to them. I made a joke about it and spoke to a couple of the women for a minute, then headed out.

My friends and I headed over to the bar next door. Guess what? The women came over from the restaurant. Having already broken the ice, I spoke to them as they passed us. I joked about them following us and asked them if they were stalkers; I pointed out that if they were, they were bad at it because we knew they were doing it. They laughed and we spoke for a few minutes before they headed to another part of the bar. Clearly, they were not interested.

That was okay, though. Why? Any communication keeps your skills honed; smiles and laughs keep your confidence high. It was just the sort of boost to get me to go over to the sensual woman sitting at the end of the bar, filling out a job application. (Notice I didn’t have a friend approach her and say, “My friend wants to meet you.” Instead, I grabbed her by the hair, bent her over the bar, tore her pants off and… oh wait, I think that’s something I saw in a movie at a bachelor party recently. My bad.)

I broke the ice by asking her how her thesis was coming along and if the alcohol helped make it better. We got to talking and to make a long story short, we left together. I won’t say what happened after that; it’s not relevant. Maybe I got digits, maybe I got laid (if you pay any attention at all, you know I haven’t been into the one-night stand scene for years, though). It doesn’t matter. I got what I wanted from her and what she wanted to give me. It all started simply by paying attention to her and being just a little sensitive.

So the next time you’re out, don’t make a minimal effort. Don’t be shy. Don’t have your friend do your dirty work. Instead, use what’s present to be creative, be confident, and approach yourself.

I’m pretty busy these days, which is a good thing, but rest assured I will be continuing to post here no matter how busy I get. I am currently working on a fun project for Lifetime and am about to sign a deal to write a screenplay, which should be a lot of fun to both write and work on the set.

I’ve had  some questions lately from both men and women asking what the difference is between a player and a bad boy, as well as statements erroneously interchanging the two terms. Here are some simple definitions (note that I am not discussing pick-up artists (pua’s) or bad asses here at all):

Player  - Focuses on meeting a lot of women mostly due to a self-esteem issue; he always believes there is a better woman around the corner. He doesn’t trust his own judgement, then. A player tends to have few female friends, as he doesn’t see much use for women beyond sexual relations. Often, women are simply a means to an end. If he has women friends, he tends to hit on them a lot, so they don’t last long. He is rarely friends with any of his exes because women realize at some point that they never feel good about themselves when they are around him. This is because a player uses a woman’s insecurities to make her feel bad about herself. Women often will see a player not because of real interest but because they feel they have to prove something to him–”I am good with money” or “I’m not shallow.” Eventually, women realize there is no point to be around him once the relationship has ended.

Bad Boy - Focuses on meeting the women of his choice. He is not interested in numbers or meeting large quantities of women; instead, he is more interested in the quality of women. This quality is based on his own definition and uninfluenced by outside opinions. He is confident in his own judgement and does not play a numbers game. He uses a woman’s insecurities to make her feel good about herself. He tends to have lots of women friends because of this; women like being around him because he makes them feel good. He sees great value in women beyond sexual relations. He is friends with many of his exes; again, because he makes them feel good about themselves. It is not unusual for his exes to call him when their current boyfriend ends it; a dinner out with him is just what the doctor ordered to get them feeling good about themselves, again.

Note that there are no physical limitations to either. Being a player or bad boy is in the mind, not the body. You don’t have to be built, tattooed, or any of those things. It’s all in the mental approach and ideology toward women.

Which am I? Neither. At times I’ve been one or the other, at other times I’ve been both, and I’ll use traits from both from time to time even today. I do have far more female friends than men and always enjoy making people feel good about themselves. 

Short and sweet this week (and a day late): Most people look for reasons not to date someone. Don’t. Instead, just enjoy the date. It’s that simple.