In most societies, women spend most of their time with other women, and men spend most of
their timewith other men. North American society is unusual in thatwe have fewrules enforcing
this, but men and women still generally follow this pattern.
Women’s culture isn’t monolithic. Some groups of women read fashion magazines, others look
to Oprah Winfrey as their role model, while other women are devoted to their horses. But, in
general, women like to be with other women.
Men like to engage in activities with other men. Watching sports, drinking beer, going hunting
and fishing, etc. The difference between men’s and women’s cultures is that men welcome
women into their cultures, when women want men to stay out of their cultures (although there
are exceptions to both these assertions).
For example, a woman who likes to watch football and drink beer will be welcomed at any sports
bar. She’ll receive plenty of attention from the men (e.g., they’ll buy her beer).(However, this may
not be the case at a small-town gambling establishment.)
But a (straight) man who shows up at an aerobics class wearing a leotard will be ignored by the
women in the class. They won’t buy him a sports drink at the juice bar afterwards.
The obvious problem is that the women will think that he’s there just to pick up women. The
women won’t think he’s there because he likes aerobics. In contrast, at the sports bar the men
will assume that a woman is there to see the big game (the same reason the men are there).
A subtler problem is that women may assume that any man who tries to join their culture is a
loser. For example, a friend invited me to the aerobics class she taught at a health club. (She
warned me not to try to pick up any of the women.) Through 95% of the class I was having
mishaps. All the brightly colored gym equipment was beyond my abilities to control. E.g., mybig bouncy ball kept bouncing around the room, instead of staying between my feet. I was hopelessly
off the beat in any exercise that required rhythm. I excelled at the few exercises that required
upper body strength, but the women ignored that. I laughed and had fun, but my friend
(the instructor) pretended not to know me, and none of the women in the class talked to me. No
one offered to show me how to use the brightly colored springy thingies, for example. In contrast,
if a woman shows up at a bowling club, men will be happy to show her how to hold the ball,
etc.
In contrast, when awoman joins a men’s culture, she quickly figures out who are the alpha males,
and is happy to meet them.
If a man tries to join a women’s culture, the women might form "buddy circles" to talk and exclude
him. A woman who doesn’t have a buddy circle will get out her cellphone to avoid him
trying to talk to her. The man trying to join a women’s buddy circle conversation is a major faux
pas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faux_pas).
The result is that women have power and opportunities that men lack. This power is balanced
in several ways. Young, attractive women are welcomed into men’s cultures, but less attractive
women are ignored. And women who are too engrossed in their women’s groups can find themselves
without a man in their lives. For example, when my running club goes out to dinner the
handful of women sit at one end of a long table, while the ten or fifteen men sit around the rest
of the table. One night I put a Kleenex pack on the table in front of me, while I talked to the men
on my side of the table. Our conversation was interrupted by two women asking for Kleenexes.
Both were crying, and when I listened to their conversation I heard them commiserating about
being thirty-something and not having boyfriends. One was saying that she’d now decided to
accept that she could be happy on her own, without a man in her life. I felt like telling them to
stop sitting together at one end of the table and go sit among the men, and they’d soon have
boyfriends. Instead, she’d decided to stay with her girlfriends and try to be happy without a man.
Men: "Report Talk"
Men communicate to establish social hierarchies, examples being when:
• They put each other down, showing off, or boasting.
• They talk about things they did, a.k.a. "report talk."
• They issue orders or commands-"Bring me a beer!"
• "Anger as a greeting." Aman makes a verbal challenge. If the otherman stands up to him, they
respect each other.
• Men disagree to show superiority. E.g., a man admires a Honda motorcycle. His buddy replies
that Harley-Davidson motorcycles are better.
• Men refuse offers of help. This shows that a man is independent. Dependence indicates low
status.
• Men tend to find something positive in negative situations. "No, I didn’t catch any fish, but I
tried my new outboard motor." Expressing unhappiness admits failure.
• Men offer advice. Advice taken shows that the advisor is smarter. In contrast, fixing another
person’s problem communicates subservient status.
• Men talk more in public. High statusmen talk the most. Men interrupt each other, to increase
their talk time.
Communication Styles
• Equal men prefer to talk sitting side-by-side, not looking at each other.3 Driving is ideal for a
conversation with a man. Men talk to each other face-to-face only within a hierarchy (e.g., a
boss sitting at his desk), or in a confrontation.
• "Playful insults and teasing put-downs are a common way that men and boys show affection
and intimacy."
Women: "Rapport" Talk
Women communicate to establish egalitarian support circles:
• Supporting each other-"You’re doing great!"
• Complimenting each other.
• Agreeing or saying "we’re the same."
• Putting themselves down-"I’mnot smart like you!"
• Making suggestions, especially to do things together- "Let’s clean the house today"-instead of
issuing orders.
• Asking for help, and offering help, to show rapport and equality.
• Instead of offering advice, women do the work themselves.
• Preferring intimacy to independence.
• Talking more in private.
• Gossiping or telling each other secrets, to demonstrate equality and intimacy.
• Women prefer to talk sitting face-to-face.5 Women feel threatened when approached from
behind.
Men Should Learn to Speak "Woman-ese"
Men have to learn two languages: "man-ese" to get to the top of the Great Male Hierarchy (and
so attract women), and "woman-ese" to make a woman feel the equality, kindness, and support
she’s used to receiving from other women. Speaking "woman-ese" is the most important dating
skill aman can learn.
The men at the top of the GreatMale Hierarchy often have the worst relationships with women.
Smart men devote years of higher education to learn "lawyer-ese" or "computer-ese." Then they
spend one weekend in a John Gray seminar learning "woman-ese."
Instead, practice your "woman-ese" with every woman you meet. Make every woman feel good
about herself. This includes old ladies, cleaning staff, and your sister-in-law.
Men with overdeveloped cerebral cortexes look down from their corner offices and wonder why
women go for losers. The leader of a three-punk motorcycle gang, who plays guitar and knows
the words women want to hear, scores all the women he wants. AnMBA managing sixty employees
can’t get a date, if he only knows how to talk about business.
Men’sMistakes
• Interrupting--women’s #1 complaint. When your date is talking, repeat silently to yourself: Let
her talk.
• When women talk about their problems, men often give advice for "fixing" the problem.
Women instead are asking for emotional connection.6
• Put-downs. Never tell a woman that she’s ugly, stupid, short, or fat. Not even when you’re
joking.
• Don’t argue, disagree, or correct facts. Listen for things a woman says that you can agree with,
instead of listening for points to disagree about.
• Lecturing. Nothing is more boring to a woman than a man endlessly talking about his work
or hobbies. Women smile, nod, and act interested, because this is how women listen. Men
interpret this as encouragement to continue talking.7 To improve your conversation skills,
imagine that your date is silently asking "How is this conversation relevant to me?"
• Lack of eye contact. Don’t stare at a woman’s breasts, behind, or pelvic area--this is highly
offensive. Don’t make sexually charged compliments. When in doubt about these, just don’t.
Don’t look at other women.
• Not listening. At least half of "good communication skills" is listening. (However, researchers
have found that the commonly taught marital counseling technique of "active listening"
doesn’t improve relationships.)</p>
• Sometimes, if you ask a woman a question, her reply will not necessarily be the one she wants
to give. Females tend to expect males to read their mind and say either ’yes dear’ or ’no, we’re
doing this’. Picking the wrong one at the wrong time is disastrous, but use that hunter’s risk
assessing ability that has been precisely sculpted over eons of time.
Women’sMistakes
• Don’t say "no" when you mean "yes," or "yes" when you mean "no.". Also avoid saying
"maybe" or relying on the male to pick up subtle signals. If you pull that kind of crud, you
will watch ’Planet of The Apes’ and be eating $8 curry and home-brewed lager.
• Most women aren’t adept at "man-ese" and shouldn’t speak it, e.g., "trash talk" after a game
(unless you desire a hearty dead-armor a wedgie).
• While interrupting a woman will cause her to pause and maybe listen but silently harbour a
scathing grudge,more often than not a man will simply continue to talk over the top of her.
• If a man talks about a problem, he is probably subconsciously asking you to help him fix the
problem. Women manage to realise the first half of this and overtly offer a solution. This
will often be rejected because the solution wasn’t provided by the male. That mistake causes
perfectly good solutions to go unused.
• Don’t argue or overtly disagree. Listen for things a man says that you can agree with, instead of
listening for points to disagree about.
• Lack of eye contact, especially don’t look at other men. Also toomuch eye contact may enrage
the male.
• Nagging. With reference to the above, men give orders and rarely enjoy taking themfrom subordinates.
However, men are often looking for some kind of ’damsel in distress’ situation andif you reconstruct the order into a request they will most likely oblige (unless it is rinsing the
dishes before putting them in the dishwasher, this is a feat yet to be accomplished independently
of nagging).
Trying to stop a fight that has already begun. Big mistake, about a hundred reasons not to do
it. Just don’t.
Emotional Communication
Emotional messages hide in factual communications.8 For example, Morrow Mayo’s essay "To
See It Fall" is composed only of scientific facts and objective narration, yet it gives a sense of
strong disapproval to the settlers’ cutting down of the Brobdingnagian sequoia.
Emotionalmessages can be verbal, e.g., inviting a woman to a party. Or emotional messages can
be nonverbal, e.g., offering a man a place to sit.
Emotional messages can be positive (e.g., "I like you") or negative (e.g., "I don’t like you"). Responses
can be positive, negative, or ambiguous.
Good communicators respond to the emotional message as well as to the factual message. Good
communicators respond positively to negative and ambiguous emotional messages.
Dating: Ambiguous Responses to Positive Emotions
In dating, the most common communication problemis ambiguous responses to positive emotionalmessages.
E.g., a man asks a woman out to a movie Friday night. His factual message is about the movie.
His emotional message is, "I feel romantic attraction to you. Do you feel attraction to me?"
The woman responds, "No, I have other things to do Friday night." She’s responding negatively
to the factual message, and ambiguously to the emotional message. She’s thinking, "You’re probably
a loser, but I’m not 100% sure, and the other men I’m dating are losers too, so keep asking
me out. Maybe some night I’ll be so desperate that I’ll go out with you. God, I hope not."
The man responds, "What about seeing a hockey game Saturday night?" The woman again responds,
"No, I have other plans Saturday night." They can go on for weeks without asking or
answering the deeper message. Miscommunication wastes their time.
The woman could directly answer the emotional message. She could say, "I think you’re attractive.
Let’s get together another time." Or, "I don’t find you attractive and don’t want to do anything
else with you." It’s hard to imagine that a woman would speak directly. You can see why we hide
emotional messages in factual statements.
Or the man could clearly communicate his deeper message: "Do you feel attracted to me?"
Again, it’s hard to imagine a man directly asking an emotional question.
But clearly communicating emotional messages will improve your relationships. Try it. At first
you’ll say embarrassing things. With practice you’ll master emotional communication.
Relationships: Respond Positively to Negative Emotions
In relationships, the most common communication problem is negative responses to emotional
messages.
E.g., a couple agrees to meet at a restaurant. He’s twenty minutes late. She points this out (a
factualmessage) and her body language and vocal tone communicate that she’s angry (an emotionalmessage).
He responds negatively, "Only twenty minutes. What’s the big deal? Last week you were thirty
minutes late."
Negative, ignored, and ambiguous responses don’t change your partner’s negative emotions.
Successful couples respond positively to negativemessages. E.g., he responds, "I’mlate because
my boss gave me a lot of work, but all day I was counting theminutes until we’d be together."
Playful Partnering
Relationship masters use humor to respond to negative emotions. The key word in that sentence
was masters. Humor used badly will get you into deeper trouble.
Play a game (see page 16). E.g., you’re twenty minutes late. Ask your partner to pretend to be
angry. She looks at her watch, paces, and says, "He’s one minute late. He doesn’t love me. Now
he’s two minutes late. I should havemarried Fred the accountant. Hewas boring but punctual..."
You pretend to be somewhere else. You dreamily think aloud, "I love her cute little nose, I love
her kissable lips....Oh no, look at the time, I’mlate! She hates it when I’mlate! I’d better stop and
buy her flowers. No, that’llmake me more late!"
Then you meet. She expresses anger, impersonating Jack Nicholson in The Shining. You express
drippy, romance novel love. If she doesn’t laugh, you get drippier, until she’s laughing.
Now repeat the game, switching roles.
You acknowledge that you understand her emotional message, and switch your partner from
negative to positive emotions.
Emotions Are Contagious
Consciously or unconsciously, people mimic each other’s emotions. We infect each other with
our emotions.9 Your emotional state results primarily from the people around you, not from
what you do or think.
If you can’t get dates, maybe you’re infecting people with negative emotions. No one wants to
be infected with anger, distrust, anxiety, or low self-esteem. Instead, infect people with positive
emotions.
Women’s Dating Lies
I felt a kind of pleasure in accepting at face value all the counterfeit currency she had passed off
onme.a
My guy and I have a loving relationship, but...I crave attention from other men. I flirt with every
guy in the bar, including men my friends are after. I never take it any further than that, but I get
off on makingmen swoon. Is there something wrong with me?a
a Kurtz, Irma. "Ask Irma: Agony Advice," Cosmopolitan, October 18, 2002,
http://magazines.ivillage.com/cosmopolitan/experts/agony/qas/0,12750,284429_536411,00.html
Women are twice as likely as men to intentionally cause jealousy.
Women cause jealousy to test the strength of the relationship, and to increase their partners’
commitment. Jealousy increases sexual passion.10 Jealous couples are more likely to marry. Revenge,
bolstering self-esteem, and punishment aren’t typical reasons for women to use jealousy.
Boyfriend Lies
25%of women living with men say they don’t intend to marry their partners. Most explained that
their partner’s income or education was too low.
These women wanted monogamous relationships, so they "hooked up" with a boyfriend. But
they’re not satisfied with their boyfriend, so they’re keeping their eyes open for better prospects.
If the boyfriend realizes this, he might cheat or end the relationship. Navigating through this
dilemma sometimes requires lying:
• A man asks a woman’s friend whether she has a boyfriend. "Yes," the friend replies, "but she
wants to break up." He asks her out. She rejects him, saying that she has a boyfriend.
• A woman flirts with a man. When he asks her out, she says that she has a boyfriend.
• A woman accepts a lunch date with a man. After he pays the bill, she starts talking about her
boyfriend.
• A woman refuses a date, saying that she recently broke up with a boyfriend and needs time to
recover. Two weeks later she has a new boyfriend.</p>
The message in all these examples is "I’m not 100% satisfied with my boyfriend so I checked
you out, but you’re not worth leaving my boyfriend for." He refuses to hear that he’s inferior to
another man. He instead accuses her of lying. (She may also be trying to make her boyfriend
jealous.)
Men’s Dating Lies
We have different rules for interactions between friends and strangers (see "Adult Friendship,"
page 86). Men’s dating lies cross the boundary between friends and strangers.
A man may feel that he knows his object of desire, and so believe that they’re friends. He may
have watched her and overheard her conversations with her friends. Or, in this electronic age,
he may have seen her on television or listened to her music and feels that he knows her. But as
long as he’s a stranger to her, he should interact with her according to the rules of strangers.
Or a man may think that acting like a friend
== will make a woman like and trust him. That works with equal partners. E.g., two men meet
while fishing. If they’re friendly to each other, they become friends (see "Equality," page 84). In
contrast, imagine going into a bank to ask for a loan. There’s nothing wrong with being friendly,
but friendliness won’t affect whether you get the loan. Dating is like applying for a loan. If a
woman decides not to go out on a date with you, being friendly isn’t going to change her mind.
Unsolicited Gifts
Friends give each other unsolicited gifts. Friends don’t expect anything in return.
If you receive an unsolicited gift (e.g., a man finishes People magazine while eating lunch at a
restaurant, and then gives it to the waitress), say that you don’t want it but you know someone
(e.g., a co-worker) who’d like it. If the giver backpedals and insists that the gift is only for you,
don’t accept it.
Solving a Problem
Friends help each other solve problems. But friends don’t overplay minor problems into major
problems. And friends don’t cause problems, and then offer to fix them.
a man and woman arrive at a hardware store after it closes. He asks what she needs to buy,
and she replies that she has a leaky faucet. It’s OK for himto say that another store across town is
open late. It’s not OK for himto insist that she accompany him to the other store, and insist that
she let him fix her leaky faucet.
Refusing to Hear "No"
Your best friend says that she doesn’t want a birthday party this year. You ignore her "no," reserve
the back room of her favorite restaurant, invite all of her friends, and decorate the room with
banners and balloons. Your friend has a great time.
It’s not OK for a stranger to refuse to hear "no." If a woman gives in to a minor allowance, e.g.,
carrying her groceries up to her apartment, she’ll give in to bigger advances.
For more about recognizing predatory men’s lies, read The Gift of Fear, by Gavin De Becker
(1997).
their timewith other men. North American society is unusual in thatwe have fewrules enforcing
this, but men and women still generally follow this pattern.
Women’s culture isn’t monolithic. Some groups of women read fashion magazines, others look
to Oprah Winfrey as their role model, while other women are devoted to their horses. But, in
general, women like to be with other women.
Men like to engage in activities with other men. Watching sports, drinking beer, going hunting
and fishing, etc. The difference between men’s and women’s cultures is that men welcome
women into their cultures, when women want men to stay out of their cultures (although there
are exceptions to both these assertions).
For example, a woman who likes to watch football and drink beer will be welcomed at any sports
bar. She’ll receive plenty of attention from the men (e.g., they’ll buy her beer).(However, this may
not be the case at a small-town gambling establishment.)
But a (straight) man who shows up at an aerobics class wearing a leotard will be ignored by the
women in the class. They won’t buy him a sports drink at the juice bar afterwards.
The obvious problem is that the women will think that he’s there just to pick up women. The
women won’t think he’s there because he likes aerobics. In contrast, at the sports bar the men
will assume that a woman is there to see the big game (the same reason the men are there).
A subtler problem is that women may assume that any man who tries to join their culture is a
loser. For example, a friend invited me to the aerobics class she taught at a health club. (She
warned me not to try to pick up any of the women.) Through 95% of the class I was having
mishaps. All the brightly colored gym equipment was beyond my abilities to control. E.g., mybig bouncy ball kept bouncing around the room, instead of staying between my feet. I was hopelessly
off the beat in any exercise that required rhythm. I excelled at the few exercises that required
upper body strength, but the women ignored that. I laughed and had fun, but my friend
(the instructor) pretended not to know me, and none of the women in the class talked to me. No
one offered to show me how to use the brightly colored springy thingies, for example. In contrast,
if a woman shows up at a bowling club, men will be happy to show her how to hold the ball,
etc.
In contrast, when awoman joins a men’s culture, she quickly figures out who are the alpha males,
and is happy to meet them.
If a man tries to join a women’s culture, the women might form "buddy circles" to talk and exclude
him. A woman who doesn’t have a buddy circle will get out her cellphone to avoid him
trying to talk to her. The man trying to join a women’s buddy circle conversation is a major faux
pas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faux_pas).
The result is that women have power and opportunities that men lack. This power is balanced
in several ways. Young, attractive women are welcomed into men’s cultures, but less attractive
women are ignored. And women who are too engrossed in their women’s groups can find themselves
without a man in their lives. For example, when my running club goes out to dinner the
handful of women sit at one end of a long table, while the ten or fifteen men sit around the rest
of the table. One night I put a Kleenex pack on the table in front of me, while I talked to the men
on my side of the table. Our conversation was interrupted by two women asking for Kleenexes.
Both were crying, and when I listened to their conversation I heard them commiserating about
being thirty-something and not having boyfriends. One was saying that she’d now decided to
accept that she could be happy on her own, without a man in her life. I felt like telling them to
stop sitting together at one end of the table and go sit among the men, and they’d soon have
boyfriends. Instead, she’d decided to stay with her girlfriends and try to be happy without a man.
Men: "Report Talk"
Men communicate to establish social hierarchies, examples being when:
• They put each other down, showing off, or boasting.
• They talk about things they did, a.k.a. "report talk."
• They issue orders or commands-"Bring me a beer!"
• "Anger as a greeting." Aman makes a verbal challenge. If the otherman stands up to him, they
respect each other.
• Men disagree to show superiority. E.g., a man admires a Honda motorcycle. His buddy replies
that Harley-Davidson motorcycles are better.
• Men refuse offers of help. This shows that a man is independent. Dependence indicates low
status.
• Men tend to find something positive in negative situations. "No, I didn’t catch any fish, but I
tried my new outboard motor." Expressing unhappiness admits failure.
• Men offer advice. Advice taken shows that the advisor is smarter. In contrast, fixing another
person’s problem communicates subservient status.
• Men talk more in public. High statusmen talk the most. Men interrupt each other, to increase
their talk time.
Communication Styles
• Equal men prefer to talk sitting side-by-side, not looking at each other.3 Driving is ideal for a
conversation with a man. Men talk to each other face-to-face only within a hierarchy (e.g., a
boss sitting at his desk), or in a confrontation.
• "Playful insults and teasing put-downs are a common way that men and boys show affection
and intimacy."
Women: "Rapport" Talk
Women communicate to establish egalitarian support circles:
• Supporting each other-"You’re doing great!"
• Complimenting each other.
• Agreeing or saying "we’re the same."
• Putting themselves down-"I’mnot smart like you!"
• Making suggestions, especially to do things together- "Let’s clean the house today"-instead of
issuing orders.
• Asking for help, and offering help, to show rapport and equality.
• Instead of offering advice, women do the work themselves.
• Preferring intimacy to independence.
• Talking more in private.
• Gossiping or telling each other secrets, to demonstrate equality and intimacy.
• Women prefer to talk sitting face-to-face.5 Women feel threatened when approached from
behind.
Men Should Learn to Speak "Woman-ese"
Men have to learn two languages: "man-ese" to get to the top of the Great Male Hierarchy (and
so attract women), and "woman-ese" to make a woman feel the equality, kindness, and support
she’s used to receiving from other women. Speaking "woman-ese" is the most important dating
skill aman can learn.
The men at the top of the GreatMale Hierarchy often have the worst relationships with women.
Smart men devote years of higher education to learn "lawyer-ese" or "computer-ese." Then they
spend one weekend in a John Gray seminar learning "woman-ese."
Instead, practice your "woman-ese" with every woman you meet. Make every woman feel good
about herself. This includes old ladies, cleaning staff, and your sister-in-law.
Men with overdeveloped cerebral cortexes look down from their corner offices and wonder why
women go for losers. The leader of a three-punk motorcycle gang, who plays guitar and knows
the words women want to hear, scores all the women he wants. AnMBA managing sixty employees
can’t get a date, if he only knows how to talk about business.
Men’sMistakes
• Interrupting--women’s #1 complaint. When your date is talking, repeat silently to yourself: Let
her talk.
• When women talk about their problems, men often give advice for "fixing" the problem.
Women instead are asking for emotional connection.6
• Put-downs. Never tell a woman that she’s ugly, stupid, short, or fat. Not even when you’re
joking.
• Don’t argue, disagree, or correct facts. Listen for things a woman says that you can agree with,
instead of listening for points to disagree about.
• Lecturing. Nothing is more boring to a woman than a man endlessly talking about his work
or hobbies. Women smile, nod, and act interested, because this is how women listen. Men
interpret this as encouragement to continue talking.7 To improve your conversation skills,
imagine that your date is silently asking "How is this conversation relevant to me?"
• Lack of eye contact. Don’t stare at a woman’s breasts, behind, or pelvic area--this is highly
offensive. Don’t make sexually charged compliments. When in doubt about these, just don’t.
Don’t look at other women.
• Not listening. At least half of "good communication skills" is listening. (However, researchers
have found that the commonly taught marital counseling technique of "active listening"
doesn’t improve relationships.)</p>
• Sometimes, if you ask a woman a question, her reply will not necessarily be the one she wants
to give. Females tend to expect males to read their mind and say either ’yes dear’ or ’no, we’re
doing this’. Picking the wrong one at the wrong time is disastrous, but use that hunter’s risk
assessing ability that has been precisely sculpted over eons of time.
Women’sMistakes
• Don’t say "no" when you mean "yes," or "yes" when you mean "no.". Also avoid saying
"maybe" or relying on the male to pick up subtle signals. If you pull that kind of crud, you
will watch ’Planet of The Apes’ and be eating $8 curry and home-brewed lager.
• Most women aren’t adept at "man-ese" and shouldn’t speak it, e.g., "trash talk" after a game
(unless you desire a hearty dead-armor a wedgie).
• While interrupting a woman will cause her to pause and maybe listen but silently harbour a
scathing grudge,more often than not a man will simply continue to talk over the top of her.
• If a man talks about a problem, he is probably subconsciously asking you to help him fix the
problem. Women manage to realise the first half of this and overtly offer a solution. This
will often be rejected because the solution wasn’t provided by the male. That mistake causes
perfectly good solutions to go unused.
• Don’t argue or overtly disagree. Listen for things a man says that you can agree with, instead of
listening for points to disagree about.
• Lack of eye contact, especially don’t look at other men. Also toomuch eye contact may enrage
the male.
• Nagging. With reference to the above, men give orders and rarely enjoy taking themfrom subordinates.
However, men are often looking for some kind of ’damsel in distress’ situation andif you reconstruct the order into a request they will most likely oblige (unless it is rinsing the
dishes before putting them in the dishwasher, this is a feat yet to be accomplished independently
of nagging).
Trying to stop a fight that has already begun. Big mistake, about a hundred reasons not to do
it. Just don’t.
Emotional Communication
Emotional messages hide in factual communications.8 For example, Morrow Mayo’s essay "To
See It Fall" is composed only of scientific facts and objective narration, yet it gives a sense of
strong disapproval to the settlers’ cutting down of the Brobdingnagian sequoia.
Emotionalmessages can be verbal, e.g., inviting a woman to a party. Or emotional messages can
be nonverbal, e.g., offering a man a place to sit.
Emotional messages can be positive (e.g., "I like you") or negative (e.g., "I don’t like you"). Responses
can be positive, negative, or ambiguous.
Good communicators respond to the emotional message as well as to the factual message. Good
communicators respond positively to negative and ambiguous emotional messages.
Dating: Ambiguous Responses to Positive Emotions
In dating, the most common communication problemis ambiguous responses to positive emotionalmessages.
E.g., a man asks a woman out to a movie Friday night. His factual message is about the movie.
His emotional message is, "I feel romantic attraction to you. Do you feel attraction to me?"
The woman responds, "No, I have other things to do Friday night." She’s responding negatively
to the factual message, and ambiguously to the emotional message. She’s thinking, "You’re probably
a loser, but I’m not 100% sure, and the other men I’m dating are losers too, so keep asking
me out. Maybe some night I’ll be so desperate that I’ll go out with you. God, I hope not."
The man responds, "What about seeing a hockey game Saturday night?" The woman again responds,
"No, I have other plans Saturday night." They can go on for weeks without asking or
answering the deeper message. Miscommunication wastes their time.
The woman could directly answer the emotional message. She could say, "I think you’re attractive.
Let’s get together another time." Or, "I don’t find you attractive and don’t want to do anything
else with you." It’s hard to imagine that a woman would speak directly. You can see why we hide
emotional messages in factual statements.
Or the man could clearly communicate his deeper message: "Do you feel attracted to me?"
Again, it’s hard to imagine a man directly asking an emotional question.
But clearly communicating emotional messages will improve your relationships. Try it. At first
you’ll say embarrassing things. With practice you’ll master emotional communication.
Relationships: Respond Positively to Negative Emotions
In relationships, the most common communication problem is negative responses to emotional
messages.
E.g., a couple agrees to meet at a restaurant. He’s twenty minutes late. She points this out (a
factualmessage) and her body language and vocal tone communicate that she’s angry (an emotionalmessage).
He responds negatively, "Only twenty minutes. What’s the big deal? Last week you were thirty
minutes late."
Negative, ignored, and ambiguous responses don’t change your partner’s negative emotions.
Successful couples respond positively to negativemessages. E.g., he responds, "I’mlate because
my boss gave me a lot of work, but all day I was counting theminutes until we’d be together."
Playful Partnering
Relationship masters use humor to respond to negative emotions. The key word in that sentence
was masters. Humor used badly will get you into deeper trouble.
Play a game (see page 16). E.g., you’re twenty minutes late. Ask your partner to pretend to be
angry. She looks at her watch, paces, and says, "He’s one minute late. He doesn’t love me. Now
he’s two minutes late. I should havemarried Fred the accountant. Hewas boring but punctual..."
You pretend to be somewhere else. You dreamily think aloud, "I love her cute little nose, I love
her kissable lips....Oh no, look at the time, I’mlate! She hates it when I’mlate! I’d better stop and
buy her flowers. No, that’llmake me more late!"
Then you meet. She expresses anger, impersonating Jack Nicholson in The Shining. You express
drippy, romance novel love. If she doesn’t laugh, you get drippier, until she’s laughing.
Now repeat the game, switching roles.
You acknowledge that you understand her emotional message, and switch your partner from
negative to positive emotions.
Emotions Are Contagious
Consciously or unconsciously, people mimic each other’s emotions. We infect each other with
our emotions.9 Your emotional state results primarily from the people around you, not from
what you do or think.
If you can’t get dates, maybe you’re infecting people with negative emotions. No one wants to
be infected with anger, distrust, anxiety, or low self-esteem. Instead, infect people with positive
emotions.
Women’s Dating Lies
I felt a kind of pleasure in accepting at face value all the counterfeit currency she had passed off
onme.a
My guy and I have a loving relationship, but...I crave attention from other men. I flirt with every
guy in the bar, including men my friends are after. I never take it any further than that, but I get
off on makingmen swoon. Is there something wrong with me?a
a Kurtz, Irma. "Ask Irma: Agony Advice," Cosmopolitan, October 18, 2002,
http://magazines.ivillage.com/cosmopolitan/experts/agony/qas/0,12750,284429_536411,00.html
Women are twice as likely as men to intentionally cause jealousy.
Women cause jealousy to test the strength of the relationship, and to increase their partners’
commitment. Jealousy increases sexual passion.10 Jealous couples are more likely to marry. Revenge,
bolstering self-esteem, and punishment aren’t typical reasons for women to use jealousy.
Boyfriend Lies
25%of women living with men say they don’t intend to marry their partners. Most explained that
their partner’s income or education was too low.
These women wanted monogamous relationships, so they "hooked up" with a boyfriend. But
they’re not satisfied with their boyfriend, so they’re keeping their eyes open for better prospects.
If the boyfriend realizes this, he might cheat or end the relationship. Navigating through this
dilemma sometimes requires lying:
• A man asks a woman’s friend whether she has a boyfriend. "Yes," the friend replies, "but she
wants to break up." He asks her out. She rejects him, saying that she has a boyfriend.
• A woman flirts with a man. When he asks her out, she says that she has a boyfriend.
• A woman accepts a lunch date with a man. After he pays the bill, she starts talking about her
boyfriend.
• A woman refuses a date, saying that she recently broke up with a boyfriend and needs time to
recover. Two weeks later she has a new boyfriend.</p>
The message in all these examples is "I’m not 100% satisfied with my boyfriend so I checked
you out, but you’re not worth leaving my boyfriend for." He refuses to hear that he’s inferior to
another man. He instead accuses her of lying. (She may also be trying to make her boyfriend
jealous.)
Men’s Dating Lies
We have different rules for interactions between friends and strangers (see "Adult Friendship,"
page 86). Men’s dating lies cross the boundary between friends and strangers.
A man may feel that he knows his object of desire, and so believe that they’re friends. He may
have watched her and overheard her conversations with her friends. Or, in this electronic age,
he may have seen her on television or listened to her music and feels that he knows her. But as
long as he’s a stranger to her, he should interact with her according to the rules of strangers.
Or a man may think that acting like a friend
== will make a woman like and trust him. That works with equal partners. E.g., two men meet
while fishing. If they’re friendly to each other, they become friends (see "Equality," page 84). In
contrast, imagine going into a bank to ask for a loan. There’s nothing wrong with being friendly,
but friendliness won’t affect whether you get the loan. Dating is like applying for a loan. If a
woman decides not to go out on a date with you, being friendly isn’t going to change her mind.
Unsolicited Gifts
Friends give each other unsolicited gifts. Friends don’t expect anything in return.
If you receive an unsolicited gift (e.g., a man finishes People magazine while eating lunch at a
restaurant, and then gives it to the waitress), say that you don’t want it but you know someone
(e.g., a co-worker) who’d like it. If the giver backpedals and insists that the gift is only for you,
don’t accept it.
Solving a Problem
Friends help each other solve problems. But friends don’t overplay minor problems into major
problems. And friends don’t cause problems, and then offer to fix them.
a man and woman arrive at a hardware store after it closes. He asks what she needs to buy,
and she replies that she has a leaky faucet. It’s OK for himto say that another store across town is
open late. It’s not OK for himto insist that she accompany him to the other store, and insist that
she let him fix her leaky faucet.
Refusing to Hear "No"
Your best friend says that she doesn’t want a birthday party this year. You ignore her "no," reserve
the back room of her favorite restaurant, invite all of her friends, and decorate the room with
banners and balloons. Your friend has a great time.
It’s not OK for a stranger to refuse to hear "no." If a woman gives in to a minor allowance, e.g.,
carrying her groceries up to her apartment, she’ll give in to bigger advances.
For more about recognizing predatory men’s lies, read The Gift of Fear, by Gavin De Becker
(1997).
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