Research has revealed the 11 secrets of attracting women

 An interesting article in the UK Times discusses the results of a two-year psychological study on the subject of attraction recently published in “Evolutionary Psychology”.

This research concluded that the key to success, for men, is a certain type of wit: self-deprecation. The anthropologist behind the research, was quoted in The Observer, explaining: “The frequent use of self-deprecating humour in sexual context – with potential mates, established mates or sexual rivals – was astonishing … people who used this humour were considered to be more desirable as mates.”  

But the researcher added that if you are not a high-status guy then this self-deprecating humor will backfire.  If you’re rich, charming, and great-looking, self-deprecating humor just means you aren’t egotistical.  The woman can easily see that you have all these qualities.  But if you have none of these qualities, then it just reinforces the fact that you aren’t worth dating.

And now for what you read this post for: the author’s summary of what the research reveals a guy needs to succeed with women.  The article is so good I’ll just quote it:

In other words, to impress, men need to be hugely successful, but pretend that they are not. And this is only one aspect of the almost impossible balance that needs to be struck. Men need to convey sexual desire without sexualising the person in front of them, need to be authoritative, opening doors, paying bills, deciding where to go and so on (recent research found that 60 per cent of women would consider it a bad first date if they paid), yet treat women as absolute equals. They need to flatter without seeming overly impressed, they need to care about their appearance (but not too much), and when it comes to chatting up, they need to take the initiative, and absorb any humiliation that comes their way, without seeming at all arrogant or pushy.

In short, the early stages of hooking up are more fraught with potential disaster than a stroll through the streets of Kandahar, more political than an episode of Question Time, more unpredictable than Gordon Ramsay on ketamine. It’s no surprise that so many men are rendered incoherent and imbecilic by the pressure of it all – and truly some kind of miracle that any relationship manages to begin at all.

I wholeheartedly agree with his last conclusion: it’s a wonder any relationships ever manage to begin.

I think Commenter Kris (by all means read the comments below the article) has a good explanation for much of the difficulty.  He says that women have so many choices that what should be an easy-going talk over a glass of wine has been converted into a job interview.   Most desireable  women insist that a guy meet all of their 23 bullet point list.  If they find during this “job interview” that the guy doesn’t meet points 12, 17, and 22, they will go back to their computers and bring up another batch of hopefuls.  With men heavily outnumbering women on internet dating sites, they always have a surplus of guys wanting to meet them. 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/article4846940.ece

Do wives berate their husbands twice as much as husbands berate their wives?

So says the psychologist Richard Driscoll in his recent book, “You Still Don’t Understand”.  I haven’t read the book, but the Amazon blurb contains several assertions that will be provocative to some people.

For example, Dr. Driscoll says women berate their husbands almost twice as often as men berate their wives.  From my own observations this doesn’t surprise me a bit.    When you see married couples in which one spouse is berating the other, isn’t it generally the wife berating the husband?

A funny sitcom illustration of this is found in “Two and a Half Men”.  Charlie Sheen’s brother was married to a woman who is, let’s say, a world-class berator.  In nearly every episode in which she appears she gave him hell, and they weren’t even still married.  Now she’s about to be married to another guy, played by the hilarious Ryan Stiles, who played the tall guy Lewis on “The Drew Carey Show”.  She makes his life a living hell too, all to hilarious effect on the show.  She’s a caricature, but one that isn’t too far removed from how many wives act.

Another revealing conclusion of Dr. Driscoll is that a husband’s willingness to comply with what the wife wants, and not the reverse, is the key to marital success.

This too isn’t surprising.  It seems to be a feature of most marriages I have seen.  And it doesn’t make marriage sound too inviting to guys.  Who wants to be in a relationship in which a pleasant life depends on your doing what your wife wants.  That’s like a job, but one where you don’t get paid (in many cases you are the one who is doing the paying).  Lucky thing most never-married guys don’t know this, at least until it’s too late.

Far too many women act in these ways yet are surprised when guys no longer want to be married to them.

http://www.amazon.com/Still-Dont-Understand-Richard-Driscoll/dp/0963412655/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1224580043&sr=1-6

Engagement rings: making billions while making guys poorer

“Making billions by making you guys poorer” should be the slogan of DeBeers, the international diamond cartel. 

 

It’s astounding how much money a lot of us spend on diamond engagement rings.  A friend of mine spent $20K on the ring he bought three years ago. Another friend of mine spent $6K, and he only makes about $30k/year.  Even that is less than the three-months salary that DeBeers (and most of the bridal business) recommends that the guy spend on a diamond engagement ring. 

 

If you thought it was only two months salary, you are behind the times.  It used to be only two-months salary, but DeBeers upped it to three.  Can you imagine the maker of any other product putting out the word that you should spend a certain percentage of your income to buy their product?  I can’t imagine it would be successful if, say, GM were to advertise that “You should spend ten months salary on a new car.”

 

I read an article last night on how this impressive marketing strategy became successful.  Reduced to its essentials, it is this:

 

The South African diamond producers realized they were mining a lot of diamonds.  Knowing the law of supply and demand, they realized that a huge supply of diamonds on the market would reduce the price they were able to get.  So they formed a cartel, a big company that controlled the supply of diamonds pretty much worldwide.  It helped that almost all the diamonds in the world were found in South Africa.

 

In the late 1930s DeBeers went to an excellent adv. agency in NYC and paid them to undertake a decades-long campaign to boost diamond sales in the US.  The country was in the midst of the Great Depression and few people could afford to buy diamonds.  Even when they did buy diamond eng. rings, they were inexp. little diamonds of poor quality.  So DeBeers wasn’t making much money.  Yet.

 

The agency told DeBeers that times were hard and they would have to convince guys to spend quite a bit of money on diamonds, which meant they couldn’t spend as much on food, clothing, and shelter, you know, necessities. 

 

The agency developed the strategy of selling the idea that only a diamond meant love and commitment.  Among many other techniques, they sent speakers to public schools making this kind of presentation, convincing a generation of young girls that they needed to get a diamond ring before giving it up (the speakers weren’t this direct, of course, but that was the effect).

 

Years later the agency figured out a way to increase their already-vast sales:  convince women that they needed another ring, ten years or so after the marriage.  And now this too is seen as necessary.  So instead of putting $10K in college fund for the couple’s children, or a 401(k) so they won’t be poor in retirement, the couple spends it on another diamond ring.

 

To show how successful the DeBeers ad campaigns have been, I have an example, a friend of mine named Alan.  Alan is a great guy, but he is one of the, let’s say, thriftiest fellows I know.  He squeezes a penny so hard that Abe Lincoln screams. He drove a little old pickup truck for years, even though it didn’t have air-conditioning, and this was in Texas and South Florida.  He brought leftovers for lunch every day (and undoubtedly still does).  He gets his haircuts at home, by his wife using a Ronco Supercut machine.  He gets up at 5AM to take his car to Walmart rather than the 10-minute oil change place to save $5 on the oil change.  He buys his clothes either on clearance sales or at the Thrift Store, second-hand.  I could go on and on, but you get the point: Alan loves to save a buck.  But even he spent thousands on a diamond engagement ring.  And I’m guessing he’ll soon be spending thousands more on the now-obligatory diamond anniversary ring (if he hasn’t already).

 

Does familiarity breed contempt?

Or at least dislike?  Apparently the answer is, generally, yes.

I skimmed the writeup of a study by the always-interesting Dan Ariely, a behavioral scientist at MIT (for our overseas readers, this is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the leading universities in the US).

Professor Ariely concluded that, on average, people like other people less as they get to know them more.  This is counterintuitive.  We’re always taught the opposite: that people like each other more as they get to know each other better.  This is true with long-established friendships.  But it apparently isn’t true for most twosomes.

The study focused on couples who had first dates.  On average, the more the two people found out about each other, the less they liked each other.  Professor Ariely theorized, based on previous research, that when we first meet we fill in the blanks about the other person, generally making assumptions that they are fairly similarl to ourselves.  But when we get to know them better we see the dissimilarities with ourselves.

The study also showed that people generally don’t realize how often their initial liking for other people will deteriorate.  This is consistent with my own observation that people seldom realize why they think what they think about other people.

Although people believe that knowing leads to liking, knowing more means liking less.

Another fascinating result was a sex difference: after the first date women’s opinions about the men went down considerably more than men’s opinions about the women.   Women seem to be, on average, harder to please than men.  It makes me wonder how any couples manage to get together and stay together.

http://www.predictablyirrational.com/pdfs/less.pdf

I Can’t Blame John Edwards

I’ve spent the past week trying to decide whether I want to weigh in on the John Edwards affair with Rielle Hunter.

I mean…another politician gets caught in an affair with another woman. He asks for forgiveness while his poor wife stands beside him in a laughable sign of unity. And my initial response is always the same…

BULLSHIT!!!

Let’s have a moment of truth, shall we?

There are two types of married men:

1) Those who cheat on their wives, and

2) Those who think about cheating on their wives.

And every single married guy will ask himself the same question before crossing that line into adultery…

…will I get caught?

You know Johnny Boy asked himself that very question. And you have to admit that Rielle looks pretty good for a chick in her 40s.

So John’s decision came down to this…

…be faithful to my plain jane wife at home or bang this vibrant blonde.

I think the decision is easy. Don’t you?

Will I get caught?

I imagine Johnny Boy will do a better job of checking the birth control angle before he decides to strap his freak on.

In the meantime, he can rub this episode in the face of a certain conservative commentator who happened to question his sexuality a few months ago (and also happens to be a hot looking babe).

So John Edwards…step up to the podium and tell Ann Coulter to go $%&^# herself.

The American Girl Dating Quandary

Over the last few years, my dating life has consisted mostly of girls from other countries, especially Eastern European states and Russia. I’ve never made it a specific goal to date or marry a girl from outside the U.S., but it certainly seems appealing.

We’ve posted many blogs on here as to the tremendous advantages of dating girls from Eastern Europe, so I won’t go into listing them again. Just suffice it to say, the quality and selection are WAY better than what you find in the U.S. But I’m having a little bit of a quandary right now. You see, I’ve been chatting-mostly online-with a young American girl for a good two years now. She was unavailable when we first “met”, and we were just friends who would e-mail occasionally. Well, she became available a few months back, and the e-mails became IMs which in turn became flirty text messages and photo exchanges.

Here’s the thing: she is very typically American. By that, I mean she meets a standard that seems to exist for all American girls, and once that standard is met, she has no motivation to be better at anything else.

Let me see if I can make this more clear. First off, she is steel-meltingly hot. She’s a model, and with good reason: she has the body for it. But since she has that aspect going for her, she really doesn’t have to, in the American dating market, have much else going for her. She has, by her own admission:

• Mentioned that she has no idea what she’s doing in the kitchen
• Told me that she already knows she’s a pain in the ass to have as a girlfriend
• Admitted that she knows she lets her emotions get the best of her, making her make irresponsible decisions financially and in relationships
• Has hinted that she feels it’s the man’s responsibility to make good money to support a certain lifestyle

I like her a lot. She’s actually very funny; we make each other laugh all the time. But…and I hate saying this: I know I can do even better than her outside of the U.S. Because in Russia or Estonia or Latvia, there is no “cap” on how good a woman can be. In Latvia, just because you’re gorgeous doesn’t mean you can’t go ahead and learn how to cook a decent meal. In Russia, a knockout hottie still wants a loyal, happy marriage with a man she loves, not a man to fulfill her needs in the “competition among her girlfriends”.

So I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’d still like to fly over to that side of the pond again and meet someone. But, I certainly can’t stop talking to my American hottie. I guess the chips will fall where they may.

The Astonishingly Beautiful Women of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia

A friend of mine grew up in Lithuania, one of the three republics on the coast of the Baltic Sea (the others are Latvia and Estonia).  He came here with his family when he was a child.  He still has a great many relatives in Lithuania. 

One of his cousins came to the US for a month-long vacation, visiting New York City, Chicago, Disney World, and several other places in the US.  After his return to Lithuania he was walking down the street with a friend.  After awhile the friend remarked, “You’re acting like you’ve never seen a woman before.”  He replied, “You don’t understand.  I’ve been in the United States for the last month and I didn’t see nearly as many beautiful women as I do on the streets here.”

I’ve been to New York City, Chicago, and Disney World.  I’d say there are a lot of beautiful women in all three places (especially parts of New York City; there does seem to be a strong connection between beautiful women and money).  It really says something if Vilnius, a city of only 600,000 – 800,000, can compete successfully with these places.

A friend of mine has visited Riga, the capital city of Latvia.  He told me that he passed beautiful women on every block.  I’ve read elsewhere that Estonia also has a huge number of beautiful women. 

Why do these three Baltic nations have such an array of gorgeous women?  And more important, how much does a plane ticket cost? 

I’m back.  Expedia shows a round-trip ticket to Riga costs well over $1,000.

If you believe the travel magazines eco-tourism is growing increasingly popular.  I’m guessing that reading magazine articles about eco-tourism is way, way more popular than actual eco-tourism.  It’s one of those things that sounds a lot more fun than it would actually be.  For every hour spent looking at a beautiful pristine view in a remote rainforest, you’ll spend 28 hours fighting mosquitoes and hoping your anti-malaria meds really do work so you don’t end up sweating the moisture from your body in tropic heat, wondering how you’re going to get the energy to bicycle back to civilization so you can fly home and stay in airconditioned comfort.

But I digress.  The subject at hand is beautiful women, specifically their presence in the three Baltic republics.  I do not understand why US guys aren’t doing online dating with women there and planning their vacations there so they can meet these women.  I know a trip there isn’t cheap, but it would cost less than twenty dinner dates with women in the US. 

Which would you prefer: a relationship with any of the 20 women you meet here in the US or one with a woman you’re likely to meet in Latvia, Lithuania, or Estonia.  It isn’t only their looks that give these women a huge advantage over US women.  It’s the culture of the two countries.  Women here have grown up in the Oprah-fried culture of the US.  Most of them are thinking, “What have you done for me lately?” (see Eddie Murphy’s hilarious bit on this from “Delirious”).

So what are you waiting for?  Stop reading our site, get your credit card, and book your flight to Riga.  And search for Latvian/Lithuanian/Estonian dating sites.

Have You Ever Noticed…

…that women who are strongly opposed to pornography aren’t ones whom men want to have sex with in the first place?

That Tone in Her Voice

I was in the middle of a hike the other morning when I crossed paths with this young couple. There was nothing really special about these two individuals except for the fact that the female was berating the male over some mindless issue. What struck me was that particular tone in her voice that women used to notify guys that it’s pointless to argue.

You know that tone…

…it’s the same one that dog owners use whenever Fido drops a seven pound steamer on the kitchen floor.

Anyway, I didn’t get to hear much of this one-sided discussion, but I was able to hear the following:

“No…matter…what…I…say…or…do…it doesn’t…seem…to…matter.”

Same tone. Same inflection. Same deliberate cadence. (Actually I wouldn’t have been surprised if she started saying “Bueller?” “Bueller?”)

Now imagine if you took a cheese grater and began vigerously rubbing it on your nutsack…

…That was my reaction to her attitude.

And the sad thing was the posture of this miserable excuse for a man who was taking this abuse. Head down. Hands in his pockets. Defeated look on his face.

I’m willing to bet that this couple will eventually get married…

…followed (very) shortly by a bitter divorce.

Enjoy writing those alimony checks.

Loser.

The Reese Witherspoon Rules

…although I guess a better title would be “I Have The Pussy, Therefore I Get To Make The Rules”.

I’m not sure whether you’ve seen this, but there’s been this story making the rounds regarding Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal (you might know his visually offensive sister as being the lone negative to The Dark Knight which came out last week). Anyway, it appears that this happy couple has decided to live together with her two children.

One catch…

Reese has decide to impose a strict list of rules that Jake must live by if he wants to remain in her presence. These rules include:

• He must take off his shoes whenever he is in the house.
• The trash must be taking out when the can is three-quarters full.
• There will be no feet on the coffee table.
• The family will have daily discussion at the dinner table.
• No cursing is allowed.

Now I realize that these seem rather mundane, but here is the kicker…

Under no circumstances will plans be made without consulting the other.

Meaning poor Jake basically has to ask for permission before he gets to do anything. Now I have to ask…

Is any pussy worth that?!

Now I understand that relationships involve a series of give and take (mostly the men doing the giving and the women responsible for the taking), but to impose this type of list seems rather one sided. I could understand if this involved an incredibly hot woman, but REESE WITHERSPOON!!!

Now once poor Mr. Gyllenhaal agreed to these terms, his balls basically detached themselves from their cozy nutsack and rolled down each leg of his pants. He has willingly reduced himself to being nothing more than a lowly housepet who can’t take a shit without getting permission from his slave master.

If you’re going to put yourself in that position, why not just get married?