Manslations
Page 2
This book isn't any of these. I'm not a womanizer (much to my eternal embarrassment, I've always been lousy at meaningless sex). And besides, knowing how to spot an a-hole isn't the beginning and the end of dating, is it?
Here are a couple of quick examples of the kind of bone-headed advice I'm trying to counteract single-handedly:
MANSLATIONS CHART: WHAT THEY SAY VS.
Question: Your Average Trashy Women's Magazine Self-Help Books Written by Other Men Your Mom
We had a great date; should I call him? Send him an embarrassingly sexy text message explaining what you want to do to him on your NEXT date! If he wanted to hear from you, he'd call YOU. And you rock, and you shouldn't have to call dudes. A woman should NEVER call a man—it looks so needy. And eat something; you're looking pale.
I saw him totally checking out another woman's boobs! Wear something trashy as hell and keep his attention on YOUR boobs! Your boobs rock, and a man who rocks will be into them enough to notice that. If a man is getting what he needs at home, he doesn't look elsewhere. Oh, and clean your room.
He won't talk to me about his feelings. Umm…talk? You really rock. That's what you have ME for!
I really want him to buy me flowers sometimes. Why doesn't he ever think of that? When he comes home, be on the bed wearing fresh flower petals and nothing else! He'll get the message! Why flowers? What did he do wrong? (Furthermore, you rock out, and you deserve flowers.) Buy yourself flowers, sweetie. And get some for me while you're there.
So…how DO you drive a man wild in bed? Put a mint in your mouth when you go down on him! By rocking out. (passes out)
MANSLATIONS ANSWERS
Your Girlfriends Manslations Answer!
Don't call him too soon—you don't want to scare him off. If you want to call him, call him. If he likes you, it will help, and if he doesn't…uh…who cares? If it's been more than 2 days, though, don't bother. He didn't think your date was “great.” No, there are no exceptions.
What a jerk! You should totally call him on it. Make him squirm. Pretend you didn't notice. He can't help it, but it doesn't mean anything. We all do it. If you want to avoid SEEING it, feel free to tell him (NOT then, but during a coolheaded moment), “Hey listen, I know you look at boobs, just never let me notice it, ok? It would bug me.” But try to get used to the idea that all men will always do this forever. Not just the jerks.
He's probably just afraid of vulnerability. Why SHOULD he talk about his feelings? If there's some reason for him to talk about them, he'll talk about them. What do you REALLY want from him? Attention? Affection? Closeness? Ask for that, instead.
Buy HIM flowers and cards and stuff. Then maybe he'll get the message. Never buy him something he doesn't want so he'll figure out that you want him to buy YOU that thing. What is that, a hint? He'll never get it. You have to explain it to him, and you'll get your flowers. I know you want him to just KNOW, but he doesn't. And he never will.
Wear sexy lingerie and …um…I read about this weird mint thing in Cosmo… Look, if you are currently alive and IN his bed, he's already halfway wild right there. After that, if YOU'RE having a fantastic time, and you pay attention to him, he'll be plenty wild, I promise. And if you really want to do the weird mint trick, hey, knock yourself out.
I'm not a psychologist, though I have to admit that it does seem mildly attractive to charge somebody 150 bucks an hour to sit there and let them talk to you. I'm not trying to give you “ammunition” that you can use against men—we're already obscenely outmatched by women as it is. I'm just a nice, normal man you might meet on, you know, the Earth. And I wanted to offer women something a little different from all of that.
Since it's so simple for men to read and understand the behavior of other men, I wanted to share with women my experience in how to do it. It's not just about how to get a date or how to get a husband. It's about how to understand men—any man—and understand who it is you're dealing with, even when he won't (or can't) tell you himself.
Plus, as if that isn't enough reason to sell you on Manslations, check this out—you're already reading it. Purely from the standpoint of convenience, I'd say that's tough to beat.
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
I've seen this sort of section listed in the introductions of other books. Honestly, I'm not sure how many ways there are to use a book. Well, other than to say that you should probably read the words. I think you'll find it makes a very real difference in your appreciation of the book.
If you can think of any other ways to use the book, though, feel free to write them in the margins here. (Please make sure you've paid for it first. Bookstores tend to frown on that sort of thing if you don't already, you know, “own” the book. Boy, did I find that out the hard way.)
__________________
*You might have seen me on Comedy Central's show Live at Gotham. This is especially likely if you were looking at your TV during my set.
* I have been blessed/cursed in that people I meet need to tell me about their deepest, most embarrassing problems. I'm not sure if I give off a smell or what. I think it's probably just that they sense that I'm a good listener. And luckily, they don't know that the reason I'm such a great listener is only that I'm trying to get all the details down so I can get their story right later on when I'm telling the first person I think will laugh the loudest.
CHAPTER 1
basic manslations theory,
or the stuff you don't know
Okay, in the interest of full disclosure, this is kind of a trick title. All manslations theory is basic. I know that some women love to believe that there are complex and fantastical explanations and excuses for various male behavior patterns. (And if you want to hear a few, just ask any woman who is having an affair with a married man. She's got piles of that stuff.) But in most cases, men are very, very easy to read if you know how to do it.
Lucky for you, it won't take long to learn absolutely everything you need to know to understand all the men in your life. (And the ones in other people's lives, if you've got some spare time on your hands or if you're waiting at the airport or something.)
Behold: The Five Supreme Laws of Manslation*
I know it seems like an oversimplification to say that all male behavior can be explained with only five things—but in truth, even five is probably giving us too much credit. Most stuff can be explained using just one or two of these at a time. But you get all five, so now you'll be prepared for everything and anything.
Well, except for the thing where some guys like to fart on each other. You're on your own there.
THE POINTY-STICK-PROBLEM-SOLVER
PRINCIPLE
Where does male thinking come from? (And can we send it back?)
Ha ha ha ha. Oh ho ho ho! Oh! Oh, you!
No, but seriously. Where does male thinking come from?
To explain, we have to go back to caveman times.*
When there were problems in the caveman world, they were mostly physical problems. Things like, “Mother eff, is it ever cold in this cave!” or, “Holy cow, would you just look at the size of that bear that's coming into our cave. What are we going to do about this huge ani—?”
So the biggest, strongest cave folks (i.e., the men) would have to run out there with clubs or sticks and do something about it. And if they couldn't, people would die, and nobody would snuggle up next to them during the long caveman nights.
Or when someone said something like, “Hey, I think I'm getting hungry for dinner,” there would be grumblings about how delicious that elk had looked yesterday, all antlery and jumpy aroundy, and so unlike that bowl of twigs we had for breakfast.
Once again, who had the honor of chasing down that elk and stabbing it with a pointy stick? You guessed it. The bigger, more muscled folks—the men. As a result of all of this running around, hitting, poking, hunting, etc., the male mind evolved into a problem solver. His value was based around whether or not he could do stuff about stuff with stuff.
No
w, fast-forward to today. Men are still trying to solve problems. But the problems are different. We almost never battle with wild animals anymore. (Probably for the best, if you think about it. I've seen TV shows where some creature gets loose at a zoo or something and battles with a human. It almost always goes badly for whichever one happens to be wearing the polo shirt.)
So with no giant beasts to fight, when a woman says something like, “I feel fat,” the man will snap into action and attempt to poke the problem to death with the pointy stick of his little mind, telling her how she is not fat—what is she, crazy?—she's perfect just the way she is—what is she talking about “fat”? Even when, wow, she sure is.
In the cave-ish portion of his brain, the man has defined a problem (“Something's wrong—we aren't watching football”), and he's working feverishly on a solution (“Please, what can I say so we can stop talking about this in time for the fourth quarter”).
This ancient style of problem solving doesn't always help a man become very good at thinking of a solution today, especially since your garden-variety modern problem isn't going to require a spear. (Though God knows I've had moments on the subway when I'm positive that a spear would help.) Sometimes his “problem-solver side” goes after the wrong thing entirely and needs some help.
You might see this when you're discussing a problem with your man. You're talking about work; you're frustrated; you're feeling underappreciated; you're upset with your boss; and you're not sure if you even want this job anyway. What's your man doing? Listing off eleven different ways you could make this situation better. And you want to kill him because HE'S NOT LISTENING…
Well, he is listening. Just not in the way you need. He has identified what he feels is the appropriate elk (your job problems) ripe for the stick-poking (getting you a different job, telling your boss you want a transfer, whatever).
Solution? Give him a different elk. Tell him, “I have a problem, and I need your help. What I need most is for you to just listen to me, let me vent, and don't try to solve the problem yet. That will really help me.” He'll poke and club that problem to death like you won't believe.
THE JACK BAUER PRINCIPLE
So, men have left behind the caves, the pointy sticks, the fur bathing suits of their ancestors in the days of yore (most men, anyway). But in addition to the mad pointy-stick-problem-solving skills, men can trace another trait back to the cave, and it is this: Men still have some kind of a weird biological memory of being badasses. Think about it. One of our ancestors must have been a badass, or else everybody in that cave would have bit the dust. (Yes, I realize that everybody in that cave did bite the dust, but you can't blame men for that. Simple biology, people.)
So what does the fact that our progenitors were ancient badasses have to do with, say, a modern accountant? Or a computer programmer? Much like the spearing of your odd elk, there's not much call for badass-ery in most of modern life. Your ability to fight a woolly mammoth with your bare hands is less in demand than, say, knowing how to order properly at Starbucks.
According to the most brilliant minds in this field,* the badass tendency didn't go anywhere. It's still there, lying dormant in most men. Thus…
Every man secretly believes that he's just a few sit-ups away from being 24's Jack Bauer.
We're all pretty sure that one day the Navy SEALs are going to call up and say, “We're under attack—we just lost half our squad! We need you!” And by God, we'll be ready.**
Now… consciously, intellectually, we know that not only are the Navy SEALs never going to call, but we would not be ready if they did. However, we still wish we were badasses.
It's very, very important for women to understand this about men. If you follow this, then you know why he doesn't want to, say, go clothes shopping with you.
Imagine your Jack Bauers of the world (or your average Navy SEAL, Green Beret, ninja, or Jedi) picking out blouses with his girlfriend. You can't, can you? That's just not much of a “mission.” These men have no time for blouses—they're all rappelling down the side of a building or kicking in a door or punching an evil person in the stomach or something.
I'm not saying that your man actually wishes he was doing these things, but he likes the idea that he might be considered capable of them. He doesn't want anything to interfere with that fantasy. Like shopping with you, for example.
Let's take that a little further.
What do you do if you want him to come shopping with you? Well first of all, don't want that. If he's anything like me, he will be an infuriating shopper. He's not your girlfriend. He's your man. He won't be very helpful.
However if you must take him shopping, you can't nag him into it. It will never work. You have to make him feel like more of a badass for coming along than if he had just refused and stayed home. If you can somehow convince him that the very fact that he's doing this stuff makes him more of a man than those “sissies who refuse to go shopping with their girlfriends to prove what men they are,” you'll have much better results.
Juvenile? Yes. Silly? Probably. Embarrassing? Sure. But it will work better than nagging, “Why can't you ever just come shopping!?” He's heard this before. From his mom. And the moment he heard it was when he first began to suspect that he was never going to be rappelling down anything.
This is just one example of the Jack Bauer Principle. We'll see it again a little later. Just trust me—if you can understand this about your man, you'll be so much happier. So will he. In these moments, let it be a little less like, “Will you stop being such an idiot and just do what I want?” and a little more like, “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope.” I think you'll be pleased with the results.
THE WHAT IT DOES VS. WHAT IT
MEANS PRINCIPLE
Speaking in broad stereotypes, men seem to interpret the world and the stuff in it in terms of what it does, or its utility. This is why guys go crazy about tools. They have a function. They do. The broad, stereotypical female reaction to a thing is to ask what it means, or its significance.
Take, for example, the humble thank-you card. The thank-you card is primarily designed for its meaning, and as a result, men are not the best gender at remembering to send them (though in our defense, we're in the top two). Nor do we really care about receiving them. We just don't get it.
The reason is that they don't do anything. Whenever I get one of these cards from someone, I never know what I'm supposed to do with it. I'm always thinking, “What are we up to here? What is this card supposed to get me to do? She already said thank you in person. So what's this about? What was wrong with that thank you? Should I acknowledge this card? Am I supposed to send a card back to her, thanking her for this card that thanked me? When does it stop? Am I in trouble?” And then I need to go to bed.
Now, most women just assume that this is a nice, meaningful thing to do, to show someone that you are grateful, that you care, that whatever you're thanking them for meant something to you.
For me, and for a lot of men, thank-you cards are like vitamins. I'm not sure what they do; I don't really understand them; but I'm pretty sure I have to use them or else something vaguely bad might happen. (The difference, of course, is that failure to use one of these things might result in someone's feelings being hurt, and in the other case, my gums might fall out or something.)
The next two sections are the biggest, most important things ever. Ever? Yes, ever. If you can really take this stuff in, you're going to cut down on the “what the hell is he thinking” part of your life drastically. You'll have so much free time on your hands, you'll be able to knit a twenty-foot image of me and use it as a slipcover for your garage. (Or you could do something not creepy. Your choice!)
THE MANSLATOR'S GOLDEN RULE
On my website, I get all kinds of questions from women complaining that a man is sending them “mixed signals.”
Here are a few examples:
He says, “I had a great time—I'll call you,” but then doesn't.
He says he wants a “real relationship,” but you only hear from him at 3:00 a.m., when he's drunk and wants to come over for sex.
He says noncommittal things or not much at all, but he keeps finding reasons to spend time with you.
He says he's psyched to hang out with your friends but constantly “forgets” what night you're getting together with them and makes other plans.
None of these situations are mysterious to a man. Any man can tell you without hesitation that these signals aren't mixed, blended, or even lightly stirred. In fact, most men wouldn't even know what could possibly have confused you.
Here's the Manslator's Golden Rule, which will solve all of these “puzzles.”
Ready?
Whenever there is any conflict between what a man says and what he does, always, always ignore what he says.