Manslations

by Jeff Mac

  This isn't spin. This is being clear. If you tell him that what you want is for him to see only you, he doesn't know why. For all he knows, it's because you're trying to “tame” him or “test” him, or “break” him like a wild horse. You know, as a hobby. (I know that no woman has ever done that, of course. It's just a silly, silly example that never happens…) But if he knows that you are crazy about him, and you want to get even closer? That's clear. There's no question about agendas. You're being straight, and there's no reason for him to go on the defensive.

  The timing is up to you. There's no good or bad timing for these sorts of talks (though, again, I'd wait until after the post-game interviews are over if you want his full attention. And I'd do it after his team wins, just to be safe. Kidding, kidding. Kind of…).

  A very important thing to know about men is that you are not going to screw this up by screwing it up. And by that I mean it's not how you word this that is going to get him to want to move in with you. It's not the timing of the conversation that is going to get him to marry you. Or not to. These things, they just aren't affected by you “finessing” them. He either wants to become exclusive or he doesn't. There will never be a moment when he says, “Well, I was ready to stop seeing other women and just be with her. But then she asked me to do that in the dopiest way, and… I don't know. Now, I'm rethinking the whole thing.”

  Relax. The good news and the bad news is that you just don't wield that kind of power here. Be clear and be direct and really say what's going on. The rest is up to him.

  Breaking Up

  I've gotten some questions about how men prefer to be dumped. No, I really have gotten that exact question. Uh, I've done some informal polling, and it turns out that, strangely, they prefer not to be dumped. I know. I was surprised as well.

  But you know, there actually are better and worse ways to do this. For him and for you. During a hot air balloon ride? Not great. (No safe escape routes.) Via text message? Honestly? Better than the hot air balloon. At least it's quick.

  See, whenever anybody wants to dump his or her person, there's usually a bit of a debate whether to use the full-on Dump or the Fade. The Fade, of course, is where you pretend to stop existing and hope he doesn't notice that you're gone. With relationships longer than, say, a month, this will be about as effective as when a three-year-old “hides” by covering his eyes.

  Anything longer than a month and you're likely looking at a real, full-on, no-kidding-around Dump. How do you do it? Two words:

  Clear. Direct.

  Remember those words from somewhere? Yep, same as with all the other Talks, you need to be clear with him here. Even if that means seeming cruel. I say “seeming” cruel, because I'm not talking about being Clear and Direct about what's wrong with him. What's the point? You want out, right? You're not holding a class called “What You Should Do to Fix Yourself, Even Though I'm Dumping You Anyway 101” are you? Wait… don't answer that.

  So if not about what's wrong with him, Clear and Direct about what? Clear and Direct about the fact that you are ending the relationship. You're not thinking about it. You're not considering it. You're not “pretty sure” you “might need some time” to “figure things out.” Leave him no room to think that there is something that, had he done it, you'd be staying. Don't leave him with the impression that there is unfinished business, or he'll become an unfinished businessman. Possibly with a briefcase and everything. (Probably not, but I don't know who you're dating.)

  But why?! This is what the dumpee always asks you, right? Boy, if he only knew what your answer might be, I bet he wouldn't ask it. The fact is, I think men ask this one because they are looking for the problem so they can solve it. Do not give them a solvable problem here.

  The fact is, with any breakup, it's never a result of problems. It's always only one problem: You are not the right people for each other. If you were the right people, you'd work out whatever problems you have. If you're not? What difference do the problems or solutions make if you're not the right match?

  That's the best, most definitive way to leave a man. Let him know that there's nothing that he could have done differently. It's just that you've decided (not that you're “thinking” or “sort of coming to the conclusion”) that the two of you just don't fit together in the way you want to fit with someone.

  In a weird way, there's no reason for a breakup to even get very personal when you're dumping a man. And there's no reason it can't be kind and even friendly. The real truth of any breakup is that no one is really “leaving” the relationship—the relationship just wasn't the right one to begin with. There's no reason to be cruel about the fact that the two of you weren't born to be a match forever and ever, is there? You're just stating the fact—fact—that you've come to the conclusion that you two aren't the match that you are looking for.

  Now, this isn't to say he's going to agree with you that you're not a match. That's why breakups are sometimes lousy. Sorry about that. Just stick to your story. For his sake and yours. Stick to the fact that you two aren't the right people, and don't get suckered into “softening” it for him. Trust me, this is as easy as you can let him down.

  ALL TALKED OUT

  And that's how you have The Talk with a guy. If you can keep this stuff in mind, you can really help make The Talk become less and less of a big freaking ordeal, until, ultimately, you can probably stop capitalizing those words altogether. He won't feel the need to be on guard, and you'll be able to just talk.

  __________________

  * Well, unless you want to be picky and count all that barking or waggling antennae or tentacles or whatever those little critters are doing to converse. Which I certainly don't. Just try ordering a sandwich by wagging your tail, and let me know how it goes.

  * I tried to think of a specific film for that example, but my brain refuses to store such things in its long-term memory. That area of the brain is too filled with character names from Lord of the Rings and the relative merits of upscaling DVD players vs. true High Def. I asked a group of typical guys if they could think of any movies like that. They gave me a look that was what I like to think of as the adult equivalent of a “wedgie.”

  * Unless (a) you are my girlfriend, and (b) it's really big.

  * Hey, I don't know who you hang out with.

  * I'm sure this is exactly how the American Revolution started. We tried to patch it up, tried to fix it piece by piece. Ultimately, somebody thought, “You know what? Let's take the whole thing apart and just replace the whole country. Dude, it'll be fun!” I am quite sure that if you were to read every history book ever written, you would never see this story told from this perspective. And I think that is just sad.

  CHAPTER 8

  manslating literature, TV, and

  the movies, or why nobody

  in the real world ends up

  with mcdreamy

  Now we're going to take a look at some of the famous situations that we've all seen in movies and on TV. And okay, we'll look at “literature” as well. When you look at the portrayals of men in popular entertainment, you can see a whole lot about how men think. And how we think we're supposed to think. And how you think we think, even though we probably don't think like that. (There's a reason they call this stuff “fiction.”)

  As an added bonus, I'd like to think that this investigation will, in some small way, justify all the TV that I watch.

  LITERATURE (THESE ARE THE ONES

  WITH “PAGES”)

  The Iliad

  This one is an easy one. A Greek guy and a Trojan guy both like the same woman, Helen, who happens to be the Greek guy's wife. Paris, a hot young guy from Troy, comes to visit Menelaus (the Greek guy). Paris then starts banging Menelaus's wife while he is a guest in their house. Paris and Helen run away together, and Menelaus is pissed off. Menelaus gets some friends to go over and get her back. It results in a crazy, huge war that kills all kinds of folks, including most everyone involved. So what's to manslate?
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br />   Warning: Do not go to Troy with Paris.

  Look, I'm not trying to say that Menelaus is a great husband. The man is a Spartan. He's a prick, I'm sure of it. I know that there are a thousand reasons for leaving Menelaus. And I won't refute even one of them. But if you go to Troy, not only will you not get to stay with Paris (he will get bored with you so quickly, you can't possibly imagine it), but Menelaus will bring all the Greeks and kill the hell out of everybody there. It's a nightmare.

  Listen, Paris is an idiot. This wasn't about love. Oh, he thinks it is. But see, most men love the thrill of getting the impossible gets. And if a guy who loves that also happens to be good-looking, wow, will he be a really great boyfriend. For about a week or so. Loving, attentive, just about as poetical and romantical a man you've ever met. He will promise you the heights of passion and seem to deliver them in a frenzy of secret meetings—late night, early morning, whatever. (See “The Romantic,” page 92.)

  How are you to know that you are with a Paris? Well, there are signs. Has he fallen “in love” with you so quickly that, even though you feel incredibly flattered, you're a little skeptical? Follow that impulse. Does it seem like he needs to get you into bed and is telling you the most wonderful things in the world toward that end?

  Remember the Two Big Questions: Is his behavior designed to get you into bed? Yes, it is. Is it designed to spend more time with you? Well, it might seem so, in a way. After all, it seems like he wants to see you all the time, wants to take you away from your Spartan lord, is unsatisfied with however much time you can have together, wants you to leave this man for him now now now. That's all well and good, but that's just now now now. As in, it's just during this entirely fabricated emergency situation that he's created for you two. What is the plan once you've broken up with Menelaus? What will your life be like together?

  He doesn't know the answer to those questions. That's a warning. I'm not saying that Paris was lying to Helen. Not as such. He was lying to himself. He's not saying, “I am so in love with this woman, I don't even care that taking her home will start a war that will destroy everything I have ever known. I just have to have her.” This is not true at all. No, he's saying, “Hurry up and run around with me like an idiot, before we figure out what a dumb idea it really is!” There's a difference between being a “crazy, passionate romantic” and just a “guy who doesn't think about stuff before doing it.”

  The point is that Paris doesn't love Helen. Neither, for that matter, does Menelaus. Paris is in love with the sound of his own voice telling her how in love he is. Menelaus is in love with owning Helen. So when Paris cons Helen into leaving, Menelaus is so pissed off that he has to go and kick some ass. The whole thing could have been avoided had Helen just dumped Menelaus and then said to Paris, “Oh, for Christ's sake, grow up, will you?”

  Romeo and Juliet

  Possibly the most famous romance in the history of everything. God knows why—it's between two teenagers, and it ends up with them offing themselves. Good plan, guys.

  The manslation of this story is that men will go through anything when they're horny. Romeo's most important characteristic is that he's young. Young enough that he's still just getting used to hormones. Why does he climb up that balcony, even though her family will kill him for it? Literally, I'm saying—this isn't where her dad's going to tell his dad, and he'll get grounded or something. I'm talking about literally being stabbed. And yet there he is, staring up at her, making up poetry on the spot, risking disembowelment.

  Men who do this do it for one of two reasons. Either they are too young to be able to fight the hormones—under the age of twenty-one or so—or they think it will turn you on. Men know that women want to be romanced. And even though we don't totally get it, some men realize, “Hey, if I act like a total romantic moron, those panties will drop so fast it'll be terrifying!”

  In this sense, it's the same story as Paris in The Iliad. He didn't think it through.

  TV (THIS IS THE ONE WHERE FAMOUS PEOPLE

  ARE AT YOUR HOUSE. FUN!)

  There have been many shows on TV. For example, there was MASH, to name but one. That was a show about how funny the Korean War really was. (My information is that they were, in some episodes, exaggerating that aspect of the war.)

  There was also Knight Rider. And Baywatch. And Baywatch Nights. But we are not going to manslate those Hasselhoffers. We don't need to. The Hoff needs no manslation. He could stand a gentle nudge away from his singing career, but we'll let that pass for now.

  But let's take a look at some popular TV shows and films throughout the ages and see if we can't analyze some of the male characters and their behavior.

  24 and Jack Bauer

  Kiefer Sutherland plays Jack Bauer on the tee-vee, and this will be the longest day of his life. Bong! Bing! Bong! Bing!

  As I mentioned in Chapter 1, the Jack Bauer Principle can help explain how your man might think of himself. But there's more that 24 can teach us. See, lucky for us, for all the expertise that Jack exhibits in torturing, assaulting, or generally punching people, Jack Bauer's greatest challenges are in relationships. He can stop nuclear terrorism, biological warfare, international incidents, and just about anything else that CTU might come across over the course of your average twenty-four-hour period. But that doesn't seem to help much in selecting the women that he chooses to surround himself with.

  Background: Jack is a tortured soul. Probably from all the actual torturing that he has done in his life. The man is a killer. Literally. He is the epitome of badass, at an expert level, with a master's degree in Badass-ery. An MBA. (I never knew what that stood for until now.) He has done some really awful things. He has gotten himself hooked on heroin for an undercover assignment. He has tortured and killed people. He once ate a whole baby, just so he could understand what baby cannibalism was like. (Okay, they never actually said that in those words, per se, but it's in there if you look closely.)

  The bottom line is that this is a haunted man. He is dark, dark, dark. No sense of humor. No real facility for anything but punching and shooting. As a result, it doesn't matter what might be going on in his personal life; he will drop it the second something happens that threatens national security.

  Now, Jack Bauer has surrounded himself with some real idiots for lady friends. I mean, I am sure they're nice. But they all have clearly had it up to here with Jack's penchant for leaving the house in the middle of the night at the behest of the president. (We went into this tendency a little in “Having ‘The Talk’.”) They simply do not understand why he can't just say, “No, Mr. President. I cannot come out to stop a biological weapons attack that will kill millions. Not at 6:30 p.m. on a Tuesday. No. No. I'm sorry, Mr. President, but it is meat loaf night, and we have a rule in the house that no one is allowed to miss meat loaf night. I understand, sir. Yes, sir, I am sure that it is important. See, the problem is that there's this meat loaf…”

  Here's where we get to the manslation of this type of man: He is being very clear with you about who and what he is. For this man, the woman will always come second to his job, and there is zero reason to believe it will change. I don't care how much he tells you he's going to “work on it.” Remember, that's just what he “says.” What he does is, you know, stop biological agents from getting across the border instead.

  These girlfriends, wives, and what-have-yous have all decided that they are in love with Jack Bauer, if only he will stop being Jack Bauer. This is always a big, big mistake. Because one of two things will happen:

  You will fail to change Jack Bauer and end up married to a guy who will run out the door at a moment's notice to kill folks that the president doesn't like. That's one option, and believe me when I tell you that it's the most likely one.

  You will somehow succeed in getting him to agree to stop being what he is. And then you've got a neutered cat on your hands. Now, if that's what you're in the market for, well, you are a soul-crushing, selfish, evil person. Why would you want that in th
e first place? To “break” him?

  If you are dating a man who is so committed to his career that he will always choose it before you, you need to ask yourself something: Why do you want to be with him? If you are hoping that one day he will stop choosing the president and punching people in the face and instead choose you… well, why would that ever happen? Or maybe an even more specific question would be, when, exactly, will that happen? On what day do you think this change will take place? Next week? Next month? In five years? Do you have any reason to think he even wants to do that?

  But that is what I want him to do!

  Right, I know—but he gets a vote on that, doesn't he?

  But what I want for him is even better than what he wants for himself.

  Ah. Now we're in really big trouble. See, you may be right. He might even agree with you. But it doesn't matter in the least. He's still like that, even though you don't want him to be. The question you want to ask yourself is, if he never changed—if I took him at his words and actions as who he is right now—would I be okay with being with him?