by Jeff Mac
If the answer is yes, then accept the situation. If not, the only thing that you can do is to tell him directly, “This is not okay. I accept that you like running around, sticking people with syringes full of your various truth serums and whatnot or shooting them in the face. But I need someone who is going to be around. If you want to do all of that stuff, I respect that, but I can't be with you.”
At that point, it's up to him.
You never have to accept a guy who doesn't put you first. But you are never, never going to change a guy who doesn't want to put you first.
I can hear you out there thinking, “He doesn't understand me. I can change this guy.” No, you really can't. You might think you can, and you might even think that you are changing him. He'll choose you first for a while. Great. But it's an optical illusion. That other shoe is going to drop soon. He will get restless and feel the need to go out and save the secretary of defense from kidnappers. It's who he is.
Grey's Anatomy
Okay, I'll begin by saying that I have never actually watched this show. However, my girlfriend watches this thing religiously, and she has occasionally felt the need to tell me all about the plot after she has watched it.
Here's what I've picked up from listening to her, in between daydreaming about dive-rolling into a room filled with ninjas.
There are no manslations to be had, because there are no male characters on the show. Not one. There are female characters, and there are male actors playing imaginary men, who have been genetically engineered so that women will watch them on TV.
If you do meet such a “perfect” man in the real world, it's because he has learned that this behavior is the express lane to your pants. It is no more real than the TV show (which… you do know is not real, right?).
This goes for a lot of the men on shows where women are the target audience. They make them into these weird combinations of total badasses and emotional little boys who need women to take care of them. Men who could finally be the man they have always known they could be, if only they could find the right woman (i.e., you).
Men hate all these TV doctor shows, because we know you love them and we know we aren't like that at all. These guys are, for women, the equivalent of the giant, watermelon-sized breast implants in guy movies. They are fantasies. Watch them, have fun, pine away—but just know that real men aren't like that. On the plus side, Dr. McDreamy is never going to take out your trash, no matter what. But we might.
Everybody Loves Raymond
The classic situation we see on TV time and time again these days: The husband is a slovenly, pathetic idiot; the wife is a sage genius, and he's lucky she tolerates him. In these stereotypical situations, he always wants sex, and she doles it out when she needs chores done.
The manslation here is what we discussed in “Having ‘The Talk.’” This couple has really taken to heart the whole thing in which the woman is Mom, and the man is the dopey little scold-able boy, just aching to be grounded. Again, the problem here is not that your husband would refuse the sex. Because he sure won't. The danger is that he'll take it, and then sex is no longer about him being attracted to you. You will have taught him that sex means that he has to figure how much work he has to do around the house before he can get some action.
Not to mention, I mean, sex is fun for you, too, right? If it's only fun in the sense that it is a tolerable compensation for clean gutters, I'm pretty sure you're doing it wrong. Just saying.
The Bachelor
Ah, the king of reality programming. Here's the idea. We get a bajillion semi-trashy women and stick 'em in a house together with instructions that they are now to fall in love with the same guy. The women comply; they hate each other's guts; they cry a lot; and the man will attempt to sleep with as many of them as he can before being pressured into proposing to one of them on camera. Great, great television.
On one hand, I can't believe that this one ever got off the ground. On the other hand, any chance you get to hear a guy have to somehow get across the equivalent of, “You are the most special… seven women I have ever known,” you pretty much have to point a camera at that stuff.
This is a situation in which you can really see the disconnect between a man's sexual brain and his relationship brain. This guy is in hog heaven, with metric tons of surgically enhanced women all ready to strangle each other for the opportunity to drop their drawers for him. He doesn't know what to do with himself. And then when he starts kicking some of them off the island (or whatever they do), they are so confused: “But I thought we had so much fun together.” You did. But that doesn't mean that he wants you for his best friend. He might be looking for a soul mate, but that's got nothing to do with whether or not he is also looking for a lot of sex. And congratulations, you were it.
The manslation here is that this is a perfect example of the Two Big Questions being ignored. Clearly, it's not enough to know that he wants to be intimate with someone in that house. He wants to be intimate with every woman in that house. Hell, when he walks through that door, the freaking cleaning lady better watch her back. But that has absolutely nothing to do with the process of looking for a wife. And since this show doesn't really afford much in the way of “quality time” for the contestants, there's right on the verge of no way to answer that second question. Good for some hilarious television, not so good for helping women understand how men look for love.
Alias
This show concept is a stroke of genius. A female super badass. Her specialty? Put on a wig and a sexy outfit, give a terrorist a boner, and then do a spinning kick to his face when he isn't expecting it. She uses the age-old weapon in the female arsenal: If a guy wants to do you, he'll either give you the secret code to the vault or, at the very least, he won't be paying attention when you clock him one.
But here's why the show is such genius. Not only do female viewers finally get to see a totally badassed female character (instead of the damsel in distress that's in all the other action shows), but men get to see a woman who is emotionally wounded and needs to be taken care of—and a super hot woman. And it was all in the same woman—such economy!
Why do some men want a “wounded bird”? It's the Jack Bauer Principle and the Pointy-Stick-Problem-Solver Principle right there. Some men like to think that they are the rock, the guy she can count on, lean on.*
Plus, she occasionally slugged it out with other hot women. Don't know why men like that one, but they do. I think guys just think, “Well, hell, they're so passionate about punching each other in the face right now. How long before they just start making out?” Sure, the “real” answer is probably “a really long time,” but don't tell us that during the show, okay?
Happy Days
Most guys who watched this show felt like they related to Richie Cunningham at best. The main thing was that, just like all the guys on the show, we all knew we were not as cool as the Fonz, but we wished we were. The Fonz could snap his fingers, and women would just appear and want to go to Inspiration Point with him. He could hit a jukebox and make it play. He could fix cars. This guy could do stuff.
Guys want to feel that capable. Men love to feel like they can grab the world around them, strangle it, and make it cry “uncle.” The Fonz was the ultimate “Controller of the Universe.” Think about that the next time your man jerry-rigs some weird thing where the microwave can be run by the remote control. If you can react as if he had just snapped his finger and Bill Haley and the Comets came on the jukebox, it would really help. And remember, just like Richie Cunningham, your man doesn't want his woman to think of him as the second coolest guy around. Even if you both know he is.
MOVIES (WHERE YOU GO TO A BIG ROOM AND
SEE FAMOUS PEOPLE, FORTY FEET TALL!)
Titanic
This is a love story between Rose and Jack, two youngsters on the Titanic. They fall in love and then hit an iceberg. Not them personally, you understand. I'm talking about the boat. Did you see the film? Okay, good, you're with me—you
know where the iceberg fits in.
Couple of manslations here. In “Men and Their Things” (chapter 6), we talked about man's need to have the biggest toys. Well, here you go. The world's biggest ocean liner: “Unsinkable.” Thanks, dude. No woman would have bothered to do that. She'd think, “Well, what if we made a slightly smaller ship and sailed it responsibly, and then everybody could just have a good time?” And some guy would go, “No, no, no. Don't you get it? Then someone else will just come along and make a bigger one!”
For another thing, if it were the real world, the more attractive Jack was, the less wonderful he would be while he and Rose were deciding who got the honor of drowning. Sorry, ladies. That's just how it is. Just like really beautiful women, really good-looking guys go through life knowing that they are supposed to get what they want.
The big manslation in this movie is to remember that this, like the TV doctor shows, was not written to be realistic to men. Jack at one point draws a nude sketch of Rose, right? And this is romantic? Yeah, see, the whole “draw a sketch” move has never, ever, ever been anything but a “remove panties” lever. And I'm sure it works like a charm. But it's not about the ultimate romance. It's about, “Hmm. Wonder if she'll fall for this one.” I'm not saying that you shouldn't enjoy the movie for what it is. But if in real life a man ever wants to make a sketch of you, just be warned that foreplay has begun.
Fatal Attraction
This is the classic “breakup gone wrong from the male point of view” movie in which Michael Douglas has an affair with Glenn Close, after which she boils his daughter's bunny. She does not appreciate being dumped. The reason why this movie succeeded is that it is one of the nightmares that every man faces when he meets someone. You get in there, and then you can't get out when it's over.
When a man gets all skittish with you, just know that this is what scares him. He is not afraid of how much you made him feel or worried that he might get hurt. He is afraid you aren't going to let him leave, and then you are going to sneak into his house and boil his pet rabbit.
You might see this skittishness after the two of you have sex for the first time. Maybe he won't call quickly enough, whatever it is. You know what I'm talking about. We went through it when we talked about how to break up. The ol' Fade. He's trying to pull a Jedi mind trick on you and act like the two of you really aren't all that close anyway, so you should just let him slip away. He's hoping that you'll catch on, and he won't have to actually dump you.
You need to understand just how little you need to know to manslate this behavior. If it seems like he is trying to slip out the back door, he probably is. This is because he feels trapped in a situation that he doesn't want to stay in. Simple, simple, simple.
Men don't fear commitment for its own sake. And they're not afraid of intimacy, as such. They're afraid of signing an exclusive contract with the wrong woman and wishing that they were still freelancing. That's the fear. And if he doesn't think you are that woman, you can't convince him. Not even if you boil his bunny. In truth, if he thinks you're the wrong woman, he is right. You are the wrong woman. And if he has decided you're the wrong woman for him, then he's clearly the wrong man for you.
Either way, please don't boil his bunny, metaphorically or otherwise. It's just not nice.
The Godfather
Look, say what you will about the Mafia, but these guys get stuff done, okay? They make sure that they are the biggest, baddest, toughest guys around. I'm not saying that most men actually want to whack a guy. But I'm also not going to tell you that when someone messes with us, we don't have a little dream about him waking up with a horse's head in his bed.
In between the whackings, strangulations, and horse decapitations, there's some material we can manslate for the good of all. One moment comes when Michael is with a bunch of the mob guys (the “idiot friends” if you will), and he's on the phone with Kay. She tells him she loves him, and he won't say it back. One of the guys gives him crap about it. “Michael, when you gonna tell that nice girl you love her, huh? Oh, I love you so much, if I don't see you soon, I'm-a gonna die!”
Being romantic, being lovey? These things are not “manly,” and our moron pals are simply not going to let us get away with them. Your best bet is not to fight that one. Don't bother “testing” him by asking him to be super sweet to you in front of these guys. It doesn't mean that he thinks that his feelings for you should be a “secret” or anything like that. He's just trying to avoid being made fun of for the rest of his life is all.
Star Wars
Oh boy, do men love these films. See, they have both the Richie and Fonzie thing going. They have Luke, the common dork. He is just a whiny little idiot, but then someone comes along and says, “The universe needs to be saved! There's a hot princess involved. And you're so special that we need you!” As I've said, all men are pretty sure this will one day happen to them. And the guy gets to defeat—and then save—his dad? I mean, come on.
In addition to Luke, we've also got Han Solo in there. The Lone Wolf. The “scoundrel.” The badass gunslinger with the heart of gold. And in love with the princess. Just like in The Godfather, we've got a troublesome “I love you” moment that we can easily manslate. You know the one. Han Solo is about to be frozen in carbonite, possibly to be killed in the process.
“I love you,” says the princess, in what might be her last words to him ever.
“I know,” he says.
First off, let me say this. Boy, oh boy, is that guy lucky that he gets frozen right after that. If they had had five more minutes, oh man, would there have been some yelling about that one.
But the manslation here is that we've got yet another example of how the “cool guy” doesn't get all mushy in front of his furry and/or robotic idiot friends. And he doesn't do it when he's got to be strong. Han Solo is facing possible death here, and he's trying to do it without showing Darth Vader any weakness in the process.
Anything Futuristic and Post-Apocalyptic
In any movie that has a guy running around in a world filled with nuclear-fallout-induced zombies, you might see men in the audience get a little faraway gleam of hope in their eyes. What is this about? We all like to think that even though, sure, we're dorks right now… if that ever happened, we'd be the guy who could handle it.
We'd be the guy who figures out how to fight off the zombies, how to find food, how to survive. In a very real sense, many men believe that the only reason we're not badasses is the fact that the world doesn't need saving. I mean, go to the job, pay the bills, pick up the milk at the store. But if all goes to hell tomorrow, we know we'll be ready. (Even when, wow, will we probably not be ready at all. We'll be badassed outdoorsmen for about ten minutes. Then we'll get something sticky on our hands, and it's all over.)
The manslation here is that this is exactly why he won't ask for directions, even when he's really lost. This is why he won't ask for help when his computer is in pieces on the floor, and he's inventing new curse words. He's not just being a pain in your ass, and it's not just stubbornness. He doesn't want to need help. He wants to be the guy who, when it all goes boom, is the one who figures out how to survive and/or destroy radioactive monsters.
Say Anything
John Cusack. Standing out in front of the house. Holding that radio over his head to get her back.
That son of a bitch. Blew everything for everyone else forever. Basically, he set the bar impossibly high for the rest of us. Guys the world over knew it the second we saw it. From that moment forward, we all knew we were absolutely screwed. We'd love to be that effective a woo-er, and we instantly knew for sure that we were not. Thanks a lot, John. Appreciate it. Jerk.
Men do get competitive about this sort of thing. I have a good friend who came up with an incredibly elaborate way to propose to his girlfriend. Made us all feel like jerks. And that's why he did it. Oh, sure, he loves her like crazy, and he wanted her to marry him and all. Of that I have no doubt. But what he really wanted to do was
to be the ultimate romance badass. For that, we have John Cusack and that friggin' radio to thank.
QUICK REVIEW
We all like to watch or read stuff that supports whatever weird view we'd like to have of ourselves. Stuff that shows us what life could be, all evidence in reality notwithstanding. You know and I know that men really aren't thinking of themselves as an actual Jack Bauer. But that is one of the images that we see over and over again. And these images, however unrealistic, are part of how we are trying to form an opinion of who we are in the real world.
Most men like to watch or read about stuff being done and the people who are doing said stuff. It's not primarily about the emotional journey, although that can be important as well. What's important about a story or character for us is watching someone take his shot and try to make something happen.