The Grill Of The Chase I have three tests for a woman before I'll get involved with her: (1) Magazine Test: Does she read gossip rags? Women who do like to talk trash, and I want no part of that. (2) Penny Test: Does she react negatively when I buy a candy bar with a dollar's worth of pennies? If so, she's out. (3) No Information Test: I don't respond if she asks what I do, what I drive, or where I live. These are gold-digger questions, revealing interest in my wallet, not in me as a person. I stand by my tests as valid, because I expect a woman to truly love me, not my money or what I can do for her. Why can't I find a woman who can pass them?
--Down To Worth
Maybe the woman who can pass your tests has tests of her own. As sick as you are of “gold-digging” women, maybe she's equally sick of beauty-grubbing men who flock to her because she looks like she stepped out of Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit Edition to binge on a lettuce leaf. Just imagine her letter: “The Eye Candy Challenge: Before I go out, I throw on a pup tent and pack it full of Crisco until I look like a 426-pound zeppelin of lard. I complete the look with a mask to give the illusion that I have one giant wart where my head is supposed to be. Why can't I find even one man to invite me out and withhold information about where he lives, what he drives, and what he does?”
Hmmm...maybe that one man she's yearning for is you? Surely, several hundred lumpy pounds of fat wouldn't stop you from taking her out and refusing to tell her about yourself. After all, you, if anyone, know it's a woman's inner beauty that matters -- even if you have to send in a search party of gastric bypass surgeons to find it. Right? Right?
Yeah, right. Men want beautiful women. Women want men of status and power. Deal with it. This isn't some new phenomenon. Any man alive today is a beauty-grubber descended from a very, very long line of beauty-grubbers -- stretching all the way back to the Pleistocene era. Likewise, modern women are hard-wired to be “gold-diggers” -- descended from an equally long line of female ancestors who would have sold their hairy left knuckle to bear Joe Alpha's furry little children.
The female features that men, across cultures, evolved to find beautiful -- hourglass figure, youth, clear skin, and facial and bodily symmetry -- are a bunch of biological thumbs up signaling that a woman is a healthy, fertile candidate to bear and raise a child. Women, across cultures, evolved to want men with the ability and willingness to invest in their children. It wasn't actually men's wealth that women adapted to seek -- probably because a T-Bone in the hand one day doesn't guarantee the ability to get another T-Bone in the hand the next. The cave mamas whose genes got passed along were those who looked for a man's POTENTIAL to consistently bring home the bison or to invent the wheel. Like a 1.8 million-year-old hangover, this psychology is still tagging along on dates today -- even when a woman has a killer job of her own, zero desire to have kids, and a lifetime supply of birth control.
This doesn't mean you have to settle for a woman who sees you as an ATM machine with legs. But, what's with the paranoia that women want you, at least in part, for what you've achieved? Of course they do! And if you want the rest of the story, your best bet is just paying attention, over time, to what a woman says and does. Ironically, with your tests, you reveal much more about yourself -- all of it negative -- than you would've if you'd simply spilled the beans about what's behind your garage door.
Regarding your anti-gossip rag manifesto: Don't you have any guilty pleasures? “Enquiring minds want to know!” About your top-secret career: A woman who's into her work is likely to be inquisitive about yours. Refuse to tell her what you do, and she's sure to assume it's something criminal or criminally embarrassing. Finally, considering that women are biologically programmed to go for good providers, how wise is it to give the impression that you'll be paying for your half of her birthday dinner with a wheelbarrow full of change?
On the bright side, if you do keep paying for small food items with very, very small change, you needn't worry about dying old, bitter, and alone -- because you're sure to die young, bitter, and alone after you're strangled by the guy in line behind you at the mini-mart.
Posted by aalkon at October 18, 2005 12:01 PM
Comments
your test is interesting, i can see the first two but like amy said, if work is important to the woman, she may want to know what you do. what you drive that is a different story, i can see that one staying. but, okay, she does not pass your test, how can you just base it on the q & a?, okay she passes, you know everyone has pet-peeves & something more ugly than the questions might acatully come out (i.e. raceist, bigiot, etc.....)
Posted by: shan at January 22, 2006 12:01 AM
I may have given myself vertigo from shaking my head after reading this. I wonder if the little tests that you seem so proud of are ways to avoid taking the time to really get to know a person and for you to avoid revealing yourself in a way that requires you to delay immediate gratification and that justifies your beliefs. Reject them before they reject you? Kid yourself into believing that you're "trying" to find someone to be with in a relationship? If you have the agenda of proving to yourself that you're right, guess what? You won't see anything but evidence to support it -- whether it's actually what is occurring or not. When you're a kid, it might be mildly amusing to present a hundred pennies to make a purchase...The first time you do it. After that, you're a bozo. However, an adult with a life is too busy. He'd forfeit the candy for low blood sugar. He'd also be smart enough to take however many pennies (machine or hand rolled) to the bank and cash them in for the less cumbersome quarters and dollar bills. (Then, he might even go to lunch and, gasp!, pay for the gal with him because he enjoys being able to do it. He even enjoys sharing the company of others and without thinking he's going to be sucked dry of his resources. Why? 'Cause he gave some thought to who he hangs out with in the first place!) Not only do you limit yourself with petty tests, but you limit the women by setting them up with behavior that would put any self-respecting person off to you because of your manipulative and controlling behavior. You could be missing out on some wonderful women. Even if you don't meet the love of your life, you could learn about yourself in the process and how you could be a better man and human being. But, maybe you're not ready to point that finger in the other direction.
Posted by: annie at February 17, 2006 2:46 PM
/agree
You hit the nail on the head, Annie.
Guess what, Down to Worth. The work you do, where you live, and yes, even what you drive can all say something about who you are. House in the suburbs says something different than apartment downtown. Station wagon says something different than Hummer. Insurance salesman says something different than veterinarian.
Your tests scream "Paranoia alert! Run, ladies, RUN!" Try taking the time to get to know a woman and judge her character and intentions by less arbitrary measures. Maybe the women who are failing your tests are just making small talk.
Posted by: Nora at November 8, 2006 6:13 PM
" No Information Test: I don't respond if she asks what I do, what I drive, or where I live. These are gold-digger questions, revealing interest in my wallet, not in me as a person."
Excuse me, but what planet are you from? Most of us that live on planet Earth spend a minimum of 8-9 hours per day at our jobs, not including travel time required for such. What else do you spend more than 40 hours per week, every week, doing? The type of work you do tells a person more about you then just the small stuff like what's your favorite sports team, or band, or such. Talking about your job will give small details like the type of work you enjoy, the type of conversations she can expect to have with you, how much you'll take your work home with you, etc. (I.E. A trauma surgeon might be always on call; a geek might be really focused on computers, a pilot may be going on trips all the time, etc.) If you are unwilling to share information about what takes up more time than anything else you do, or will do, for 40+ years, then what else are you going to hide from the girl? This isn't exactly a confidence builder in any kind of relationship, even a friendship.
Oh, and newsflash: if your job is one that will make a gold-digger interested in you simply because of money, there's this little thing called the internet where she can research you and find out what your job is regardless of whether you tell her or not. And trust me, it's easy to find anyone online that isn't living in a hole. So, you won't scare off the gold-digger with your inability to talk about your job, but you will scare off the girls that just want to know what makes you you.
Posted by: becki at December 6, 2007 2:51 AM