One night, six months ago, my best friend and I lowered our inhibitions and got in bed together. Lo and behold, in three months, I’ll be a father. I’ve been clear about not wanting a relationship with her, but I get the feeling she thinks the baby will equal magical love between us. I’m living with her until the dust settles from the baby, but tensions between us are growing daily. If I even spend time with female friends, she gets jealous and stops talking to me for days. How can I get our friendship back to normal? And how do I handle it if I meet girls I want to date?
--Reality Ankle Bites
Bummer, baby’s on the way. How are you supposed to mack on girls?
As heavily as your future dating life must be weighing on your mind, when you have a moment, you might consider how you’ll handle the little things, like when your kid looks up at you and asks where he came from. Then again, maybe your partner in inhibition relaxation will be handling that one all by herself: “Mommy had a one-night stand with a man who used to be her friend. You don't know him, but the government makes him send checks to pay for your therapists and defense attorneys.” Aww, how heartwarming.
For future reference, babies do not generate dust. Babies generate bills. Moreover, while condoms are not 100 percent effective as birth control, they still beat hope hands down. Unfortunately, the abstinence education crusaders seem to have missed out on human nature education, an important element in preventing unwanted pregnancies. There they are, telling kids to abstain from sex, which is fun, when they could be telling kids to abstain from debt, which is the opposite of fun: “Let’s see, boys and girls, you could put that $500 you earned into a new stereo system for your car…or a breast pump, diaper bins, and a stroller.” Hellooo, latex!
Yeah, yeah, so the little strip turned pink, what’s the big deal? Well, here’s a big, warm thanks a lot from the rest of us, who’ll probably be getting mugged at gunpoint by your 10-year-old. What could go wrong now? What couldn’t? For starters, emotional stress on the mother during pregnancy -- for example, her continuing anxiety that Daddy’s going to dash out of the delivery room and start dating -- gives the developing baby a bath in the stress hormone cortisol. Numerous studies link this prenatal stress to serious cognitive, emotional and behavioral problems, possibly long-term, especially in boys. Marriage and family researchers Alyson Shapiro and John Gottman noted that after the baby is born, destructive conflict between the parents can cause the kid to suffer “depression, withdrawal, poor social competence, and conduct-related disorders.”
It isn’t this baby’s fault that two idiots’ genitals got together. But, all is not lost. Not yet, anyway. Enlist your parents and hers -- in other words, bring adults into the equation to help keep you three kids out of trouble. Should you feel compelled to put more into parenting than your checkbook, recognize that you can’t suddenly say you’ve thrown enough baseballs around when the kid hits 11. If you do decide to dad, go with the mother before the baby’s born to one of the research-based Bringing Baby Home parenting workshops (BBHonline.org). There, you can learn to work together (even if you aren’t together) to meet the kid’s psychological needs and to keep conflict to a minimum. Tragically, parenting class is about the worst place you could go to find dates (just behind Lamaze) -- but it is your best shot at keeping your mack-mobile free of bumper stickers like “My delinquent deals drugs to your honor student.”
January 7, 2006
I’m a 23-year-old guy, just out of college. I dated a lot in school, and found it easy to meet girls in class or through friends. Now, I’m going out more than ever, but having the hardest time even breaking the ice. I know women say they value a guy with a sense of humor. Should I memorize some jokes or funny lines? I read an article that suggested teasing a girl by pretending you have a point system, meaning whenever she does something you can bust her on, you say, “You just lost a point!” so she thinks she has to work to date you. Does stuff like that actually get you anywhere?
--A Man In Need Of A Plan
Canned pickup lines are the cheap toupee of humor. Sure, they’ll get a woman’s attention, and maybe even make her laugh -- same as she will if your head reminds her of a freeze-frame of somebody being attacked by a ferret.
The guy who tosses cheesy lines around -- “Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?” -- is the warm-up act for the guy who talks to women like a human. A study of which openers work best by UK researchers Christopher Bale and Rory Morrison distinguishes “wit (spontaneous jokes that fit the context exactly, are genuinely funny, and require intelligence) from mere humor (the pre-planned jokes and one-liners which were ineffective and do not demonstrate intelligence).” Sexually suggestive cracks can be effective -- when you’re trying to hire a date instead of simply finding one. But, in general, even if a woman’s a cheap hoochie, she won’t appreciate being treated like one. Clever as you feel suggesting places she might re-park her thighs upon exiting the bar, it pays to consider your goal: breaking the ice, not wearing it, along with the rest of her drink.
There are books you can read that will help you be interesting to women, but they aren’t the ones with titles like “How Even A Schlub Like You Can Be Irresistible To International Supermodels Who Are Also Nymphomaniacs.” A recent entry in the Tricking Women Into Liking You genre is M.A.C.K. Tactics, by Rob Wiser and Christopher Curtis, which advocates using hostage negotiation techniques like “creating IOUs.” At a restaurant, you’re supposed to ask your date which side of the table she prefers. Whichever seat she picks, you tell her it’s your favorite, but insist she take it. Later on, if she won’t put out, “it’s time to cash one in.” That’s when you say (“jokingly”), “Wow, I let you take my favorite seat at dinner, and I can’t even get a kiss.” According to the authors, “She’ll smile at this clever, unexpected comment, and might reconsider.” Well, other girls’ mileage may vary, but a man gets all sweaty about his “favorite chair,” and he will be going home, almost immediately, but not with me.
Why would you want to scam a girl into liking you? Not only is it a highly ineffective way of getting a girlfriend, isn’t it kind of degrading if somebody only wants you because she’s too dumb to see through your con? And then, on the off chance you are successful, there’s always the problem of keeping up the British accent or remembering to stick the “war wounds” back on after showering. Instead, try a novel approach: Be real. Just walk over and say hello, and maybe open with a real knee-slapper like “Do you live in the neighborhood?” Talk to a woman like you’re genuinely interested in her -- which involves actually listening to her, not waiting for her lips to stop moving so you can continue your monologue on your own greatness. Remember, it’s a conversational exchange, not a used-car sale with martinis.
No, real life isn’t the surreal, built-in chick stable that college was, but at least nobody in your corner bar is showing their solidarity by waving big foam fingers around. If you fare best when you have common ground, why not create it? Start a bowling league, or a satanic cult, or go again and again to the same bar. Suddenly, you’ve got the home-game advantage: It’s your turf, the bartender treats you like somebody, you know which bar stool is ripped. And maybe that’s all it takes. You open by warning a girl before she catches her skirt, “Watch out for that chair, it eats your wash.” There you are, taking charge, being helpful, displaying generosity, and using mild, situationally appropriate wit -- qualities Bale and Morrison ranked high in girl appeal. The idea is trying to pick up women, but not trying too hard. It’s a lot like being bald. Many women will overlook a bald spot on a great guy’s head, but they’ll never get that far if they’re too busy offering bar snacks to the ferret covering it up.