I'm confused. Does treating women as equals mean not doing those things that would previously have been considered chivalrous, like opening doors and giving a woman your coat? What's now considered polite, and what's considered offensive?
--Bewildered
The response by some women these days to men's well-intentioned acts must tempt at least a few men to swing entirely in the other direction: "Let's see...I could open the car door for my date -- or start to drive off and let her throw herself across the hood and hang on."
To these women, chivalry is "benevolent sexism," affectionate but patronizing sexism -- a way of treating women that suggests they are in need of men's help and protection. It involves things like opening doors and offering to carry a heavy item for a female colleague and being the one who runs for the car in a downpour -- instead of handing the girlfriend the keys and announcing, "I'll just wait here under the awning!"
Research has found that benevolent sexism can be undermining to women -- even leading them to feel less competent at their job. However, complicating things a bit, new research by social psychologists Pelin Gul and Tom R. Kupfer finds that women -- including women with strong feminist beliefs -- are attracted to men with benevolently sexist attitudes and behaviors despite (!) finding these men "patronizing and undermining." The researchers theorize that what women are actually attracted to is the underlying signal of benevolently sexist behavior -- that "a man is willing to invest" (in them and any children they might have together).
Frankly, even I engage in benevolent, uh, something or other -- like by holding the door open for any person, male or female, coming up to an entrance behind me -- simply because it's nice for one human to look out for another. Or, as my mother would put it, it's genteel. Ultimately, your best bet is behaving as genteelly as you would if you had no idea about benevolent sexism. Most women will probably appreciate it -- even if a few of them say "Thank you...that's very nice of you!" in language more along the lines of "Screw off, you medieval turd!"
I'm a 34-year-old man, newly single after a relationship that started in college. Though I love the work I do running a small nonprofit, I don't make tons of money. I'm worried that my inability to "provide" in any sort of lavish way will make it hard for me to attract post-college women. Do I need to win the lottery?
--Making A Difference
It is best if the dream date you're proposing isn't all in the presentation: "We have reservations tonight at a cozy new hot spot -- my studio apartment with the heat that won't shut off. Dress tropical!"
I do often write about how women evolved to prefer male partners with high status -- men with the ability to "provide" (like by being a hotshot spearmeister who regularly brings home the bison, earning others' respect and loyalty). However, what's important to note -- and what has some bearing on your chances with the ladies -- is that ancestral humans lacked anything resembling "wealth" (portable, conservable assets).
Though no modern woman wants a man who lives paycheck advance to paycheck advance, there's hope for you -- from research on one of the few cultures today in which men aren't the primary earners. Political scientist Nechumi Yaffe looked at ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel -- a community in which the men spend all day hunched over studying the Torah and the women are the breadwinners.
Yaffe finds that, as in other cultures, the men the ultra-Orthodox women prefer as mates are those who are the best in their "field" -- which, in this community, comes out of the level of "religious devotion and piety" the men show. In other words, though men's status is a vital mating asset across cultures, "how status is achieved may be culturally specific."
As for you, I'm guessing you don't work at a nonprofit because you hit your head and forgot to become a cold corporate tool. You're surely part of a community that shares your beliefs about the importance of making a difference. Chances are, many of the women in your world don't want some money-worshipping hedge fund buttknuckle.
In other words, to ramp up your status, you need to stand out as a top do-gooder -- like by coming up with and implementing innovative ideas to ease people's suffering and make the world a better place. This should make you extremely attractive to a woman with similar values -- the sort who spends time every week beautifying the planet...and not because picking up trash along the highway is a condition of her probation for her DUI.
I'm a 57-year-old twice-divorced man. Though I never wanted to get to a point where romance wouldn't be in my big picture, I'm feeling done with it. I've replaced dating and getting married again with gourmet cooking for one. I'm really enjoying it, but it worries me. Is it okay to be done?
--Single And Culinary
Well, according to some research, married people do live longer. However, that's sometimes just because they were unsuccessful at killing each other.
There's this notion that your life is pretty much a black chasm of nothingness if you're without a "significant other." Psychologist Bella DePaulo blames this thinking on what she calls "the cult of the couple." DePaulo, who researches the elements of being satisfyingly single, marvels at "the strange implication" (in a paper by noted marriage researchers) "that people without a stable sexual relationship are wandering adrift with open wounds and shivering in their sleep."
Though we humans evolved to be interdependent -- people who need people -- we don't have to be sleeping with those people on the reg for them to count. In fact, having good friends and close acquaintances you can rely on is associated with a whole bunch of physical and mental health benefits, including better cardiovascular health, increased happiness, and decreased stress and depression.
Interestingly, research increasingly suggests that providing social support may be even better for you than getting it -- psychologically and physically. A study co-authored by psychiatrist Randolph Nesse on elderly people who regularly did generous acts for others in their lives is one of a number that find an association between being a "giver" and increased life expectancy. Conversely, Nesse theorizes that the rising tide of depression in our society has roots in how disconnected many of us are, leading to a deficit in the level of kindness we evolved to give and receive.
Well, you're set up perfectly to extend yourself for others -- like by handing them a plate of your gourmet chow. Consider using your newfound love of cooking to bring a social circle together around your dining room table. Invite friends over every Friday or so to dine or even help you make dinner. The cool thing is, before they arrive, nothing's stopping you from whispering the same seductive thing you would to a woman: "So...what are you wearing?" The turkey: "The same little paper socks you put on me an hour ago, stupid."
I'm a 42-year-old woman, and I've been dating the guy in the town house next door for two years. I love him, and I'd like to get married, but he has always taken me for granted. My friends say I'm too available. Yes, I'm always there for him, always picking up the phone or texting back right away, etc. Why is this a bad thing? I'm loyal and caring. Also, I'm not sure how I could be less "available" when he lives next door.
--Undervalued
Being neighbors is so convenient: "Hi...could I just borrow your stepladder until tomorrow and your vagina for, like, an hour?"
Unfortunately, being ready, willing, available and conveniently located is not exactly the launchpad to romantic longing. Consider that the restaurant everybody wants to go to is the one where getting a table requires Hollywood connections plus selling two-thirds of your soul to bribe the maitre d'. The food there might not be substantially better than that of the bistro up the street. But exclusivity -- how tough it is to book a table -- elevates the apparent value of a place.
There's a related concept in relationships, "the principle of least interest." The term was coined in the 1930s by a sociologist, Willard Waller, and it describes how the person who has the least interest in continuing a relationship has the most power over it. (Modern research by sociologist Susan Sprecher supports Waller's theory.)
Sadly, your boyfriend most likely has a set opinion of your value, so your chances of getting more appreciation from him are probably blown. Still, it's important to note that in a relationship, you don't have to keep up the "least interest" gambit forever; you should just hold off on being full-on loyal and caring till you have somebody who's inspired to do that for you, too.
Ultimately, it's important to work on yourself so you'll be "hard to get." But before you get to that point, you can act "as if" -- like by setting an alarm for four hours and returning texts then instead of 8.6 seconds after they hit your phone. It's sure to be seriously hard at first. But you could probably get into a balanced, loving relationship if you'd just adhere to "the principle of least interest": We pine for what's slightly out of reach, not what's all over us like an oil spill.
I get very lonely around the holidays. My family is just my parents, and they're far away. I don't have a boyfriend right now. I have many friends and good people in my life, but instead of hanging out with them, I find myself isolating. So...it seems my treatment for loneliness is loneliness and then feeling sorry for myself that I'm home alone. Help!
--Pity Party Animal
Each of us gets into the holiday spirit in our own special way. Some of us build gingerbread houses; some of us build gingerbread psychiatric hospitals.
To understand how you can long for human connection and (ugh!) long to avoid it at the very same time, it helps to understand the mechanics of loneliness -- the pain we feel when we're disconnected from others. Like other emotions, loneliness is "adaptive," meaning it has a function. It most likely evolved to motivate ancestral humans to behave in ways that would help them survive and mate. (Survival in the harsh ancestral environment would have been strongly connected with social bonds, and mating without a partner tends to be a bust for those of us who are not aphids or slime mold.)
The problem is, our psychology is complex, and work orders laid out for us by different emotional adaptations -- different functional feelings -- sometimes conflict. For example, the sadness that comes with loneliness is also motivating -- only it can motivate you to lie facedown on the couch.
This probably seems anything but useful, but psychiatrist and evolutionary psychologist Randolph Nesse explains that the slowing down in energy that's a partner to sadness gives us time to examine our behavior, figure out whether we might do better with different tactics, and, if so, change our MO.
It is important to take stock like this -- to a point. But if you remind yourself of the evolved job of emotions, you'll see that it's sometimes in your interest to override them. In short, you can do your sadness homework without making your loneliness worse by spending your entire holiday mumbling into the throw pillows.
Tell your besties that you could use some cheering up, and give yourself an emotional work assignment: going to a minimum of three parties over the holidays where groups of your friends will be in attendance. Keep in mind -- while you're lifting what feels like your 3,000-pound arm to apply mascara before going to some shindig -- that we're bad at predicting what will make us happy or unhappy. Chances are, once you're at the party, you'll catch a buzz from the eggnog, get laughing with your friends, and accidentally slack off on your fashionable nihilism -- your muttering that it's all nothingness and you're alone in the universe except for your unpaid debts.
I'm a 32-year-old guy with a really great female friend. We talk on the phone, grab food, etc. She even kept me company in the hospital after I got into a motorcycle accident. I've started falling for her, and I want to ask her out, but I'm afraid of losing her friendship.
--Conflicted
It's just a bit of a twist on the friendship ring. You'd like to give her a friendship penis.
Risk researchers find that decision-making in the face of uncertainty -- when we can't be sure of what the outcome will be -- is really hard for us. However, by plugging in all the information we have, positive and negative, we can make an educated prediction about how things are likely to turn out -- and whether we can afford the loss if our effort is a bust.
For example, if you have only one friend and if you're pretty sure you could never make another -- say, because you live on one of those tiny desert islands in a New Yorker cartoon -- you might decide it'd be too costly for you to risk saying something. And if, on a scale from 1 to 10, your friend is a 9.2 and you're more on the bridge troll end of the spectrum (in both looks and career prospects), your chances of romance with her might be pretty slim. ("Shrek" is not a documentary.)
If, after weighing the pros and cons, you decide to ask this woman out, you could simply say, "I'd like to take you on a date. Would you be interested in that?" Yes, it's possible that doing this would tank your friendship, but chances are, you'd just act a little weird around her for a while. Then again, if you said nothing and constantly agonized over wanting her, you might also end up acting all weird -- in ways that would make continuing your friendship impossible. (Okay, so she's not into you, but maybe if you send her yet another love poem written in your own blood...)
I'm a recovering addict, five years sober. My ex-boyfriend was a "normie" (12-step slang for someone who hasn't had addiction issues), and there were definitely things he just didn't get. Do I need to date another recovering addict to feel understood? I've done that before, and I really don't like it. It's like living in a recovery bubble 24/7.
--Sober
A person who doesn't have a history of addiction can understand the need to take the edge off. They'll even admit to doing it themselves -- with a cup of chamomile tea.
Though "normies" tend to view addicts as lazy, an addict's shame sometimes comes out of typically impressive qualities -- like creativity and industriousness -- being applied to getting loaded. Take author and former comedian Amy Dresner. In her addiction memoir, "My Fair Junkie," she writes about suffering a grand mal seizure while shooting cocaine. Realizing that she could've cracked her head open, she had an epiphany -- no, not to stop shooting coke but to strap on a bike helmet before doing it.
As shocking as this would be to most normie men, there are those who could still be a good partner to someone in recovery -- if they're willing to put some work into empathizing. However, it turns out there are different kinds of empathy. In short, "I feel ya" empathy is different from "I understand you" empathy. "I feel ya" is dumb empathy, the kind that just pops up automatically, without any mental effort on our part. Researchers call this auto-empathy "affective empathy," because "affect" is researcher-speak for the observable expression of emotion (in a person's face, body, or voice). Affective empathy involves "emotional contagion," in which you "catch" and then automatically experience somebody's emotion, to some degree. (It's basically the emotional version of the mythical "contact high.")
"I understand you" empathy, on the other hand, is "cognitive empathy," a psychological skill that psychologists also call "perspective-taking." It involves a conscious mental effort to put yourself in another person's shoes -- to understand their point of view, motivations, and/or emotions. Research by business school professor Cynthia Wang and her colleagues finds that an ability for perspective-taking correlates with reduced prejudice and stronger social bonds. This suggests that a man who engages in it might be more likely to see you as, well...rehabulous -- sober and fabulous -- a person who overcame her addiction issues instead of a bunch of addiction issues with a person attached.
Finally, because you've probably done serious soul-searching and character correction in getting and staying sober, a man who's a good match for you is probably one who's taken some hard looks at himself and worked to remodel where necessary. Ideally, he'll help you feel comfortable opening up to him by being open about his own current and former shortcomings. (Try not to laugh when he reveals deeply shameful lapses...like once stress-eating five cookies at a party.)
In a documentary on Lady Gaga, she talked about how whenever she reached a new pinnacle of success, her boyfriend or fiance left her. It happened three times. My most recent boyfriend couldn't handle it when I started to become successful. Are my options to be successful and alone or unsuccessful and loved? How do I find someone who won't feel threatened?
--Disturbed
It's often hard for a man who's achieved less than the woman he's with. She introduces him with "Meet my boyfriend..." and he imagines everybody finishing her thought with "...the man whose job it is to eat treats out of my hand like a squirrel."
Wave hello to "precarious manhood," a term coined by psychologists Jennifer Bosson and Joseph Vandello for how a man's social status must be continually earned and "can be lost relatively easily" through public failures and the exposure of his shortcomings. We rack up our social standing in comparison with others. So, not surprisingly -- in line with research I recently cited about men's freakouts when they were told a woman beat them in every category on an exam -- Bosson and Vandello write that "feelings of masculinity can be undone" by "being outperformed by a woman."
The reality is, the world is not our dating oyster. (Atheists have to take a pass on the hot churchgoers. The teetotalers go poorly with the "social crack smokers.") Accept that success narrows your options, and concentrate on meeting men in places the honchos (or at least the highly successful) hang out. (Price points -- like costly admission to a charity event -- are one way to weed out many of those of middling achievement.) Narrowing the field this way should make you less likely to hear dismaying parting words from a man -- those that basically translate to "I have mad respect for your success. My penis, unfortunately, has some ambivalence."
January 1, 2019I lost over 100 pounds. I'm really proud of my myself and my new body, so I post pix on Instagram. Disturbingly, I've got a few haters -- all women! -- who come at me saying I'm narcissistic, slutty, a showoff, etc. I thought women are supposed to support one another. How should I respond? Should I post fewer selfies?
--So Much For Sisterhood
Nothing lasts forever -- except middle school, which never ever ends. You'll be 85, and some biddy will be all "Look at that slut with the pink walker."
There actually seem to be sex differences in the content of social media meanness, according to research by psychology doctoral student Joy Wyckoff and her colleagues. In keeping with previous studies, they found that women online get comments knocking their physical appearance more often than men, whereas men more often get comments "derogating their status" and skills. (Additionally, in their study, it was women alone who got "derogated" for "promiscuity" -- a trigger for men's evolved fear of providing for a kid with some other dude's genes.)
These differences in who gets bashed for what -- appearance in women versus status and skills in men -- are right in line with the differences I often cite in male and female mating priorities. These evolved out of the differing potential costs from having sex. Because women can get pregnant and stuck with kids to feed, mate-seeking women are drawn to high-status men -- "men with the ability ... to provide resources," as the researchers put it.
They note that men, on the other hand, are "unconstrained" by any sort of "minimum obligatory parental investment" (that is, beyond the initial teaspoonful of sperm). This allows men to prioritize hotitude in prospective female partners -- which is to say, men's eyes make a beeline for boobs and butts, and never mind whether they're attached to the barista or the senior VP.
As for the ugliness you've been experiencing on social media, it's best understood as female-on-female psychological warfare. Chances are, these "haters" are looking to chill your enthusiasm to post hot bod selfies -- leading you to self-relocate lower on the mate competition totem pole. (I'm guessing nobody goes meangirl on your photo studies of inanimate objects or Cujo, your teacup Yorkie.)
Block the Cruellas. Nobody has a right to your attention or a seat on your social media platform. On a positive note, now that you've been schooled in the covert ways some compete, you should be quicker to identify and fend off female underhandedness -- on Instagram and beyond. (Nothing like women celebrating other women's achievements: "Way to go, girl! Who knew the walk of shame burnt so many calories?")
I'm a 28-year-old guy in grad school. I love my girlfriend, but I don't want to have sex with her anymore. I'm hitting the books and writing papers day and night. She still wants to party -- go out and smoke pot and drink a lot -- which I used to enjoy but now find empty and stupid. I keep feeling seriously annoyed with her choices, and I'm increasingly attracted to other women. Is this the end, or should we try to make it work?
--College Boy
When you're slaving away in grad school, it can be hard to feel connected to somebody whose idea of higher education is Googling how to grow pot in your closet.
Your eye-rolling at your girlfriend's choices -- to the point where you could sprain a pupil -- is not exactly the stuff a peppy libido and a happy future together are made of. In fact, the mounting lack of respect you have for her is the starter emotion for contempt -- an ugly emotion that plays out as sneering disgust. Relationships researcher John Gottman finds that contempt leaching into a marriage is the single best predictor that a couple will split up.
Conversely, for a relationship -- marital or just committed sans paperwork -- to have staying power, you need to have the hots for your partner, not just as a sextivities provider but as a human being. This involves having deep admiration for what they think and value, which shapes who they are and how they go about life.
Did you start out in a place like that with your girlfriend? If so, you two should have a chat about where you are now and whether you can get back there. The answer may not be immediately apparent, so you might set a defined period of time to give this a look -- with a deadline to make a decision. Ultimately, there has to be enough that connects you to overcome the stuff that divides you, or the only thing that will ever be throbbing in your relationship is that big vein in your neck.