Here’s an excerpt from my recent Webinar for men, “Nine Things You Need to Stop Doing With Women.”
In this segment, I make the point that real men DATE — and that “hangin’ out” is for frat boys and losers:
You can download the full Webinar here: http://LeadingManBlog.com/9Things
Do you ask your guy friends to go hang out with you? If so, why do you have a different standard for women? I agree that it’s better to have specific plans in mind instead of vaguely saying “let’s hang out,” but it seems that your thought is rooted in traditional dating and male/female roles, and I think you make an error with that.
Which leads me to a side question: Do you pick up the whole tab when you ask a woman to go eat with you on a “date”? Do you open the passenger-side car door for her? Do you rush to get to the restaurant door before she does so you can open it for her? And would you do any of these things for a guy friend whom you had asked to go grab some food with you? It you have a double standard, I think you definitely are basing your thought on cultural courting rituals, and it may be you who are at risk of looking like a “loser,” without realizing it, in the eyes of many women.
But again, nice video series.
Do you ask your guy friends to go hang out with you? If so, why do you have a different standard for women?
No, I don’t ask men to “hang out” — but then, I also don’t ask men out on dates. So I suppose I am indeed guilty of employing a double standard!
Academic feminist jargon aside, my ideas are based on years of observation of what works in romance between men and women.
… my ideas are based on years of observation of what works in romance between men and women.
Well if it is working for you and you’re happy and satisfied with your romance/love/sex life, then I wouldn’t want to fiddle with that at all.
But my concerns in general remain: That by relating to women with traditional dates and courtship you are widening the gulf between you and women; creating awkwardness with the ceremony and expectations of a “date,” thereby creating roadblocks for a real connection; and making yourself less attractive to women, because they see you as the one vying for their attention (trying to sell yourself) by paying for their meal and opening their doors, as though you are putting them up on a pedestal, with you being the lowly and hopeful courter. In my experience, women are not attracted or turned on by this behavior.
Not to mention the fact that this model of courtship, while trying to treat a woman like a valuable possession and showing her that you’re so interested in her you will serve her, ends up still treating her like a possession instead of a person and turns you into a servant to be pitied, not turned on by, and is intrinsically sexist.
I also do very, very well in the sex/romance arena, and I don’t go on “dates.” That kind of thinking is not even on the table, for the reasons mentioned above.
secondhander: You are making big (incorrect) assumptions about what I maintain and advocate.
Please limit your critiques to things I have actually said or written, not what you imagine my position to be.
secondhander: You are making big (incorrect) assumptions about what I maintain and advocate.
Please limit your critiques to things I have actually said or written, not what you imagine my position to be.
But those are things *implied* in what you have said, even if you didn’t say or write that explicitly. I don’t doubt what you say works for traditional dates and courtship, but is it actually good? I’d say please think critically about opposing views!
Kevin. First off, my intention wasn’t to make assumptions about your view. If it came across that way, I didn’t mean it to and I apologize. I did actually ask specific questions above in my first post about what you meant by a “date.” You never answered, so when I responded, I addressed the general conception of “dating” that people have. I’m still curious then what you mean by dating, and whether you would do the things I asked about above (pay for dinner, open car and restaurant doors, be the driver instead of the passenger, etc.).
So my intention was not to make incorrect assumptions, but to make some points concerning the potential problems I see for anyone who did those types of traditional things that are implied in a “date.” And because you didn’t specify what exactly you mean by a date in your videos, a lot of listeners will assume that you mean by it those traditional courtship rituals. If you agree that those things are problematic and you don’t want to imply them by using the word “date,” it might be beneficial to say that directly.
One other thing that I think is very important, and I am not in a position at the moment to re-listen to the video in order to transcribe your words exactly, but I think you mentioned something about one benefit of a date being that you keep your friends away from the girl you have an interest in – that if you were to “hang out” with a group, then your guy friends might try to win over the girl you are interested in. You did say something like that, correct?
If that was your point, I think there’s a real danger with that perspective, and it highlights a lot of the problems people have in terms of jealousy, sex, attraction, and romance.
Given that a woman is a person, not a possession, then no other guy could swoop in and take her for himself without her also being attracted to him and choosing him as well. Don’t you want a woman to choose you freely, even with other options available to her? And if she did in fact “hang out” with you and a group of your friends and ended up having a fling with one of them, then isn’t it a good thing that two people who like each other follow their desires and have fun with each other? Why should that be something to fear?
Any kind of scheming to try to keep a woman from someone she might be attracted to over you seems to me to indicate a high level of low self-esteem, and indicates what I believe to be a false dichotomy: That a person can only be attracted to one person at a time. (Not that you personally have low self-esteem, but someone who did would conceivably do such a thing.)
In my view, I have no qualms whatsoever with a woman spending time with my friends, or becoming attracted to one or more of them. There is no competition, because love and attraction require free choice – if a woman is going to be attracted to me, then by default it is her free choice and has nothing to do with how I can manipulate situations or keep her away from other people. If anything, that kind of paranoia and low self-esteem will only make me a less attractive person. And at the worst end of that scale, those kinds of people end up being the kind of abusive husbands who try to turn their significant others into virtual house slaves, keeping their wives from having any friends at all because of an extremely jealous fear that they may choose someone else, or be attracted to someone else.
And for me, there is no problem with a woman being attracted to multiple different people on different levels. As far as I know, every person (including me) is attracted to multiple other people at any given time. If you and her fit together well, and connect in a deep, romantic way, then it will happen naturally and freely, with no manipulation required, and she will choose you even if you have hot friends (she will find you hotter, if she does. That’s an important tautology). It’s really important to drop the fear over those sorts of things. If anything, that fear and jealousy and attempt to keep a person away from someone else, end up being detractors and roadblocks that prevent women from being attracted to you.
I recommend keeping your friends away from a woman you’re dating, not because you might lose her to one of them, but because “friends” (particularly male ones) often have an unfortunate tendency to act in ways which can cause a woman to lower her opinion of you.
I recommend keeping your friends away from a woman you’re dating, not because you might lose her to one of them, but because “friends” (particularly male ones) often have an unfortunate tendency to act in ways which can cause a woman to lower her opinion of you.
Kevin. Don’t you think that if a woman found out that you were keeping her away from your friends because you were embarrassed by them or concerned about how they would act, then THAT would cause her to lower her opinion of you? Especially if your concern was your own image and hiding parts of yourself from her? For a man who does that sort of thing, it comes across sounding like he has such a low view of himself, and is somewhat desperate to convince her to like him, that he is trying to sell a certain image to her.
At the risk of incorrect assumptions and based solely on what I can gather from the little that you’ve told me and from reading your blog and video posts, I think your viewpoint is suffering from some fundamental concepts that you’ve neglected. You seem to be trying to craft a certain image to display for a woman, and then hoping that she approves of that image and accepts you. But why are you trying to seek anyone’s approval? The only approval that matters is the approval you give to yourself. Key to this is determining what your own ethic is, and only doing what you would do. Once you know what your ethic is, and you live by it, then you are free to grant yourself approval – no other approval needed. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be free to offer yourself to other people as you are (without any attempt to sell yourself), and form friendships and relationships with people who enjoy you – the real you. There is no need, ever, to worry about another person’s “opinion of you.” And this is the fundamental point many men need to get straight on.
So your desire to hide your friends from a girl you would be interested is wrongheaded.
Part of the process of knowing your ethic, doing what you would do, and granting approval to yourself, means that you choose the kinds of friends whom you want to have as part of your life. To approve of them for your life is a natural outflow of your own self-approval. So, if a woman disapproves of your friends and has a lower view of you based on how she judges your friends, then she is probably not the kind of woman that you would want, I would think.
But again the main point here is that, in a relationship, it’s not about a man trying to impress or sell himself or manipulate someone’s opinion, by crafting a certain image and hiding other parts of his life. Even if that were to “work” for a short amount of time, eventually once the woman gets to know you better she will (hopefully) see deeper than the facade, and if you are not what you presented yourself to be, if you sold her something that you could not deliver, then you end up being a relationship con-artist.
A relationship is not trying to mold yourself to fit what you think her opinion is, hoping you hit the right buttons; it is to offer your real self, fully self-approved, without the trappings of the ceremony of “dating” and courtship gestures (which only display neediness), in order to be real with her and get to know her for whom she really is. That way you are not selling her a bill of goods or conning her. If you choose to be with each other, you both will be getting the real deal, exactly what you each presented to one another. And an extra benefit is you won’t be wasting your time trying to win the “opinion” of someone who wouldn’t be right for you anyway.
The problem I see with “hanging out” is that you’re not showing up with a specific plan. It’s unclear what you want and what she’s signing up for. She wants to know what she’s following you into and that she can trust you to be in charge.
I don’t think it matters wether you go out with friends or not, though spending some alone time can be nice. Most of my friends are pretty awesome.