The Rules of Relationships: Women's Edition

On the art of following

Photo by Niranjan _ Photographs on Unsplash

I’ve been writing material on the subject of relationships for consumption by men who want to get good at social, but it hadn’t occurred to me until I had an exchange with Holly that women might be interested in a man’s take on the woman’s role. This is my stab at explaining to women, especially those who haven’t been in a lot of relationships, what will make them successful in a relationship with a man.

There are many guides to protecting yourself from violence. This is not one of them. I work on the assumption of good faith, because it’s how you win at life, and I assume the same of my romantic partners—if your concern is your personal safety, I recommend the work of Gavin deBecker. This guide assumes the point of view of a morally and emotionally healthy man in what Dan Savage refers to as “good working order,” which is most of us.

1. Men are motivated by cliche stuff. (Cliches exist for a reason.) At his heart, every man is the hero of his own story. He may never tell you precisely what it is, but he has one. Your job is to figure out what it is and buttress it. Play the heroine in it. Never allow anyone else to deconstruct it. He will love you for this alone.

2. Men often place a great deal of value on aspects of a relationship that it might not occur to you to significantly prioritize. Here are a few to consider:

   1. For one thing, we really want to have sex with you. Like, a lot. There’s been a lot of overcomplication of this in various psychological journals that has trickled down to lifestyle publications. Men have been found, God knows where, to say in tones of apparent seriousness that their sex drives aren’t necessarily as high as all that, and that we, too, are victims of objectification, and similar malarky. I’m the last person to say people should do things in bed they don’t want to, but if a friend of mine said anything like that to me, I’d recommend he get his testosterone checked and maybe get off psych drugs. The male sex drive is much less complicated than the female one. More to the point (and this is probably going to lose me some subscriptions, but I’m saying it anyway), it’s your job to at least be able to lead us around by the…er…nose. That’s like, your sex’s superpower. “Any woman can get any man” is an exaggeration, but not much of one.

   2. We also really want you to think we’re cool. You get compliments from men, directly or indirectly, literally every day. By contrast, when a man gets a compliment from a woman, he will put it in his front hall with a glass vitrine over it and dust it once a week. (“She complimented me on my shirt!” is something I once overheard one man say to another on the subway, without irony; the compliment clearly marked a red-letter day for him.) It just doesn’t happen to us all that often. Tell us you like us. Tell us we’re awesome. Tell us how much you like something we do for you (only if you really do, mind, because if you say that to us once, we will keep doing whatever it is forever). Men want to be your hero.

   3. If you can cook, you’re gonna have a happy boyfriend/husband. I briefly went out with a girl who made me really great oatmeal, once, with raisins and brown sugar (and I think a capful of vanilla), and I take that memory down from the shelf anytime I’m not in a relationship and I want to feel warm and cozy. I have been in a whole bunch of romantic relationships, but that’s the episode that comes to mind when I envision the Platonic form of a really good woman. Feed us. It’s honestly that simple.

3. Most guys are, by your standards, oblivious to social signals (I am really, really good at that aspect of social dynamics, and I still hesitate and second-guess myself occasionally, mostly when I’m genuinely interested). The reasons for this, in most cases, are twofold:

   1. There’s an evolutionary psychology argument against social boldness. Social transgressions are not adaptive, to say the least. If you were a guy living in a small tribe of proto-humans and you assumed a woman was interested and she wasn’t, in the best case your social status would suffer a steep drop. At worst, you might get killed. I assume (without evidence) that arranged marriages came about because basically this.

   2. Most guys do not get that many dates. I think the average number of sexual partners for men is like 6-8. You, by contrast, get dick thrown at you daily, and it’s up to you what you want to do about it. By and large, men just don’t have that experience. As such, most men do not do The Dance as well as you do. (I’m working on that aspect of the problem over on the Dance Class section of this blog, ladies, but I am just one man.)

4. Relationships based on sticks are lifeless, but relationships based on carrots are delicious and nutritious. What I mean by that is this: Be good to us. The fact we are large and rough and hairy by comparison to you does not mean we don’t have feelings. In fact, we have a quite lot of them. But your communication skills are by nature better than ours, and you’re almost invariably more emotionally literate. Based on this alone, you have way more power over a man in a healthy romantic relationship than he does over you. The health of that relationship depends on you never misusing it. Shirley Manson could take a man out with a flick of her wrist, and so can you. But really, why? We’re built to love you. At the end of the day, you’re the ones leading the dance, whether we know it or not.

5. The transition from boy to man is social; boys become men when other men agree they’re men. The transition from girl to woman, however, is biological. There are three roles available to you as a woman: Maiden, Mother, and Crone. You’ll definitely be two of them if you live long enough (the one in the middle is optional, but regardless of what your brain wants, your body will at a certain point gently nudge you to take it on). Correctly play the role you embody at any given time and men will adore you. Force yourself to act as the wrong one and you’ll be perceived as either silly, bossy, or off-puttingly peculiar.

   1. I hesitate to explain The Job to representatives of a sex who are, as a rule, wiser than any man on a cellular level with regards to the natural rhythm of relationships, but here goes: the Maiden is adored for her youth and potential, the Mother is adored because she is home, and the Crone is adored for the act of creation she has accomplished (and revered for her wisdom besides).

   2. Once you’re done with a role, don’t try to go back to an earlier one. Women are fond of saying there’s nothing more pathetic than an immature man. I’d counter by pointing out that a woman with kids (or worse, a grandmother) who behaves as if she’s still the ingenue ranges from sad to pathetic to creepy to crazy, depending on how far she pushes it.

   3. Her youthful beauty is what makes the Maiden desirable, and that ends eventually for everyone. Learn to love what you are. A woman who is comfortable in her own skin never stops being beautiful.

6. We are going to check out other women. We will try to keep it surreptitious, and we will fail. Have a sense of humor about this. After all, you check out other men, you’re just much better at doing it without being noticed. The appropriate response is not to get in a huff; when training dogs and boyfriends, the recommended response to distraction is redirection. If your man subconsciously associates getting caught looking with having sex with you rather than being glared at or frosted out, you’re going to have a happier relationship (and he’ll be pleasantly exhausted). It’s blatantly manipulative, but your old pal Rollins will look the other way just this once.

7. Speaking of the pleasantest form of exhaustion, habitually slutting it up in public is not without risk; “sex positivity” is bullshit, everyone has a camera in their pocket, and men are just as insecure as you are—outside of the requisite conversational zone regarding STIs and pregnancy, maintaining the polite, gossamer-thin fiction that we’re the only one you’ve ever slept with makes us feel secure, and is a loving thing to do.

8. Having said that, it’s still worth trying on that Slave Leia costume in private (and if “private” means something different for you than it does for me, that’s neither my business nor my problem; all I ask is that you don’t scare the horses) from time to time. Wearing trashy lingerie for your man doesn’t make you trash. And sex is important. If you aren’t blowing each other’s minds with some regularity, your relationship probably won’t last.

   ---