Why We Suck at Dating

I need to explain, before we begin today’s post, why the release dates for my blogs turned all topsy-turvy this week.

I spent last weekend at an Army Reserve base in Cape Coral, Florida, and that pretty much smashed my schedule against the wall. This comes as something of an embarrassment, given my recent advice at Darkwana.blogspot.com, where I stressed the importance of a strict schedule for your blogs.

Expect my blogs to suffer, for the remainder of this week, a shuffling of release dates. Everything ought to return to normal, come Monday, which means:

Short stories (Mondays and Thursdays) at martinwolt.blogspot.com

EntertainmentMicroscope.blogspot.com on Tuesdays

An inside look at my novel series (Wednesdays) at Darkwana.blogspot.com

Writing advice for your fiction (Fridays) at FictionFormula.blogspot.com

And Sunday's movie review at moviesmartinwolt.blogspot.com.

Okay. Let's get this horse running.

A lot of feedback (always welcome) flooded my way in regards to my post from two weeks ago.

The post in question served as a longwinded ramble that attempted to justify my enjoyment of perfect-bodied women in comics, video games, and so forth via its supposed separation from actual objectification.

At best, I confronted the dual voices in my head (and probably that of every other heterosexual male). Straight guys love to look (to say nothing of touch) attractive females, but most of us want also to respect them as human beings.

I rested my wispy-at-best case with the thought that sexy images and animation remain inanimate and consequently cannot possess an agenda, thus they can do nothing to objectify their subject matter.

People can use those images to fuel objectifying behavior, and the blame therefore rests with people’s actions and not the Playboy centerfolds (or whatever) that inspire it.

I suppose such mental gymnastics come only from wanting to keep my centerfolds, Hooters calendars, and whatnot without feeling like a scumbag while I enjoy them.

At the risk of leading this blog a bit further from its original concern (sexism and homophobia found specifically in the entertainment business), I'll respond to some of the feedback that my aforementioned post generated.

One person wrote to tell me, “It’s ridiculous that girls complain when a guy looks at them. Our attraction gets them free meals. They could cover themselves up, but then they might have to pay for their food. They can’t have it both ways.”

O . . . kay. That’s kind of . . . stupid (not to discourage responses, mind you).

Women pay for their meals. Trust me as someone who lived with many female roommates.

The amount of money that most women spend in preparation for a date towers over what a guy spends. Guys shave, shower, and don some clothes that don’t look as if we snatched them from the nearest Dumpster.

Women spend a lot of money on their hair, wardrobe, and so forth, not just when they go out on a date, but in general to improve the possibility that someone will ask them out on a date.

(Related point of interest: Sometimes, women appear so attractive that men who aren’t narcissistic pigs won’t approach them. “Look at her! She’s out of my league and probably already in a relationship with someone much better than me.”)

Listen, guys. By the time you pick up your date, she already spent more money than you likely will on the dinner and movie.

Let’s address the real problem with the aforementioned comment. The suggestion that women dress and decorate themselves and then get offended when guys look at them.

Women live in a confusing world where their looks earn them a number between one and ten, and that alone serves to sum their entire value as a person, which, of course, represents a shallow system.

Imagine if guys wore their credit scores or bank statements on their chests for the world to read, and everyone who met them instantly graded them based on those numbers.

If you, as a man in this hypothetical situation, refuse to advertise your monetary value, women wouldn't notice you. If you do wear your credit score and bank statement in this (again) imaginary situation, a woman's eyes instantly glide around those numbers and assign a value upon you in that microsecond.

Like a woman’s looks, a guy’s credit score or life savings can nosedive at the drop of a hat. Imagine walking through life, fellows, with the knowledge that once your financial value hits the wall, your value as a person drops with it, and everyone can see it.

That sums up only a portion of the confusion-filled world of women in America (and plenty of other countries). The clock ticks, so you, as a woman, must put yourself "out there." You deal with, in that process, the dehumanizing experience of having every set of eyes you pass grade you at a glance.

I imagine that homosexual women despise this nonsense even more for obvious reasons.

Here’s another comment someone shared with me after my post of two weeks ago:

“Women LOVE to mess with guys’ minds. They lead us on just to tease us. They ignore us just to make us feel like shit.”

I won’t pretend that some women do behave this way just to hurt someone’s feelings, but the majority of the time, they just want to avoid the catch 22 they face every time they meet a man.

Women know that if they smile and act pleasant, the guy might get the wrong idea. Once he discovers she’s not interested in dating and/or sleeping with him, he claims that she misled him, labels her a tease and badmouths her because of it.

But if she doesn’t smile and speak to the guy, he considers her stuck up, and badmouths her for that.

Imagine, guys, if every time someone spoke to you, you had smile—but not too hard. Laugh—but keep it in check. Don’t give anyone the wrong idea.

I don’t know how women deal with this crap.

As the title of this post implies, reasons exist why we suck at dating, flirting, and relationships. We, as a species, enjoyed little practice. "Dating," for the vast, vast majority of our history, meant kidnapping and raping.

Eventually, men grew more considerate, and learned to purchase a young woman from her father so she could cook, clean, please him sexually, give birth to his children, and keep her mouth shut, lest he beat her.

Makes you laugh when certain people whine about “protecting the sanctity of traditional marriage,” huh?

Heck, plenty of countries still treat women as soulless property.

Most guys (myself included) want to treat women with respect, but it proves a challenge with all those lunacy-inducing chemicals that pump relentlessly through our brains whenever we see a nice ass in a tight pair of jeans.

Heterosexual men will likely never surrender our unreasonable depictions of perfect-bodied women in our cartoons, comics, and so forth. We enjoy them too much. That's fine, but we need to recognize real, flesh-and-blood women as people and treat them accordingly.

Dolls prove a nice distraction, but don't confuse them with people.