Your Ex-Boyfriend Will Hate This (3 page)

Chapter Three

Remixing Romance

Among the women I’ve known who repeatedly suffer through bad relationships with lousy men, most are quick to point out how “unlucky” they have been at love. Some even go so far as to pin the fault on love, as if the concept itself were to blame.

“Love is bullshit,” one of my friends told me after yet another terrible breakup. “It’s a rigged game that you can’t win. I’ve had better luck playing blackjack, and I don’t even really know the rules. At least blackjack
has
rules.”

My friend was right about love being a rigged game, but she was wrong to compare it unfavorably to blackjack. The rules of blackjack are set up to give an absolute advantage to the dealer, and thus to the casino hosting the game. Even the most skilled player in the world will always be at a statistical disadvantage over the course of time. The advantage is so great that 2011 marked the first time any casino in Atlantic City
[v]
, New Jersey, had ever shown a monthly loss at the blackjack tables. It happened at the Tropicana, which lost $1.86 million in the month of April due to the record success of one player who had won an unbelievable $5.8 million at one of the casino high stakes tables.

Only one casino, in one
month
, in the thirty-two-year history of Atlantic City lost money at the blackjack tables because one guy had an incalculably, unlikely hot streak. Now, that is what I call a rigged game. Statistically, you will not, and arguably cannot, win.

Love isn’t like blackjack for several simple reasons. First off, people’s “luck” in love isn’t consistent from one person to the next. Some people have such better “luck” at love than others that it seems like they aren’t even playing the same game. The reason for this is simple.

They aren’t.

Think about the relationships you’ve been exposed to throughout your life—those of your parents, your relatives, your friends, people you work with, all the couples you’ve come into contact with. Now think about the successful relationships you’ve witnessed, the ones that lasted long after the others had dissolved. Have you ever asked the successful couple about their experiences before they met?

If you asked them together, you would probably get an answer along the lines of, “My old relationships were nothing compared to the way I felt about [insert partner name].” As true as this might be, it’s unlikely to be an entirely candid response. No one who has been successfully married (or in a great relationship) for many years is likely to talk about how deep, passionate, and sexually gratifying their prior relationships were in front of his or her significant other. Withholding this information is one of the reasons that they’re still together. (“Full disclosure” is a nemesis to lasting relationships, to be discussed later.)

To verify my point, ask people individually what their relationships were like before meeting their significant other. You’ll likely discover that this happy partnership isn’t their first. People who are that successful at the “game” tend to have a much more accomplished history playing it. They choose better partners and demand more of them. And their demands are more thoughtfully determined, because they have a better idea of what is necessary for their own happiness. Just as important, they show more consideration for what is important to their chosen partner.

Mia Hamm, the leader of the U.S. Women Soccer Team, was once asked how her squad had managed to remain the best in the world for so long. Her answer was simple.

“Success breeds success,” she said.

As it goes in soccer (or any game), so it goes in relationships. Small early victories lead to more substantial ones later on. By its very nature, any relationship that lasts forever will inevitably have been preceded by some that didn’t. However, the fact that those earlier relationships didn’t last doesn’t automatically mean they were failures. If you’re the least bit thoughtful and introspective (which you clearly are by choosing this wonderful book), you learned something valuable from each of your former so-called “failures.” You discovered something about yourself—your needs, your fears, your insecurities, your desires, and the nature of the love you’re capable of giving and receiving.

This awareness leads to a valuable point in our discussion, one that’s not terribly popular with those who prefer to think of love as the mysterious, unyielding force often found in soap operas and romance novels: love is rational.

According to two popular sayings, “love is blind” and “the heart wants what it wants.” Both sayings aren’t only wrong, they’re craftily malignant to real love, at least insofar as their common usage. Most often, shopworn words like these are employed to excuse foolish or even downright destructive decisions. For instance:

“Why did I go back to [Theoretical Shitty Boyfriend A], even after catching him cheating?”

“Love is blind.”

“Why do I keep choosing these selfish, narcissistic bad boys who never reciprocate my love?”

“The heart wants what it wants.”

The truth is that love isn’t blind.
Love
sees just fine, thank you very much. On the other hand,
lust
can’t see worth a damn. Lust is so blind that it could toss an anchor off a boat in the middle of the ocean and miss the water. As for that silly business about the heart wanting what it wants, it would be more accurate to say that the heart wants what it wants, but that sometimes the loins want something else a little bit more.

If your “heart” keeps telling you to choose the wrong kind of man, it’s more likely that a different part of you is to blame. Your heart may be telling you what it wants loud and clear, but it’s not what you’ve been choosing because parts south of there are yelling a little bit louder. Try to block out all that dumb, lascivious yelling and listen closely. Our culture loves to tell women that they’re the less rational gender. Men are the analytical sex, while women are more emotional. Do you know what says otherwise?

Science.

Research has shown that the minds of men and women are about 99 percent alike. The key difference lies in that other one percent, which says something extraordinarily contrary to what we’ve been taught. As it turns out, the males’ amygdalae (the brain structures that control our “fight or flight” reaction) are larger, but females have a larger frontal lobe, the part of the brain responsible for problem solving. In addition, females have ten times the amount of “white matter,” the connective tissue between different parts of the brain. Scientists speculate that this white matter is responsible for women’s superior ability to multi-task, as well as their superior skill with language.

This means you have a biological advantage over men in any argument. So the next time your mate tells you that women aren’t logical, tell him that the current scientific understanding of human brain activity instructs otherwise. Moreover, refuse to engage him in discussion until his gender evolves to catch up with yours. If it takes him a little extra time to understand what you’ve said, you shouldn’t be too hard on him. His brain is at a natural disadvantage to your own.

Speaking of disadvantages, one of them actually confirms a popular stereotype. It turns out that we men really are led around by our genitals, biologically speaking. Not only do our larger amygdalae increase our sexual drive, but the portion of our brains that controls sexual drive is 2.5 times larger than in the fairer sex. So not only are we unable to reason as well as you women can, but we’re also far more susceptible to our sexual desires, which are about as far from logical as you can get.
[vi]

Not only are we men biologically less rational than you women, we’re also more easily led. So if you really want to ensure winning an argument with a man, wear a mini-skirt. He’ll never stand a chance.

This research underlines the extent to which the culture has repeatedly lied to you. You’ve been told over and over that you’re the emotional one, and that “love is blind” is your universal truth. Men (or at least the men I’ve known) have always known that expression to be a load of crap. We generally choose our mates with an established set of criteria that make sense, at least to us. We’re shoppers in the marketplace of love.

Which leads us to our next point…

Chapter Four

Buyers and Sellers

If there is one common theme to this book, it’s that the dating “problem” most people face is one of perception, not reality. If dating were a person, he or she wouldn’t be ugly. Yet many people describe dating as something (or, in our case, someone) so unsightly and vulgar that you wonder how dating gets any action at all.

Dating isn’t ugly but, like all of us, it can seem far less attractive from certain angles or in a certain light. A girlfriend of mine loves to take pictures whenever we go out, but she always insists on taking them at an angle from slightly above us. She explained that doing this makes one’s face look slimmer and more angular. Consequently, I look best in the pictures she has taken when we were out together, and it’s not because I suddenly get much better looking when she’s around.

It is the positioning of the camera that does it.

How does it apply to dating and this enigmatically-titled chapter? By allowing us to reposition the lens through which we view dating and see it for the fresh, attractive person it always was. Your past pessimism was actually a kind of reverse beer-goggles, by making something ugly that was handsome all along.              

People have often described certain singles’ bars as a “meat markets.” Although it’s sort of a grotesque metaphor, it demonstrates a couple of instructive points. First, it underlines the essential pessimism with which most people view modern courtship. Any euphemism that describes a butcher shop won’t exactly fill one with positive associations.

“It was so romantic the first night I met [Boy A]! We met at a meat market, and we danced all night on the killing floor!”

As repellent as it is, the image of a “meat market” is somewhat useful. Dating does take place in a “market,” one that isn’t much different than the capitalist market that guides our economy.

Most people have taken basic courses in economics at some point during their education, so you’re probably already familiar with the concept of “supply and demand.” Suppliers or “sellers” provide products that compete with similar products for the spending dollar of consumers or “buyers.” A seller’s primary motivation is to sell his product. Full stop. The price he gets is entirely dependent on the amount of existing demand for the product. If there is no demand, he’ll drop the price again and again until the product sells. Moreover, he doesn’t care who buys his product, as long as someone does.

The buyer has a different motivation, to find the best product in the marketplace at the best price possible. Not only does he not have to take the first product available, the buyer is expected to survey the marketplace before making his decision. The buyer weighs each product against the others, noting their various features and determining which one most closely mirrors what he’s looking for. If he is patient, discerning, and knows what he wants, the buyer will find the product that best fits his needs at a price he can afford.

Look at these different motivations and ask yourself: in the dating “marketplace,” am I a buyer or a seller? If you’re reading this book for any reason other than recreation, it’s likely you’ve been the seller more often than the buyer. Don’t feel bad about it. Our culture has been telling you since you were born that is the way it’s supposed to be. Turn on your TV and look at the way your gender is regularly objectified for profit.

Ad execs love to say that “sex sells,” but if you look at the gender iniquity in how men and women are portrayed, it’s more honest to say that “the female sex sells.” The fact that occasional ads in which men are ogled stand apart so memorably proves just how pervasive the objectification of women really is.

So don’t feel bad if you feel like a product for sale. Our culture keeps telling you that you are.

You aren’t a product. You’re a wonderful, flesh-and-blood modern woman. You weren’t put here to serve anyone, and you sure as hell aren’t some object to be obtained, used, and discarded. The time has come to flip the gender script that has been insidiously fed to you from the moment you first sat Indian style on the floor in front of your television.

You’re the buyer starting right now.

This new approach introduces an entirely different set of questions. Any queries about motivations other than your own are no longer relevant. In fact, you can completely relinquish the following questions:

“Does he like me?” and its cousin, “How much does he like me?”

“Will he call?” and “When will he call?”

“Is he really attracted to me?” and “Is he attracted to other women more?”

“Is he seeing someone else?” and “Does he like her more than me?”

These questions make a common, but crucial, mistake.  They employ the wrong pronoun: he.  Forget what “he” wants, and ask questions the questions
you
can solve, the only questions that really matter.

“Do
I
like him?” and “What is it about him that
I
like?”

“Do
I
want him to call?” and “Why do
I
want him to call?”

“Am
I
attracted to him?” and “If yes or no, what is it about him?”

“Do
I
want to be in an exclusive relationship with him?” and “Do
I
trust him to be faithful?”

The latter set of four example questions is more important, because it gets at at the root of
your
choices. Understanding your own motivations is an essential step in your self-exploration. Introspection about your own preferences will lead you to seek out traits that make someone a complementary partner and avoid those men that don’t. In addition, you may find that you’re seeking negative traits (selfishness, narcissism, possessiveness) without knowing or choosing to acknowledge it.

Of course, not all of your motivations for choosing a mate will be immediately clear to you. Research shows that we all have a series of unconscious predispositions that influence our choices, sometimes even more so than our stated desires. The MHC factor presented earlier is one of the stronger ones, but it’s far from the only example of our secret motivations.

Not only do women emit pheromones during ovulation that make them more desirable to men, a study at the University of California, San Francisco, found that women are 24 percent more likely to engage in sex during the most fertile period in their menstrual cycle. Many studies have demonstrated that women are more likely to cheat or have one-night stands during this fertile period as well. Even women’s preferences change during this period, as they’re far more likely to choose rugged and overtly masculine sexual partners than during periods of infertility.
[vii]

Some other influences discovered by science seem almost arbitrary. For instance, studies have shown that, across genders and even cultures, people are attracted to the color red. In one study, people examined a series of photographs and assigned a number rating based on the level of sexual attractiveness to each person shown. Participants consistently rated higher those people wearing red. This result applied even to previously viewed photos in which the clothes were then digitally altered to red. Test subjects rated people in exactly the same photos as more attractive when they wore red.
[viii]

The likelihood of sexual contact on a first date can come down to something as simple as what kind of movie you watch. The experience of fear (like seeing a scary movie) with someone you’re attracted to reads as arousal in our brains.
[ix]
When that killer in the movie makes you jump and clutch your date, your brain is quietly but insistently whispering,
I know what you should do with him after the movie…

This confusion of fear and attraction goes both ways, so if you really want to see a certain someone naked, don’t rent
The Notebook
. It will definitely not prompt subconscious desire, and your tears will actually produce a hormone that dampens the male drive to procreate.
[x]

So if you really want to get laid, watch
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
with him while wearing a red dress and ovulating. Science puts his chances of resistance at somewhere between slim and none.

I bring up these fun facts to show that we’re motivated by factors both conscious and unconscious when choosing a mate. Most people look for a particular “type” of partner, whether for a lifetime or just a few delightfully sweaty hours. In the next chapter, we will examine your “type” and ask the burning question:

Is my type kind of an asshole?