Tuesday, January 04, 2005
Tired of Being Single?
Are you tired of being single but can't seem to get off the merry-go-round of perpetual singledom?
You can read my thoughts about this all-too-common subject in two articles:
1) "New Year's Eve: The Loneliest Night of the Year" (FoxNews)
2) "Did You Make Your New Year's Revolution?"
Don't spend another year contemplating your navel. Take action, today!
Marc H. Rudov
Author/Publisher
The Man's No-Nonsense Guide to Women
(ISBN 0974501719)
You can read my thoughts about this all-too-common subject in two articles:
1) "New Year's Eve: The Loneliest Night of the Year" (FoxNews)
2) "Did You Make Your New Year's Revolution?"
Don't spend another year contemplating your navel. Take action, today!
Marc H. Rudov
Author/Publisher
The Man's No-Nonsense Guide to Women
(ISBN 0974501719)
She's Just Not That Into Him
There is a lot of fuss being made over that new book, He's Just Not That Into You. It's amazing that women are so naive to behave like fools, sitting by the phone, waiting for "him" to call. How pathetic. Equally disturbing is the guy who will not stop pursuing a woman who is "not into him."
I keep telling you that men and women are not different. We are the same. Alas, we've been programmed to think and act differently, but we pay for that socialization in our conflicts with each other.
Read my article "The Golden Rule Dictates Your Sex Life." It is about the hazards of unilateral pursuit -- whether it be men pursuing women or women pursuing men. Pursuit should be mutual. Period. Anybody who obsesses about another human being -- either pursuing or waiting -- needs a lot of therapy. Seriously!
What is the Golden Rule? It's not what you think. Read the article.
Marc H. Rudov
Author/Publisher
The Man's No-Nonsense Guide to Women
(ISBN 0974501719)
I keep telling you that men and women are not different. We are the same. Alas, we've been programmed to think and act differently, but we pay for that socialization in our conflicts with each other.
Read my article "The Golden Rule Dictates Your Sex Life." It is about the hazards of unilateral pursuit -- whether it be men pursuing women or women pursuing men. Pursuit should be mutual. Period. Anybody who obsesses about another human being -- either pursuing or waiting -- needs a lot of therapy. Seriously!
What is the Golden Rule? It's not what you think. Read the article.
Marc H. Rudov
Author/Publisher
The Man's No-Nonsense Guide to Women
(ISBN 0974501719)
He's Just Not That Into You: Insulting to Women
Below is the best critique I've seen on the book He's Just Not That Into You. It was written on 01.05.05 by Dominic Knight in The Sydney Morning Herald. According to Knight, this book is actually insulting to women. I agree. Read my book, The Man's No-Nonsense Guide to Women: How to Succeed in Romance on Planet Earth. Compare for yourself.
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Carrie and co have inspired a book which pushes women towards the wrong kind of man, writes Dominic Knight.
Haven't the writers of Sex and the City made men suffer enough? First we had to feign interest in their show while the women in our lives were addicted to it. But that apparently wasn't harmful enough to our relationships, so now the new book by S&TC writers Greg Berendt and Liz Tuccillo is convincing women to take anything less than constant male affirmation as proof that He's Just Not That Into You.
One of those endless self-help books that are the American publishing industry's equivalent of the doughnut - easy to wolf down but not very good for you - HJNTIY tells women to stop making excuses for imperfect men. If we aren't calling you constantly, inundating you with flowers and otherwise making you feel like princesses, then you should pull the plug.
While its hook is empowerment through insisting on such high standards, HJNTIY isn't exactly a feminist manifesto. Female readers are constantly told by suffering fellow-traveller "Liz" to distrust their instincts and obey the "tough love" advice from the all-knowing "Greg".
The book tries to convince women they can't change the way men behave, and that a man's help is even needed to get the courage to realise they're in a bad relationship. As Salon.com's Rebecca Traister put it, "Behrendt's tone is a bracing slap administered by a man to the face of a hysterical woman." And what qualifies Greg to so insensitively demystify the mysteries of men? Well, he used to behave like the guys in the book. Not exactly an endearing qualification.
Greg tells women not to wait by the phone, because "if he's not calling you, it's because you're not on his mind". To call him yourself, he insists, would be humiliating. Which leaves women to hang around for even longer until a guy arrives who deigns to overwhelm them with love and affection. It's not exactly a sure-fire recipe for success.
We shouldn't expect anything more practical from the writers of a series which ultimately left its viewers with the same dumb luck. Want to be happy like Carrie Bradshaw at the end of S&TC? Just dump your boyfriend for not being that into you, collapse broken-heartedly on the floor of a luxury hotel in Paris, and hope that at that exact moment the love of your life coincidentally walks into the foyer and spontaneously decides that after six years he is into you after all.
But not all men behave like Mr Big. (Some of us even tell our girlfriends our names before the sixth series.) This book made my blood boil on behalf of romantically inept men everywhere. "Women often say to me that men run the world," Greg writes, probably because it sounds less sexist if "women" say it. "That makes us sound pretty capable. So tell me, why would you think we could be incapable of something as simple as picking up the phone and asking you out?"
Well, Greg, any romantically inept man can come up with hundreds of excuses not to call. Phone calls and emails are agonised over precisely because of being "that into" the object of affection. Some men are modest enough not to deluge women they like with attention precisely because they think they're so "beautiful", "amazing" and "brilliant", as Greg constantly tells his readers he knows they are, even though in his dating days he wouldn't have returned their calls.
Berendt pushes women away from sensitive, caring - yes, perhaps also somewhat dorky - men and towards the ultraconfident phone maestros who enjoy the thrill of the chase. But beware: maybe the guy who calls you up and sweeps you off your feet the day after he got your number is good at that because he's done it dozens of times before. As a glib book like this would put it, he'll be probably be just as smooth when he's breaking up with you.
So ladies, I urge you: give dork-boy a call instead.
While I mainly dislike the book because it's making the dating game even harder for sensitive new-age wimps who don't act like Greg, its stereotyping is broader than that. Men aren't always decisive tough-guys who know how to get what we want. (Ask Simon Crean.) And of course women are often just as commitment-phobic, emotionally unavailable and badly behaved as men. For instance, one English husband would probably do well to read a book called She's Just Not That Into You If She's Having David Blunkett's Baby.
To be fair, HJNTIY does contain some useful advice in its later chapters. People often make excuses for inadequate relationships, and even though chapters such as "He's Just Not That Into You If He's Having Sex With Someone Else" seem self-evident, we've all known women who would have benefited from realising this earlier - Princess Diana, for instance.
Most people, though, should resist the temptation of believing that the solution to loneliness is a six-word maxim. While a few women trapped in particularly bad relationships may benefit from the avuncular Greg telling them "don't waste the pretty", my advice would be "don't waste the money".
Dominic Knight is a writer on The Chaser Annual.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Carrie and co have inspired a book which pushes women towards the wrong kind of man, writes Dominic Knight.
Haven't the writers of Sex and the City made men suffer enough? First we had to feign interest in their show while the women in our lives were addicted to it. But that apparently wasn't harmful enough to our relationships, so now the new book by S&TC writers Greg Berendt and Liz Tuccillo is convincing women to take anything less than constant male affirmation as proof that He's Just Not That Into You.
One of those endless self-help books that are the American publishing industry's equivalent of the doughnut - easy to wolf down but not very good for you - HJNTIY tells women to stop making excuses for imperfect men. If we aren't calling you constantly, inundating you with flowers and otherwise making you feel like princesses, then you should pull the plug.
While its hook is empowerment through insisting on such high standards, HJNTIY isn't exactly a feminist manifesto. Female readers are constantly told by suffering fellow-traveller "Liz" to distrust their instincts and obey the "tough love" advice from the all-knowing "Greg".
The book tries to convince women they can't change the way men behave, and that a man's help is even needed to get the courage to realise they're in a bad relationship. As Salon.com's Rebecca Traister put it, "Behrendt's tone is a bracing slap administered by a man to the face of a hysterical woman." And what qualifies Greg to so insensitively demystify the mysteries of men? Well, he used to behave like the guys in the book. Not exactly an endearing qualification.
Greg tells women not to wait by the phone, because "if he's not calling you, it's because you're not on his mind". To call him yourself, he insists, would be humiliating. Which leaves women to hang around for even longer until a guy arrives who deigns to overwhelm them with love and affection. It's not exactly a sure-fire recipe for success.
We shouldn't expect anything more practical from the writers of a series which ultimately left its viewers with the same dumb luck. Want to be happy like Carrie Bradshaw at the end of S&TC? Just dump your boyfriend for not being that into you, collapse broken-heartedly on the floor of a luxury hotel in Paris, and hope that at that exact moment the love of your life coincidentally walks into the foyer and spontaneously decides that after six years he is into you after all.
But not all men behave like Mr Big. (Some of us even tell our girlfriends our names before the sixth series.) This book made my blood boil on behalf of romantically inept men everywhere. "Women often say to me that men run the world," Greg writes, probably because it sounds less sexist if "women" say it. "That makes us sound pretty capable. So tell me, why would you think we could be incapable of something as simple as picking up the phone and asking you out?"
Well, Greg, any romantically inept man can come up with hundreds of excuses not to call. Phone calls and emails are agonised over precisely because of being "that into" the object of affection. Some men are modest enough not to deluge women they like with attention precisely because they think they're so "beautiful", "amazing" and "brilliant", as Greg constantly tells his readers he knows they are, even though in his dating days he wouldn't have returned their calls.
Berendt pushes women away from sensitive, caring - yes, perhaps also somewhat dorky - men and towards the ultraconfident phone maestros who enjoy the thrill of the chase. But beware: maybe the guy who calls you up and sweeps you off your feet the day after he got your number is good at that because he's done it dozens of times before. As a glib book like this would put it, he'll be probably be just as smooth when he's breaking up with you.
So ladies, I urge you: give dork-boy a call instead.
While I mainly dislike the book because it's making the dating game even harder for sensitive new-age wimps who don't act like Greg, its stereotyping is broader than that. Men aren't always decisive tough-guys who know how to get what we want. (Ask Simon Crean.) And of course women are often just as commitment-phobic, emotionally unavailable and badly behaved as men. For instance, one English husband would probably do well to read a book called She's Just Not That Into You If She's Having David Blunkett's Baby.
To be fair, HJNTIY does contain some useful advice in its later chapters. People often make excuses for inadequate relationships, and even though chapters such as "He's Just Not That Into You If He's Having Sex With Someone Else" seem self-evident, we've all known women who would have benefited from realising this earlier - Princess Diana, for instance.
Most people, though, should resist the temptation of believing that the solution to loneliness is a six-word maxim. While a few women trapped in particularly bad relationships may benefit from the avuncular Greg telling them "don't waste the pretty", my advice would be "don't waste the money".
Dominic Knight is a writer on The Chaser Annual.
