You’re Too ‘Empowered,’ Darling

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Amanda Leigh is a funny writer, who writes about dating, and is capable of clever sentences like, “If you can’t tell whether he’s gay or straight, he’s gay,” and “Finding a tall employed man with values in Los Angeles is like finding a unicorn.” But her dating life is actually a failure, as is the case of most people who write about dating. What is the object of the game? To find The One. So as long as you’re still dating, you’re a loser.

The only dating advice young people should ever listen to is advice from happily married people. Their advice will likely be “old-fashioned.” Why? Because old-fashioned works. Old-fashioned is good. Amanda Leigh is not old-fashioned:

I can read a man like a book. But I haven’t always been that way. I had to get seriously played to learn the game. . . . In other words, I’ve been hurt, surprised, upset, shocked, duped, and manipulated enough to consider myself a seasoned dater.

This is the modern “empowered” feminist attitude: All of her previous romantic relationships were failures, so listen to Amanda Leigh, because she knows what’s she’s talking about!

Ladies: Do not follow the herd. Do not let yourself be “played.” Do not imagine that you are going to become the first woman ever to survive the hook-up culture without damage. Talk of promiscuity as “empowerment” is nonsense. Speaking of nonsense and failure, Amanda Leigh tried dating via Tinder:

I’ve gone out on over 10 dates and communicated with at least 50 guys since joining. . . .  An accountant told me he was afraid to ask me out again because he felt intimidated by me. Someone needs to grow a set. I had a great date and make out sesh with a hot photographer. He said he wanted to see me again and then disappeared.

You see the problem. Amanda Leigh is a type. The caution accountant, a shrewd just of risk, found her intimidating. The “hot” guy got a make-out session on the first date, but she can’t understand why he “disappeared” after that.

Amanda: You were being tested. Lots of girls want to make out with the “hot” guy. He might have been impressed if you had resisted the opportunity. Be old-fashioned, and especially strive to resist the guys you find irresistible.

But some of your advice, frankly, is just plain crap:

If he refuses to get a pedicure because it’s not manly, he will not go with you to see a therapist to work on your relationship issues. He has too much pride.

WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS? A guy has to get a pedicure in order to prove he’s willing to “see a therapist to work on your relationship issues”? This is a flashing red-light warning, guys. She’s thinking so far ahead, she’s got your first therapy session planned, because you have “too much pride.” The accountant’s caution was so wise, in retrospect.

Therapy causes divorce. There, I’ve said. The belief that your “relationship issues” require intervention by “experts” is a surrender flag, a confession of incompetence. As a matter of fact, I would advise against dating anyone who uses a phrase like “relationship issues.” That kind of therapeutic jargon indicates either she’s got “issues” of her own — which probably explains why she doesn’t already have a boyfriend –or else she’s the type who sits around reading self-help psychology books about “relationships.” She’s a compulsive over-thinker, in other words.

Confident people aren’t always second-guessing their decisions. They don’t sit around critiquing their partners or relationships. Confident people are decisive. They take action, and accept responsibility for the consequences.

So much feminist talk about “empowerment” is a counterfeit substitute for real confidence. “Empowerment” is whistling past the graveyard, pretending you know what you’re doing, no matter how badly you’re doing it. By contrast, real confidence is based on success. You are confident because you are competent, and you don’t need a therapist to tell you how to cope with your problems.

Why do we get such horror stories from the dating scene? Because all the good people are already in relationships, that’s why. The good people found each other and are living happy lives together, which leaves the dating scene full of bad people. It may be tempting for an attractive young person to develop a perfectionist attitude, to keep chasing around in search of romantic adventure, but it’s like a game of musical chairs. The world seems full of exciting possibilities when you’re 18 or 21, but if you stay in the game too long, you begin to get the sense that you’re picking through a pile of castoffs and discards — dating people who weren’t good enough for somebody else. They’ve been dumped and rejected, and are carrying around the emotional damage they suffered as a result of those broken promises and broken hearts.

If you find somebody good, close the deal. Get married and stay married, and make a point of being happy about it. Do not for a moment envy those single friends of yours or think about whether the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. Be old-fashioned and enjoy grazing in your own pasture. Consider the story Amanda Leigh tells about how she thought she’d found the perfect guy, only to get dumped once again:

Men consistently say they don’t want to hurt a woman’s feelings but they do it in ways that seem so ridiculous, uncaring, and avoidable. Many men project that having a relationship is a bad thing — that all women are a hassle or take up too much time because they have been in relationships with unhealthy women in the past. It’s not fair to those of us who are healthy, self-sufficient, independent, creative, and understanding. I’m not your ex-girlfriend or your ex-wife. My intention in partnership is to both thrive and be more successful together than we are apart. Not to weigh anyone down. Myself included.
How does someone go from full speed ahead to a screeching halt like that? If he had told me in the beginning that he isn’t looking for a relationship I would not have gone out with him.

Amanda: You are too “empowered,” darling. If you want to domesticate a male, be domestic. Cultivate your inner June Cleaver. Strive to convey that you are not part of the dating herd. You are old-fashioned — the marrying type — and you are not looking for a mere “relationship,” but a ring and a wedding, a picket-fence suburban home and three kids to drive to soccer practice. If you are confident in your own value, why sell yourself short?

Be old-fashioned. Old-fashioned works. Old-fashioned is good.

 

55 comments

  2. One of the ways my wife got me: she can cook. Also, she’s a nice religious girl as well. At the time, we were both looking for someone to settle down with.

    Oh, and her friends like me. I think I’ve won here.

  5. I just came back from a company meeting. The owner is a woman who started her business out of a bedroom in her house. Her kids helped with the things they could and she’s built a damn good business. ( We’re the preferred company for a major corporation.)

    Most of the project managers are women. The one thing they all have in common, besides being easy on the eyes is…they are all married and have kids. They exude confidence and competence.

    They are feminine women, not feminist women.

    I think this Amanda chick needs to rethink her approach.

  6. Heh. I’m in my late 40s and am on my third relationship; first lasted 4 months, second ~12 years, third is 15+ and counting. I never understood the appeal of the dating scene and greatly fear ever having to go back to it. Course I’m a semi-anti-social geek, but still.

  8. This reminds me of some articles the guardian has been flogging lately, along the lines of “I went onto “xyz” internet dating site and blokes began sending pictures of their dicks to me”…
    They are trying to find a short cut to a good man while at the same time keeping themselves ‘protected” from interaction with men they might not like.
    (asshole) Men have learnt to filter the chicks filter with dick pics. And ladies, they do it because it works, you get more of what you reward, if it failed 100% of the time it would stop tomorrow.

  10. Almost all people who get married do so after only a few relationships. When you go to school you often find life-long friendships out of a rather small population of human beings. That indicates that successful relationships arise out of a willingness to see and enjoy a rather common and generic humanity rather than waiting for that tailor made match. Sure, you will find friends which appeal to you more than others in a school of a thousand people or so but that’s still a tiny fraction of the humanity in any city, even pretty small one’s. And how do people get married in tiny towns? Do marriages in tiny towns end up in divorce more?

    In other words, if you can’t find what you want in that you likely never will. People are people and that’s who marry one another, not matches made in heaven with an actuary computer which sifts data from 300 million people. In that scenario, feminists are even more likely to fail since men default to stupid from the git go. In other words they want to marry themselves. If this woman feels therapy should be involved somewhere she should probably do that prior to a relationship, not during. The grass is not greener elsewhere. Where you are at any given moment is going to be as green as it gets. And if you’re’ a feminist you might be starting with sand all around.

  11. I have never known a man who would send pix like that. That indicated they are either exotic obsessed perverts or kids playing pranks. The idea they are “men” is silly. The fact feminists so often think they understand “men” through the internet tells me they are the perfect candidates to stay off the internet.

  12. The dick-pic phenomenon is the online version of “street harassment.” Never once, during all the years I was single, did I engage in “street harassment” because, obviously, it doesn’t work.

    Smart people do what works. Smart people devote themselves to learning what works, and then implement effective methods. The guys sending photos of their penises to girls are not acting rationally. They may have some exhibitionist tendency, or they may simply have failed to consider what works — what is effective.

    We see people engage in self-defeating behavior all the time. This one behavior is only being subjected to widespread public scrutiny because feminists have called attention to it. But what self-defeating behaviors do feminists engage in? As Andrew Breitbart said, “Turn the camera around.” Start asking questions of the people who consider it their job to ask questions. Start focusing attention on the academics, activists and “experts” who claim authority to tell us what to think.

  15. If finding a tall employed man with values in Los Angeles is her goal, has she not fallen into the very trap that the feminists decry, the need for her mate to be taller than her?

  17. I suggest Stacy and Fail Burton start a “lonely hearts” advice column.

    Seriously. The advice is worthwhile and with feminism on the rise the number of potential needy of both sexes is high.

    And it probably pays better than socio-political blogging.

  22. It seems to me that most of these advice columns from “empowered” women dance around the real issue for fear of destroying their feminist bona fides. That is, the purpose of dating/courtship is not to establish a gratifying relationship. The purpose is to find someone to marry and with whom to have children. None of these women can/will admit that, because it is a tacit acknowledgment that Feminism has sold them a bit of goods.

  24. That’s a good point, and I think it highlights the truth that many of these “feminists” aren’t really aware their ideology stems from a lesbian dogma which rejects marriage and family as well as opposing men – period. That leaves them in the bizarre position of opposing their own natural instincts, a thing which, of course, radicalized lesbians don’t have. But that’s going to happen when sociopathic hate speech is mainstreamed as fair play, equality and justice.

  25. I have no advice other than holding out for that great person is a thing only queens and princes do. If you’re as arrogant as Napoleon, waiting for your Napoleonic match and working in a coffee shop you’re likely to hold out forever.

  26. Okay, granted my view of romantic love is different, but I collected pelts in my younger days. The one thing it taught me that if you’re in it just for the sex, you’re going to get bored with that person very quickly. I call it the Pillow Talk Problem.

    I prefer the Greek ideals of love. Any relationship that has only one dimension of love is doomed. Two is a bare minimum, three is just about right. The more dimensions of love you share means the more directions that you can move together.

  27. If he refuses to get a pedicure because it’s not manly, he will not go with you to see a therapist to work on your relationship issues. He’s WAAAAAY out of your “league” sweetie.
    “ALL men are PIGS! EVERY one stopped calling me
    after the second date!!!!!”
    Hmmmmmm……..

  28. Right. You haven’t gone on innumerable dates, married, divorced, had an out-of-wedlock child, married again, divorced again, and had children from each. And your heart isn’t covered over with scar tissue caused by the emotional damage from all of these relationships. You’ve only been married for 36 years to the same person. What could you *possibly* know about building a successful relationship?

  29. The Leftist/Progressive Cult has long desired the destruction of Marriage & Family as an idea and an Ideal. With the advent of cheap, easily accessible contraception–the lunatic ravings of Amanda Marcotte, Sandra Fluke, et al. notwithstanding–that destruction became physically possible, as it shifted the focus from long term, generation-perpetuating, pair bonding to self-gratification. Men could become PUAs without fear of commitment; women, thanks to Feminism, believed they could “have it all,” including promiscuity, without consequence.

    Where has that led us? To at least two generations of people who are so emotionally damaged, that they are incapable of having normal productive lives. And all of these people know this to be true, even if they refuse to admit it to themselves. Instead, we get vacuous “relationship” advice columns written by people who can’t get their heads out of their own asses.

  32. When I clicked on the link our esteemed host provided, my anti-virus software sent me a message saying that the site was probably unsafe. McAfee was probably right in more ways than one.

  34. If you find somebody good, close the deal.

    Exactly. If you have shared values and are generally heading the same directions in life, then the rest can be worked out.

  38. There are real women out there who want real romance, and the free market tells us so. Eleanor Hibbert wrote a metric ton of romance novels, under a variety of pen names (Victoria Holt being the best known), and sold a billion copies. The Hallmark Channel is just about all romance movies, all the time, while the Lifetime Movie network isn’t far behind. These things have been commercial successes because there is a market for them. People laugh at chick flicks, but they are made because people watch them.

    What would a romance novel by Amanda Leigh (or Amanda Marcotte) actually read like? Whilst Miss Leigh is apparently once again between boyfriends, Miss Marcotte has had the same POSSLQ for a decade; Melissa McEwan (Shakespeare’s Sister) and Jessica Valenti are both married to actual males.

    Women are interested in romance — and, in a shocking surprise, so are men — but I would be genuinely interested in knowing how heterosexual Officially Feminist Women® really see romance these days. What makes them all warm and moist, and what do they do if a Neanderthal like our host still makes their loins quiver?

    Is the personal life dead for the feminists?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6raF7kcJJs

  39. From whom do smart young people learn what works? When their parents have already been divorced and remarried, and they’ve been shuttled back and forth between parents depending on who has custody or visitation, the most obvious source of wiser elders is gone.

  40. Met my wife on December 17, 1978. She had to return home for semester break right after that, not returning to Lexington until mid-January. First date, January 20, 1979. Married May 19, 1979, and still married today.

    That said, I did have a live-in girlfriend from September of 1972 through October of 1978; shacking up might not really be considered dating.

  41. A Whitepages search finds one person in greater Los Angeles named ‘Amanda Leigh’. It says she lives in a peripheral suburb on the Ventura County border and is about 62 years of age. MyLife finds a dame in Santa Monica by that name; she’s 49. There is an Amanda Leigh 30 years of age in Los Angeles County; she lives 70 miles to the north in Lancaster, Ca, so, perhaps not her. Is “Amanda Leigh” a pseudonym or is this all a put on?

    Amy Alkon and a pair of friends used to sit on a corner in Brooklyn holding up signs which said ‘Free Advice from a Panel of Experts’. She’s now a 51 year old spinster living in Los Angeles (and has a neuralgic reaction when someone criticizes her outfits).

  42. No. Notorious depressive and, eventually, alcoholic. Her first husband was (by some accounts) a drug user who eventually inadvertantly killed himself with some painkillers. Her second husband committed suicide (and was, by some accounts, given to homosexuality). Both marriages were childless. Between the 1st and 2d marriage, she evidently had an abortion which left her barren for the rest of her life. She left her estate to Martin Luther King Jr. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference took possession of her property and of her cremains. They sat in a file cabinet for decades because no one on their staff had a clue about what to do with them (or, likely, a clue as to who was this book reviewer / screenwriter whose creativity was at its peak around 1925)

  43. I was able to get to all three. Avast didn’t ding any of them. The third takes you to a blog guest post with the title, “Things I’ve learned About Men.” She could have posted a blank page and it would say everything she’s learned.

  46. I’m actually at the point of thinking that I should just find a pleasant chick to knock up and skip the formalities. It’s a bit hard to address because there isn’t much difference between a “confirmed bachelor” as the old phrase goes and a “failed heterosexual” as our host puts it, but when it comes right down to it, there are always people as attractive as you are. You might be really awesome, but if you’re not closing the deal, then you need to either aim lower or work on your deal-making skills, or both.

  48. First, I finished reading _Sex Trouble_ on kindle last month and enjoyed it, and I learned a little bit as well. I don’t know if I could stomach the full-length version though.

    A while back I read a selection of readings that Mr. and Mrs. Leon Kass had put together called _Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar_ (sadly it seems she passed away this year). I think it was the curriculum for a class with various writings about marriage to encourage the students to consider it. One reading is from Pearl Abraham and it describes how a young Jewish girl found her husband with the help of her community. The parents asked around their network of families and brought a couple of potential suitors around. They also put some pressure on the girl to make a decision. She finally accepts the second suitor because he seemed good enough. Whether this is a good system or not, the community involvement reasonably vetted the suitors, and provided some impetus for a match to happen. Also I imagine the community would continue to support the couple after the wedding and make gross failures less likely.

    With a weaker community bond, the role of vetting falls more to the individual. Also there are fewer outside perspectives to give the potential couple insight to their blind spots and encourage or warn them.

    Here’s a good article Kass wrote back in the ancient days of 2002 before Tinder.

    http://www.aei.org/publication/the-end-of-courtship/

  49. Women think that “romance” is a synonym of “pragmatism”. They have an entire genre of fiction where an average woman is courted by a high-status billionaire handyman who is good in bed.

    Women falsely think that they’re more romantic, because of porn. And sure, men love sex. But at least we know that actual romance is tragic.

  50. Find a woman who has a good temperament. If she likes you but seems a little nervous when you first meet, she’s a keeper. And she’ll marry you.

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