Agreed, it took me years of being a jerk to women plus the good fortune of an ex turning into a friend and smacking me with the truth.
I think most men go through the thesis-antithesis-synthesis triad with women.
Thesis: "All you have to do is be a nice guy." "Be yourself." "The way to get a girlfriend is to be friends with girls." (All those things mothers tell 10-year-old boys.)
Once a man realizes that these sorts of guys are a fistful of fail when it comes to women, there's a swing over to...
Antithesis: "Women like assholes." "Ignore and mistreat her so she'll be more attracted to you."
This is a great way to scoop quantity but not quality, so any decent guy realizes that this is a shitty way to live as well, leading to:
Synthesis: Treat women well, but don't be a doormat, and quickly dump the ones who play games or are attracted to asshole behaviors.
Another piece of advice -- all you nerdy guys out there who check off all the races except "African American" on dating site preferences --
I thought that was douchebags, not nerds. Generally, nerds are a non-racist crowd.
In any case, I think having those sorts of criteria is incredibly self-defeating, for two reasons. The first is that a lot of people on dating sites turn down anyone with racial criteria at all (I'm white, and I stop reading if I see anything other than "Any"). The second is that great matches with top-quality people are pretty rare and rejecting one on something as trivial skin color borders on self-destruction.
There's lots of really cute nerdy gals out there who just happen to have a bit more melanin.
Around women: No, but I should, because even smart women find intelligence above IQ 130 to be sexually unattractive.
Around men: No, I don't care enough to do so, but I don't make a point of being smart either.
Regarding urban myths like "You only use 10% of your brain", everyone has heard those and believes some of them. I'm sure I have some wrong folklore in my knowledge base, and you probably do as well.
Recent research suggests that the difficulty of having it both ways is not always insurmountable. Women may try to get investment from one man while mating with another who is desirable in different respects. Baker and Bellis have found that when married women have affairs, the matings with
the “extra-pair” male occur disproportionately during the woman’s fertile period. This finding suggests that one goal of short-term matings for women is to secure “good genes” from another mate, and that women may use deception to play a mixed sexual strategy.
This is why I hope there's a hell, or some other form of karmic retribution. These sorts of women need to burn.
Anyway, what is truly hilarious is that women who sleep with "alpha males" aren't giving their children good genes anymore, because narcissistic and psychopathic men are generally unsuccessful in the modern world (with some exceptions, but not enough to make these desirable traits). They're actually placing a genetic curse on their bastards.
In this particular case, women aren't particularly good at determining whether a potential husband will turn out to be a scumbag, so it makes some sense for society to protect them against that possibility. (Actually, men aren't very good at determining whether a potential wife will be a scumbag either, so society should probably protect them, too...)
I agree with you. I think men and women are, innately, about equal in terms of stupidity and bad intentions. They diverge for cultural reasons. Men (in general) are rewarded more for individual accomplishments but also are punished more severely for misbehavior, and both of these discrepancies are morally wrong. What this leads to is a country in which the women, on average, are more spoiled and less ambitious than the men.
Most men have a spell when they get burned by their bad tastes in women-- before their tastes mature, they go after the popular bubbly/slutty chicks everyone else wants, and most of them get their asses handed to them. Thing is, for men, these sorts of spoiled/immature/stupid traits get burned out of them when they're young, because they grow up knowing that they have no one to blame but themselves. That doesn't happen as much for women.
It's a reality for some women; not all, obviously. There are many men who are just as bad in intention and deed, but they don't get nearly as much support from the court system.
The problem is that we have an unfair system (not just in the courts, but in all kinds of social affairs) that enables female misbehavior (under antiquated beliefs that women are weak and can't protect themselves) while holding men to a higher standard of accountability, which makes women a lot more likely to get away with being spoiled.
I guess that's allowed so that a certain class of spoiled American female can live the archetypal slut's dream of fucking an alpha male while a beta male provides for her.
I think most states stop alimony when she remarries, though, which is why women who want to play that game will have live-in boyfriends but not remarry.
I think $4k a month isn't overboard for 3 teenage boys, especially if you factor in school & health care.
Health coverage should really be provided by the government, but that's a separate issue. Also, individual health insurance on teenage boys is going to be cheap: closer to $150 per month than $1000/month.
School is provided by the government, for 12 years. College, on the other hand, is ridiculously expensive, but if the government isn't forcing married couples to pay for it (I know some $100-300k couples who paid nothing) it doesn't have a leg to stand on in forcing divorced parents to pay for it.
Child support should represent the minimum acceptable contribution of the non-custodial parent (father, in the vast majority of cases) to the child's welfare. Should he contribute a lot more, in cash, gifts, and college support? Absolutely. I would. However, the government shouldn't require him to do so, and the spending should be at his discretion. Right now, that freedom is completely taken away. The custodial parent should not be getting a huge check and the freedom to spend the money however she wants. If I end up having a kid with a wife who divorces me to live it up with an illiterate biker, those CS payments damn better be going to the kid's college, not her beau's lottery-ticket budget.
It's a bizarre inconsistency. Parents can stay married and financially neglect their children. They can make $300k combined per year and still refuse to pay for their kids' college. Yet, if they divorce, the one parent who rarely sees the kids (usually father) is forced not to pay up merely to the minimum level of decency, but far beyond that if he's "rich" like the article's author.
His book has to sell well because he's been ass-raped by the alimony-industrial complex.
Although he made a lot of really dumb decisions and had some bad luck to exacerbate the problem, the man-hating court system is what fucked up his life.
My blood pressure went way up when I found out how brutally he is being raped by the alimony system. He'd be better off in a technical field where skills matter more than reputation; he could change his identity.
Assets earned during the marriage are earned by the couple and should be equitably split, but child support should be no more than 1/2 the minimum cost of raising a child (of course, if the father's not a prick, he'll contribute much more; but the govt. should not require him to) and alimony should not exist.
I don't think it takes monumental effort to "become acceptable to a good woman."
It takes a lot of luck to find one, especially in the US.
I had a really good relationship with a great person for 2 years. I don't know how I did it.