Can a Booty Call Grow Into a Relationship?
August 9, 2007 by NML · 8 Comments
Booty Call: This is when someone has the ability to flex their dialing finger and call up a certain person solely for the purpose of a shag. It tends to be late at night, it’s most definitely casual, no strings fun, and it relies on either both parties being grown up enough to know the deal and enjoy it for what it is, or for one person to be clever enough to let the other think that they’re getting more than they are, when all they’re looking for is boo-tay.
On the very basis that booty calls relies on the parties using each other for sex and you being flexible enough not to mind, why the hell would you want it to turn into a relationship? If you’re doing the booty call right, you don’t know enough about their character or personality to warrant even considering having a relationship. Technically all you know is that they screw well (God help you if you’re having a crap sex with a booty call…) and that when it comes to getting free and easy sex without any hassle, they can be punctual about arriving, and even more punctual about beating a hasty retreat to their own home, so that you can finish getting a good nights sleep. If you’ve been talking and getting to know each other…you just aren’t doing it right!
Booty calls are about using people for sex and whilst it’s a case of each to their own, it’s not a great advertisement for a person. Trust me when I say that booty calls are not something that everybody indulges in. The fact that all he wants to do is rock up when he gets hard, stick it to you and then leave, shouldn’t have you hankering for a relationship!
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
A$$holes Really Do Have a Lot of Success
June 16, 2007 by NML · 7 Comments
There are two types of men that have a lot of dating success with the ladies - emotionally unavailable men and bad boys. When it comes to the latter, it does seem that the badder, the more of an a$$hole, the better. Many women really do thrive on being treated mean and kept keen, and just to prove it, a guy called Tucker Max has set up a website which is full of his sexual exploits with women who clearly are not perturbed by the fact that he is a self-confessed dickhead.
On the homepage he greets you with “My name is Tucker Max, and I am an asshole.
I get excessively drunk at inappropriate times, disregard social norms, indulge every whim, ignore the consequences of my actions, mock idiots and posers, sleep with more women than is safe or reasonable, and just generally act like a raging dickhead.”
This guy must have some serious lines because he really is not particularly special and I would imagine that for the type of liasons that he’s having, looks, charm, and sexual attraction must go a long way. Mind you, always remember that just like the way women have a way of underplaying how many men they’ve slept with, many men have a habit of exaggerating their number…
Even so, judging by the number of stories that he has, it seems that declaring yourself an a$$hole still works a charm with women, which is a crying shame. When will we ever learn?!
Read via Dating Dames
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Mixing Money & Men
June 15, 2007 by NML · 3 Comments
Years ago I descended to the depths of fluff brained woman when I dated a guy and ended up loaning him money that I never saw again. More than six years later, despite being very loved up with the boyf and the arrival of my new bambino, it still grates that I got suckered for my cash, but it taught me a very long lasting lesson that I wish many other women would grasp – If you have to start bankrolling your man and you’ve not even been together that long, I’d grab your handbag and make a run for it before you end up out of pocket.
I regularly get contacted by women who complain that they keep finding themselves in relationships where they end up either being the breadwinner or the financer of his lifestyle. They often end up being taken for a ride and wonder why they keep drawing in these money grabbers.
Like many things in life, if you have a habit of finding yourself at the same crime scene again and again, it’s time to start asking what you’re doing to contribute to the situation.
Often when women find themselves in this situation on the regular, it’s because they have either a Florence Nightingale habit where they like to ‘take care’ of their men, they have an often unacknowledged need to control their men, or they’re trying to buy love. Not one of these things means anything good, no matter how well intentioned and at some point, it is very likely that it will all end in tears.
It doesn’t matter that we no longer live in the Dark Ages and that we’re supposed to have equality amongst the sexes – We often don’t have that equality and on top of that, many men are still programmed to be providers and their ego’s will struggle to be on the receiving end of a woman’s financing. And just like when women accuse men of having expectations of them based on the fact that he’s the breadwinner, women are no different. Human nature can’t help but often put a little caveat there that if we provide the money, he should be for example, more loving, caring, accommodating, obedient, and any number of things. Plus in an odd twist, many women subconsciously want expect their men to be the provider so there is a clash of ideals and realities.
I always say that the male body is 75% water and the rest is penis and ego, which means that if your man is too comfortable with getting you to part with your hard earned cash, be very afraid. You’re in ‘player playa’ territory and in danger of turning into an accidental sugar mama. And trust me, no matter how good the sex is, even that will get stale and boring when you’re wondering when he’s going to stop looking for his ‘pocket money’ like Kevin the Teenager!
When you’re in a committed relationship with a man who is responsible, and you both have love, care, trust and a view to the long term, this money issue won’t rear its ugly head so much. However if money enters the equation when the relationship is unclear between both parties, there is a lack of commitment, there are already other issues at hand, the basis of the relationship or why she is giving the money, or why he is asking for it is dubious, you can only end up out of pocket both emotionally and financially.
It’s a massive leap of faith to trust someone enough to risk yourself and your emotions, never mind bring a financial decision into it. It is difficult to know sometimes whether you shelling out money is the right thing to do, but if you’re a woman who often makes dubious love choices, has vague relationships, or a penchant for attached or emotionally unavailable men, I would keep your purse under lock and key and decline the loan application.
NML is the editor of Baggage Reclaim
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
‘Average’ Men Turned Upside Down
April 6, 2007 by NML · Leave a Comment
I believe that you can pretty much divide men into three camps: Nice Guys, Bad Boys and Mr Unavailable’s, but many women talk about ‘average men’, usually with disdain. Average by its very nature implies middle of the road, nothing special and to many women, it’s not a very attractive prospect. Combined with the fact that Bad Boys and Mr Unavailable’s are still a more attractive prospect for most women, and bingo, you get screwed-up-central. But is average really that bad and who is the ‘average’ guy?
If you look up ‘average’ in a Thesaurus you get some of the following:
Standard; regular; normal; usual; typical; common; middling; run of the mill; ordinary
At a glance, most of these words will send a shudder through most women because there is this fear of ‘settling’ and that’s what being with a so-called average man implies. We’re so caught up in chasing fireworks, drama, The One, It, excitement, our visual of perfection, criteria on a master list and much more that it’s no wonder it is easy to cast off a perfectly nice guy in favour of going to the greener grass on the other side.
The reality is that most women wouldn’t know an average man if it slapped them in the face, but the term gets used to blanket cover men that aren’t deemed to be hot in the looks and personality department. If you’re calling someone average it’s because you’re looking at them from a superficial, shallow perspective. One woman’s ‘average’ man is another woman’s dreamboat.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
How to Spot a Player (Playa)
August 24, 2006 by NML · 12 Comments
We’ve all been there when a guy has a whiff of doggy dog about him and screams Bad Boy, yet it’s clear that not only can some women not read the signs but they don’t do anything with the knowledge. Here are 21 tips to keep you out of a player’s path or to get you to wise up to the one in your life.
1. He bigs himself up a lot. Men are quite egotistical but men who have Those Who Doth Protest Too Much Syndrome that keep telling you how ‘nice’;'different to their friends’ they are, scream player. Men who elevate themselves onto a perch where they can look down at other guys and say how great they are, have mastered the art of being a player. They use real life examples to illustrate the harm you could come to if you were with some of the other guys they know so that they can distract you from what they are doing.
2. When his phone rings or beeps with a text message, he races for it. If he is shady about taking or receiving calls, I would ask yourself what he is trying to hide. Is he always taking calls in another room when you’re there? Does he look shifty when the phone rings? Would he have a fit if you answered the phone? Does he look nervous if you ask to use it? Is he taking calls late at night?
3. He disappears for periods of time with little or no explanation. I once had an ex tell me he was going out for an hour and he returned thirteen hours later the following day. He was promptly dumped.
4. He’s very routine. If your man is just anal retentive, skip over this one, but in general when guys are inflexible about their time and seem to slot you into the gaps, it’s a clear indicator of the possible existence of another woman in his life. It’s one thing if his routine includes a lot of you, but if the routine is his way of explaining why he can’t see as much of you even when you have been together a long time, this man does not want to let go of his ‘freedom’.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
The Player’s Boot Camps: Camp Rejection
January 11, 2006 by NML · Leave a Comment
Askmen recently launched The Player’s Bootcamp series of articles which provides men with a series of exercises which force guys “to learn by rote, rather than by mere suggestion, the core set of traits and skills required to follow through on the Player’s advice.” The Player is a columnist who is teaching guys how to play the game by giving seduction and sexual techniques, and between the various articles, the microsites where seemingly hundreds of thousands of men pay $14.95 a month to learn how to get into our knickers, Askmen has it covered. Make no mistake ladies, these guys are not looking to get to know you, as in the person; it’s all just one big game. People keep saying that dating and relationships isn’t a game, but if one person is playing, you will get played unless you play too, or become aware of the type of BS techniques that there are out there and be alert.
The act of picking up women as a game is a way of giving men the opportunity to attempt to pull but distancing themselves from the results. This is great for a guy because he gets to insulate his ego (penis and brain) from negative results but also gets to understand why women react to certain types of his behaviour so that he can establish a pattern.
The first article that I have checked out is the The Player’s Bootcamps: Camp Rejection.
Exercise 1: The Rejection Pot
“Wagers On Quantity: Before you head out with your buddies, each of you agrees to put $20 into a pot. At the end of the night, whoever gets rejected the most times wins the pot. “
Ladies, little did you realise, but saying no is making money for some guys! Guys that try out this game not only make some money from rejection, but with any luck they actually managed to get some interest from some women, so they are quids in. I’m not remotely surprised that not only are men competing as usual, but they’ve managed to put a wager on it. However, the article does caution guys against going for the money and using tactics to boost numbers, because this little game is supposed to be about learning pick up tricks. The game can also be switched around so that it focuses on quality and it’s about the least number of rejections. Personally I think it’s a bit late to be talking about quality over quantity…
Exercise 2: The 3-Second Approach
“You have to train your brain out of relapsing into self-doubt. Let action replace deliberation and force yourself to make a move immediately: Upon choosing a target, set yourself a limit of three seconds to approach her. Once the three seconds have passed, force yourself to abort. Tough luck bud, you missed your chance.”
So beware of men approaching you in out of the ordinary places such as malls and public transport zones where you are more likely to be embarrassed by their approach. The ironic thing is that this so called ‘random approach’ is supposed to be perceived as spontaneous rather than premeditated making the woman more comfortable and trusting of the guy.
Exercise 3: Day Quotas ”Set yourself a goal of a certain number of women to approach in a day. Five is a good number. You might do most of this assignment walking home from work downtown, for example. Take whatever detours are necessary to go where the women are and make contact — malls, shops, cafes, bus stops, waiting at a crosswalk, etc. ”
Again like the 3-second approach, this is totally premeditated and calculated.
Exercise 4: Avoid Self-Pleasure
”The civilized man fears rejection. The primal animal has no concern for the social order and couldn’t give a damn what people think of him. Reduce yourself to an animal by laying off the masturbation; your sense of self-awareness and social hierarchy will dissolve and be replaced by your raging libido. This exercise is all about readjusting your perception of rejection: Stop thinking of it as a social evaluation (i.e. she stuffed me, so I’m a loser) and start thinking of it as a means to an end (if this woman won’t agree to satisfy my man-lust, I must find another who will).”
I am truly amazed at this, because this advice is being given as if every guy is completely normal and is in total control of himself and his faculties. At least he has the good grace to advise that if the guy feels himself becoming aggressive, he should “..abort this exercise. After all, women do have feelings and deserve respect.” No shit, Sherlock.
This is the problem that I have with The Player’s Bootcamp. The very act of being cold, calculated, and premeditated to achieve quotas and goals shows a complete disregard for a woman’s feelings and does disrespect her. The reason why these men can do these ridiculous exercises is because women are unaware that they are part of a game, a numbers quest. It’s all about putting a woman in her comfort zone when she should actually be extremely wary. These exercises and the other guides for wannabe Player’s can only appeal to the type of man that just wants to boost his ego with pick-up’s and sex. Every guy is interested in getting laid, but there are some that can see beyond that to the fulfilling aspects a relationship.
I am afraid for women with all of this game carry-on. Yes there are a certain number of women out there looking for just a shag, but I am loathe to believe that there is this cold, premeditated numbers game taking place with most women, shag or not. This is what we have been reduced to, numbers, with a shag on the end of it. The Player’s Bootcamp appeals to the competitive, methodical, logical side of a man, and enables men to view us as commodities shifting in and out of view. Stock ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap. It’s all about boosting the ego and holding back any real emotion. It’s about picking up and moving on to the next challenge.
Beware ladies and pay attention. If you think you smell a rat, you do smell a rat and no matter how attractive the prospect is of nabbing him or trying to change him, you are just another conquest. Abort the chase.
I’m curious as to how a man switches from being a numbers man, to being someone that wants to be in a committed, monogamous relationship? Are there lessons for this? I bloody doubt it!
NML is the editor of Baggage Reclaim
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Chasing the Bad Boy: Do women thrive on drama?
When we were little girls, playing with our Barbies/Cindy’s, Action Men or even guns….I don’t think any of us looked up with our innocent little eyes and said, “Mummy, when I grow up, I want to go out with a bad boy”, yet oddly enough, many a woman has dedicated herself to the task of chasing and attempting to tame bad boys with more ferocity than they dedicate to their careers.
The frightening thing is that women chase men that treat them mean and keep them keen, get hurt, but still won’t try a ‘nice’ guy. When they do, the ‘nice’ guy spends a lot of time working on and attempting to repair the damage created by her experiences with ‘bad’ guys. The women that chase the bad guy often penalise the future partners for the bad choices that they’ve made in the past.
Time and time again we witness women that appear to love to be treated badly and it’s bewildering. How is it that some women have managed to be conditioned that love comes in the form of a man that struggles to be good to her in any way, shape or form? Is it possible that we have watched so many movies, read so many books, been impressionable so young, that we have become convinced that there must be a shitload of drama for it to constitute the big love and if there isn’t sparks flying and fireworks shooting out of our bums when we get with a guy, then it can’t be meant to be?
The reason why women chase bad boys is because of the thrill of the chase, the occasional hints of a better character, and the twisted notion that these guys are ‘men’.
As soon as we got old enough to put on trainer bras and put lipstick on behind our parents backs, we rarely paid attention to the guy that was ardently showing his feelings for us, and instead lusted after the elusive guy that every other girl at school wanted. These guys were often built up on a jumped up history where they drank, smoked, were a key player on the sports team (the cool ones), seemed daring, and often had a car to boot. Just as there was a massive thrill to this guy bestowing you with his attention and dating you making you the coolest girl at school, there was a massive thrill to not only getting his attention, but even when you were rejected by him, after all of the tears, we jumped back in the saddle and continued the chase of the bad boys. I think that we were often having an internal contest with ourselves and our peers where we’d ‘show them’ and prove that we could pull a bad boy too. Some of us got wiser after leaving school, others have translated their behaviour into the big wide world where bad boys are ten a penny.
These bad boys can manage to be nice to these women and give them just enough attention to keep them hanging on. The attention may come in the form of sex, gifts, taking them out from time to time, but then they disappear leaving the woman confused. There are bad boys who make the woman the legitimate girlfriend, but their behaviour makes it clear that they have other interests. Sometimes they’re blatant and tell the woman that they are sleeping with other people, often they don’t but his behaviour is a dead giveaway. There are some that have an emotional control over their women and others have gone into very dubious territory with a physical control. Whatever it is that these guys are doing, the women in their lives see something in the behaviour which they take as a sign that they can be the ones to make him be different, they can be the ones to tame him, if only they can do x, y and z.
There is this weird notion that guys seem like more of a man when they treat you like shit. If a guy is really nice, women discard him into the friend pile with the word ‘nice’ cropping up repeatedly. He’s also often completely disregarded as boring and some women will wonder if he’s gay because he’s being so nice. It seems that a guy can be ‘nice’ but not nice to us in a relationship capacity. If we have to work for his attention constantly and we’re never really quite sure of how he feels about us, we want him. It’s as if we have an in-built mechanism where the attraction seems to kick in when they guy is elusive, misbehaves, or just has a general disregard for us. All of this translates to exciting. The ‘nice’ guy is made to feel inferior for having good intentions and the manners and respect he was raised with.
We need to let go of this idea that we can fix and change these bad guys and get some self esteem. It is frightening to think that we would take a guy walking all over us and treating us like shit any day over a man that wants to be nice to us. How much fun can be had with a guy that won’t communicate with us properly, that you suspect is dallying with other women, that disappears for periods of time without explanation or even has the cheek to raise his hand to you? We do thrive on drama but I think we need to adjust the setting and switch our focus to building relationships with men that want to love us properly. If we changed our attitudes and addressed our individual fascinations with men that mistreat us, I think that we’d find that our eyes would open up to guys that aren’t creating a load of drama to keep us in their lives.
Lust, big willies, dependency, and even a misguided need to prove to yourself that you can nab him are just some of the reasons why a woman will keep chasing the drama, but these are not the foundations of solid relationships. It’s no wonder relationships fail, marriages fail because the very basis of our relationships are built on jacked up values. Spend some time getting to know a person properly and build a relationship from there. Try the friends first route and opt out of this soap-opera BS that we’ve been buying into. I think you’ll find that life will take on a whole new perspective.
NML is the editor of Baggage Reclaim
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
