0:00

I'm rock I've got got so many zingers

0:02

bouncing around in my mind. You want to a couple do you want

0:04

to trifecta of zingers? my

0:07

my favorite absolute dumbest one was

0:11

something like The

0:13

only thing I know about rules Michael is that I'm always

0:16

breaking them I

0:21

was I was ready

0:24

to do it though. Give us give

0:26

us the real one. Let's let's go in okay

0:30

Peter Michael, what do you know about

0:32

a book called the rules? finally

0:35

a set of arbitrary social

0:38

guidelines for women

0:54

So the full title of this

0:56

book is the rules Time

0:59

tested secrets for capturing the heart

1:01

of mr.. Wright the

1:03

book came out in 1995 but

1:07

it was a word-of-mouth hit and

1:09

only started showing up on the bestseller list in 1996 It

1:13

eventually sold 2 million copies Which

1:16

is objectively like a lot

1:17

of copies, but also Compared

1:19

to the secret which sold 30 million

1:22

or men are from Mars which sold 15 million

1:24

Yeah, it's relatively small. Why follow

1:27

a bunch of rules when you can just manifest

1:29

a man

1:29

It's

1:32

written by Sherry Schneider

1:35

and Ellen fine who are

1:38

essentially just two random women They

1:40

are 36 and 38

1:42

years old when it is published I was not

1:44

able to find any background information

1:47

specifically on these people all I could find

1:49

is that they're they're both just Freelance

1:51

journalists, and then they

1:53

wrote this book and Immediately

1:55

started doing like seminars, and

1:58

you could pay them for

1:59

$45 for a 15-minute

2:02

consultation, which honestly

2:04

seems cheap for this tumbling self-fulfifting. That's

2:07

like, it almost feels like it's not a grift. They're

2:09

just doing it because they really want

2:12

women to get laid.

2:12

Since this book came out, they've

2:14

essentially spent the rest of their lives just

2:17

doing spin-offs and extensions. Of

2:19

course. So, we have the

2:21

Rules for Online Dating, the Rules

2:23

Dating Journal, the Rules Handbook,

2:26

the Rules 2, the Rules for

2:29

Marriage, the Complete Book of Rules, the

2:31

New Rules, and not your mother's

2:33

rules. Oh, God. It's like Air Jordans,

2:35

every year a fucking new one comes out.

2:38

Do you know anything about the premise of this

2:40

book? I do not. Do you really not? You

2:42

never heard of it when it came out? I have heard of this book

2:45

through one channel, and that

2:47

is listener demands that we do this

2:49

book. Yeah, yeah,

2:51

yeah. So, this

2:53

is from the intro of the book. It says, the

2:55

purpose of the rules is to make Mr.

2:57

Wright obsessed with having you as his

3:00

by making yourself seem unattainable.

3:03

In plain language, we're talking about playing

3:05

hard to get. Follow the rules, and

3:07

he will not just marry you, but feel crazy

3:10

about you forever.

3:11

That's what we're promising. Happily ever after.

3:14

A marriage truly made in heaven. Got

3:16

it. So, a couple of things. One,

3:19

it doesn't matter what gender it's directed at.

3:22

Every dating guide is like, be

3:24

a little bit unpleasant.

3:26

Just be shitty. Like, create a weird distance between

3:29

you and the person you like, and they will

3:31

want to bridge that gap. And

3:34

then

3:35

maintain that sense of desperation in

3:37

your partner for the rest of his life. I

3:40

was thinking as I was reading the book about a

3:42

woman reading this and a man reading the game,

3:44

and just neither one of them ever does anything with

3:47

each other. The girl is ignoring him, and the guy is just

3:49

shouting insults from across the room.

3:52

So, as opposed

3:54

to many of the books, a shocking number

3:57

of the books that we've covered on this podcast, this book

3:59

was actually pretty much the same.

3:59

controversial when it came out. Yeah, because

4:02

you can do, you can write a whole

4:04

book about disrespecting women, but if you're

4:07

talking about manipulating men all of a sudden, we're

4:09

gonna need congressional hearings.

4:11

To give you a flavor of some

4:13

of the debate around the book, we are going to watch

4:15

a segment from Dateline. Oh, fuck

4:18

yeah.

4:21

So you went after it. You made the first move

4:24

with guys. You asked them

4:26

out. You even paid for dinner once

4:28

or twice. But you're still

4:30

not married. Sherri Schneider and

4:32

Ellen Fine say it's because you've been

4:35

playing the dating game all wrong.

4:37

First of all, we take the thinking out of dating. You

4:39

take the thinking out of dating? Basically, there are

4:41

just some innate things that you must do when you're dating,

4:44

and that's why they're called rules.

4:44

And if you follow the rules, you will

4:47

inevitably have a man who's crazy about you. Got

4:49

90s hair. I know. The first time he calls,

4:52

don't rush to call him back right away. No, actually,

4:54

don't call him back at all. We really tell women not to call back.

4:56

Yeah, that's right. And when you finally do talk to him,

4:59

you end the phone call first. Yes,

5:02

definitely. And normally, he'll end 15 minutes. 10 or 15

5:04

minutes. He has to get to know you slowly.

5:07

Men don't want to get to know you slowly. We force

5:09

them to. And you can talk on the date. But end

5:11

the date first. You just look at your watch. You go, oh

5:13

my God, I have such a big day tomorrow. Don't tell him what

5:15

you're doing.

5:16

Living the rules means

5:18

no more than casual kissing on the first

5:20

date. Holding off from sex

5:23

for as long as possible. The author

5:25

suggests six to eight weeks. Never

5:28

offering to go Dutch on a date, even

5:30

if you make more money than he does. And

5:33

to stop dating him altogether if

5:35

you don't get a romantic gift for your birthday

5:37

or Valentine's Day. And if you

5:40

too are a woman who has an easier time getting

5:42

into Mensa than getting men's

5:44

attention, the help

5:46

you need may be just a rental away.

5:48

The authors

5:50

of the rules say women should watch Love

5:53

Story and follow it like the

5:55

Bible. She's not that nice. She

5:57

doesn't chase him. She doesn't pursue him.

5:59

You know this rules thing

6:02

maybe about the M word but Doesn't

6:05

stand for marriage what we're talking

6:07

about

6:07

here is manipulating man

6:09

aren't we? So

6:16

I'm kind of like a Rottweiler puppy

6:19

ready to be trained I Love

6:20

them You'll

6:23

never believe it's training though. You're gonna enjoy it so

6:25

much enjoy it

6:28

Wish we could convey the faces that the

6:30

interviewer is making So

6:32

this is the mid 90s which means we're like

6:34

two years into it being socially

6:36

acceptable for Women to approach

6:39

men in this way and then all of

6:41

a sudden there's a book like don't do that Yeah,

6:43

we'll never be happy the women are all aggressive

6:46

crones and it's been an off There

6:49

are of course there are women who will

6:51

like you know approach strange cute men

6:53

But I just feel like that's also

6:56

like very rare even now well

6:57

They're doing the thing that we see a lot where

6:59

there's a tiny smidge

7:02

of social progress and then

7:04

they're able to cast the existing

7:07

conventional wisdom of The status quo

7:09

as like forbidden knowledge right right

7:11

they talk about the rules that it basically was like a

7:13

word-of-mouth Sort of secret

7:16

that was transferred

7:16

like whispered between women and like

7:19

you couldn't even utter the words like wait for

7:21

a man to Come up to you in the park right

7:23

like no, this is This

7:25

is not a new bold truth

7:27

for women the listeners can't see this, but

7:29

I also love the enormous shoulder pads

7:34

So you can sort

7:36

of see the selling point of

7:38

this strategy throughout this clip in

7:41

the book the the early parts of the book They make three

7:43

major selling arguments for

7:46

why you

7:46

should do the rules the first

7:49

is it's about self-esteem Yeah, yeah

7:51

They say are we telling women to play games?

7:54

Some people like to focus on the most superficial

7:56

aspects of the rules the ones most likely

7:58

to promote controversy, but the The book is really

8:00

about self-esteem and setting boundaries. Yes,

8:03

in some ways you're playing a game. The game is called

8:06

liking

8:06

yourself. The game is not accepting

8:08

just any treatment from a man. The game

8:11

is being true to your heart. This

8:13

is also sort of the pitch of the game

8:16

and shit like that where it's like behind

8:18

this all is just self-confidence. Exactly.

8:20

And basic biological

8:22

realities. The

8:24

second selling point of the book is

8:27

that feminism is great, but

8:30

it just doesn't work for dating. I'm

8:32

going to send you an excerpt from this section.

8:35

Anti-feminist? No, as far as

8:37

we are concerned, there is no conflict between

8:39

the rules and feminism. Rules girls

8:41

can be feminists. We are feminists. We

8:43

believe in and are grateful for the advances women have

8:45

made in the last century.

8:47

All women have different definitions of feminism, but

8:49

to us it is about getting equal pay for equal

8:52

work. It's about women being authors,

8:54

astronauts, doctors, lawyers, CEOs,

8:56

or whatever they want to be. Getting promoted, being

8:58

treated the same, and paid as much as men.

9:01

But with all due respect, feminism has not changed

9:03

men or the nature of romantic relationships. Like

9:05

it or not, men are emotionally and romantically

9:08

different from women.

9:09

Men are biologically the aggressor. Biologically.

9:12

They thrive on challenge, whether it's the stock

9:14

market, basketball, or football, while

9:16

women crave security and bonding.

9:19

This has been true since civilization began.

9:22

There's nothing we can do about it. I like how in their

9:24

examples they're like, the stock market, basketball,

9:27

and then also football. They

9:29

couldn't think of a third thing that men do. Money,

9:33

basketball, football. It's biology,

9:36

both sports. So okay, this

9:39

is actually like a relatively

9:41

articulate explanation of what

9:43

they're doing, which is sort of like, this is

9:45

about a practicality.

9:46

What's weird is that they have this sort

9:48

of conception of men biologically as like

9:50

essentially great apes. Like they just want the thrill

9:53

of the hunt. But then they also are basing

9:55

this in a biological understanding

9:58

of women as kind of like so emotional that you

9:59

you can't trust yourself. The whole thing is

10:02

not letting him know how much

10:04

you like him. And that's also based on

10:06

this biological understanding of women. It's like

10:08

you are too emotional. So what you need to do

10:11

is set a series of policies

10:12

for yourself that don't let you

10:15

show him how in love

10:17

with him you are after the first date, right?

10:19

And how you're thinking about him all the time and

10:21

you want to call him, but you can't.

10:23

Don't let yourself do it. The

10:26

third selling point of the book,

10:28

you mentioned this in the love languages

10:31

where

10:32

these sell help books, they can't just be like, hey,

10:34

this is one approach to this problem. They immediately

10:37

go to like the rules are the only

10:40

way to get a man. Every single

10:42

person who doesn't use the rules is

10:44

basically in a sham marriage. So

10:47

this is a couple

10:50

paragraphs from that section. What

10:52

can you expect to get when you do the rules?

10:54

The answer is total adoration

10:56

from the man of your dreams.

10:58

Because he spent so much time trying to get you, you

11:01

have become so precious to him that he doesn't take

11:03

you for granted. On the contrary, he

11:05

thinks of you constantly. He's your best

11:08

friend. He's

11:08

hurt if you don't share your problems with him. He

11:11

even likes to get involved in mundane things such

11:13

as picking out a new bedspread. He

11:16

always wants to do things together. When you do

11:18

the rules, you don't have to worry about him chasing

11:20

other women, even your very attractive

11:23

neighbor or his bosomy secretary.

11:25

Bosomy with the shoulder pads.

11:28

It's 1995. At the end of the day, I suppose he listens

11:31

when you talk to him. Okay, sure. When

11:33

you walk around the house with very little on he

11:35

whistles as though you were a babe on the beach.

11:38

He notices everything about you except

11:40

anything bad. If you're 10 pounds overweight,

11:43

he doesn't think you're overweight. He thinks

11:45

you're cute. But

11:46

if your friend is the same size, he

11:48

thinks she's fat. Why would you throw that

11:50

last part in there? He's sexist,

11:52

but against other women. He

11:55

treats your friends like shit. That's what you want in

11:57

a man. Someone who a

11:59

man who sees a woman who looks exactly

12:01

like you and then complains about her

12:04

body. To you,

12:06

yes. So like this

12:09

is another theme of the book where they just tuck in straightforward

12:12

red flag behavior

12:13

as like, this means that he loves you. Right.

12:17

What is your experience with like the dating market,

12:19

Peter? Were you ever like an online guy? Yeah,

12:21

yeah, yeah. I met my wife on Bumble.

12:24

Oh, did you? I was an apps guy. Yeah. Oh,

12:26

you were woke. You went on the one where women control

12:28

the process. It's the opposite of the anti-rules

12:31

app where women have to talk first. What

12:33

about you? This feels like completely

12:35

different in gay dating. One

12:38

of the critiques of this book, which I think is kind

12:40

of unfair, is like how

12:43

sort of heteronormative

12:43

it is. Like this

12:45

is very explicitly a guide for

12:48

straight women to get a husband. Right.

12:50

And part of me feels like that's actually kind

12:53

of defensible because none of this

12:55

fucking advice

12:55

would like work in my world. You're

12:58

like, oh, don't talk about like sex or, you know, anything

13:00

deep before you go meet up

13:02

for gay men. It's like, you need to do like a 30 minute

13:04

negotiation on exactly the sex

13:06

that you're about to have before like getting a coffee. So

13:10

as usual with these books, the

13:12

structure is all over the place. There's 35 rules,

13:14

but they're not

13:16

arranged in any like reasonable

13:18

structure and they're super repetitive. So

13:21

I am kind of taking apart

13:22

the rules and putting it back together to organize

13:25

this in terms of like the stages

13:27

of dating. So the

13:30

first stage of relationship formation is basically

13:32

like getting ready to date and like attracting

13:35

men. Rule number one

13:37

is be a creature unlike

13:39

any other where they tell you how to become

13:41

the kind of person who men will approach.

13:44

Okay. They talk about how basically

13:46

you should like join a gym. You should

13:48

start dressing differently, kind

13:51

of standard advice for just like to become

13:52

more conventionally attractive. That

13:54

creature that is unlike any other, a lady

13:56

who goes to the gym and dresses a little nice.

13:59

A thin, hot, Not women, yes. So

14:02

I'm going to give you a couple of paragraphs

14:05

of very specific advice. I'm

14:08

sure this was basically the text on your Bumble

14:10

profile, which is like, this is the woman

14:12

that I want. This is how you should be.

14:15

Don't leave the house without wearing makeup. Put

14:17

lipstick on even when you go jogging.

14:20

Do everything you possibly can to put your best

14:22

face forward. If you have a bad nose,

14:24

get a nose job. A bad nose. Color

14:26

gray hair. Grow your hair long. Unprefer

14:29

long hair, something to play with and

14:31

caress. You don't have to say true after

14:34

every one of these paragraphs, Peter. I already know you agree.

14:36

I know your people. Men like women

14:38

who are neat and clean.

14:40

They also make better mothers of their children,

14:43

the kind who don't lose their kids at the beach.

14:45

That's true. I do at the end of the day want

14:48

a woman who would not lose our kids at the beach. Yeah,

14:50

who will not result in the best of your children.

14:52

Now a word about clothes. If you walk

14:54

around in any old clothes on a theory that what counts

14:57

is only what's inside, not your outside,

14:59

think again. Men like women who wear

15:02

fashionable, sexy clothes in bright colors.

15:04

Why not please them? Why not have the largest

15:07

shoulders you can possibly have? You

15:11

have to stop editing the quotes as you go through

15:13

them. You should have shoulder

15:15

pads so large you cannot get on a bus. Don't

15:19

aspire to the unisex look. By

15:22

feminine looking clothes to wear on the weekends

15:24

as well as during the work week. Remember

15:26

that you're dressing for men, not other women,

15:29

so always strive to look feminine.

15:31

Wear a short skirt, but not too short

15:34

if you have the legs for it. If

15:36

you don't, get a leg replacement, ladies.

15:39

Get a leg job. Well, I wouldn't describe

15:41

this as feminist. That's just me. The

15:44

casualness of like, you have a bad nose,

15:46

get a nose job. Fix your face. Make

15:48

your face better. Jesus. We then get

15:50

to rule number two, which is don't

15:52

talk to a man first and

15:54

don't ask him to dance. And they're

15:56

very explicit about like, they mean this literally

15:58

never. Talk to a man first, do

16:01

not go up to men. They say even if you're at a nightclub,

16:03

don't do the thing where you like stand near

16:05

a man hoping that he talks

16:07

to you. Basically, you should act

16:10

completely distant and aloof and

16:12

unbothered at all times. And

16:15

only men

16:15

who like aggressively come up to

16:17

you. Those are the men who you should entertain.

16:20

Only pickup artists should be approaching you. Exactly.

16:23

This is written before the game, so I will give them a

16:25

little bit of credit. If you tried this in 2007,

16:28

this ensures that

16:30

a man will approach you in a nightclub like juggling

16:33

and then making eye contact. Only

16:36

respond if he has runes. Look at his runes

16:39

first. What's in his fanny pack? When he shines

16:41

a blacklight on you, you should be spotless.

16:43

I think one of the main tensions that they have in this

16:46

book and they never really reconcile is

16:48

they're straddling the line between pretend

16:51

to be aloof and be

16:53

aloof. Yeah, yeah. At one point, they

16:55

sort of intimate that if you

16:57

go out to a nightclub and a man doesn't

17:00

hit on you, that's actually totally fine. Have an enjoyable

17:02

time with your friends. That's reasonable

17:04

advice. You should not live your life as

17:06

if you're waiting for

17:07

somebody to scoop you out of it. But

17:09

then they also give this very

17:11

specific advice of how you should walk

17:13

around clubs, head

17:16

up, shoulders back. Even

17:18

if a man talks to you, you should

17:20

be like, I'd better

17:21

mingle after two or three minutes. It's

17:24

like the advice is simultaneously don't

17:27

care and care an enormous amount.

17:29

I'm going to send you another little

17:31

excerpt. This is from the part of the book

17:33

where they talk about how you should basically never

17:36

initiate anything. You should never invite

17:38

him to anything. You should never be the

17:40

one who

17:40

kind of goes out on a limb for the guy.

17:43

Our dentist friend Pam initiated a

17:45

friendship with Robert when they met in dental

17:47

school several years ago by asking him out

17:49

to lunch.

17:50

She spoke to him first. Although they later

17:52

became lovers and even lived together, he never seemed

17:55

really in love with her and her insecurity

17:57

about the relationship never went away.

17:59

She spoke to him first. He

18:02

recently broke up with her over something trivial. The

18:04

truth is he never loved her.

18:06

Had Pam followed the rules, she

18:08

would have never spoken to Robert or initiated

18:11

anything in the first place. Had she followed

18:13

the rules, she might have met someone else

18:15

who

18:16

truly wanted her. She would not have

18:18

wasted time. You can

18:19

see how they're straddling this line between

18:21

like, yeah, don't spend time with

18:23

people who don't treat you well. But

18:25

also it's like she invited him

18:28

to lunch and that set the tenor for the

18:30

entire rest of the years long

18:32

relationship. They're also sort of framing

18:34

it as if like if she were

18:37

following the rules, she would have found another

18:39

guy who cared about her. But the

18:42

actual message seems to be if she was following

18:44

the rules, she could have manipulated Robert

18:46

into loving her somehow. Exactly.

18:48

And also this is

18:50

also her fault too. Right. So

18:52

this is the sort of thesis

18:54

statement of this section of the book where they're talking about

18:57

how to attract

18:57

men, how to get men attracted

19:00

to you. And we're going to we're going to dig into

19:02

this a little bit. So they say it's

19:05

easy to rationalize women's aggressive

19:07

behavior in this day and age. Unlike

19:09

years ago, when women met men at dances

19:11

and coming out parties and simply waited for one

19:13

to pick them out of the crowd and started conversation. Today,

19:16

many women are accountants,

19:17

doctors, lawyers, dentists and in management

19:19

positions. They work with men for men

19:22

and men work for them. But even if you're

19:24

making the same amount of money as a man you're

19:26

interested in, he must bring up lunch.

19:28

The premise of the rules is that we never

19:31

make anything happen, that we trust

19:33

in the natural order of things, namely

19:35

that man pursues women.

19:37

If he likes you, he'll always approach

19:39

you. It's hard to accept that. We know

19:42

it's also hard waiting for the right one. The one

19:44

who talks to you first calls and basically

19:46

does most of the work in the beginning of the relationship

19:48

because he must have you. The

19:51

natural order of things. The natural order of things.

19:53

This is like a really common trope where like some

19:56

social like the social norm in 1995 is

19:58

that.

19:59

it's increasingly more accepted

20:02

for women to approach men, right? But

20:04

they still frame it as if there is a natural

20:07

order. The natural order was

20:09

the one that emerged from the social norms of the

20:11

1950s or whatever, for some reason.

20:14

That one's natural. The modern one is somehow

20:17

a bastardization of the perfect

20:19

order that we had previously achieved. Peter,

20:22

what I hear you saying is, Mike, do you want to tediously explain to

20:24

me the history of dating norms because you read

20:26

another book for this podcast? That's what I'm hearing

20:28

you saying. Yeah. The answer is yes, Peter.

20:30

The answer is yes.

20:31

I want to zoom in

20:34

on this kind of fascinating phrase that they

20:36

use. It's easy to rationalize

20:38

women's aggressive behavior in this

20:40

day and age. For

20:43

this

20:44

episode, I read a extremely

20:46

interesting book called From Front Porch to Back

20:48

Seat, Courtship in 20th Century

20:50

America by Beth Bailey. Love that title.

20:53

The place we're going to start is with an anecdote

20:55

from the book that was allegedly

20:58

uproarious. This is a story that went around

21:00

in the 1920s. She says, one

21:03

day, the story

21:03

goes, a young man asked a city

21:05

girl if he might call on her. We

21:08

know nothing else about the man or the girl, only

21:10

that when he arrived, she had her

21:13

hat on.

21:14

This is like a hilarious knee-slapping story. What

21:19

this is getting at is the slow

21:21

shift from the previous norms

21:23

around dating, which were all based on this idea of

21:25

gentlemen callers. That's where we get

21:27

that term. All of the

21:30

dating basically happened in the

21:31

private sphere. If a girl liked

21:33

you, she would invite you over to her

21:35

house and then you'd hang out with her basically

21:38

in her living room. As

21:40

opposed to later dating norms, it was mostly controlled

21:43

by women. It was often

21:45

the mothers that were doing this. It was the girls

21:47

themselves who were deciding

21:49

which boys they were going to invite over. She

21:51

quotes an advice column from 1909

21:54

where a boy writes in and he's like,

21:56

I really like this girl. Can I ask her out?

21:59

And the sort of

21:59

Ann Landers type answers like,

22:02

no, no, no, come on, come on. You've got to wait for her to do

22:04

it. If you want her to invite you

22:06

over, you can sneak to one of her

22:08

friends and be like, hey, can you

22:10

ask Lucy to ask me over? But

22:13

you could never just declare

22:14

interest in a girl. You got to

22:16

get runes and then make her want to

22:18

invite you over. Knock

22:21

and leave runes. So

22:23

what then starts happening, starting in the 1880s

22:26

with industrialization, women

22:28

start entering the workforce.

22:29

They're exposed to many more men independently

22:32

of their parents. People are also moving

22:35

into cities where they

22:35

have much less living space and they just

22:38

can't have people over. We

22:40

also get the invention and the mass adoption

22:42

of the automobile. There was massive, decades-long

22:45

moral panic about young people having

22:47

access to cars because that meant

22:49

that they would have private space just with

22:51

each other. They would have a way of getting

22:54

to places

22:54

away from the watchful eyes of their parents and also

22:56

a place to have sex, which is how a lot

22:59

of people lost their virginity in

23:01

the early 1900s. Another

23:03

really big one is the invention of mass media.

23:06

We get the penny press. We get large circulation

23:09

magazines, many of which are magazines for women.

23:12

We also get radio and TV

23:14

and Hollywood, which start establishing

23:16

the script for normal

23:19

dating, like dinner and a movie. This

23:21

takes place over 60 years and it's

23:23

a slow and stuttering process. We

23:26

don't want to say that anything is like this binary shift,

23:29

but over time,

23:30

what this does is it shifts

23:32

dating from a private

23:34

activity that takes place in people's homes to

23:36

a public activity that is happening in

23:39

restaurants. It also becomes much more

23:41

controlled by men. She says in the book,

23:43

the conventions that grew to govern dating

23:45

codified women's inequality and ratified

23:48

men's power. Men asked women out. Women

23:51

were condemned as aggressive if they expressed

23:53

interest in a man too directly. Men paid

23:55

for everything, but often with the implication

23:57

that women owed

23:58

sexual favors in return. The dating

24:00

system required men to always assume

24:02

control and women act as men's

24:04

dependents. So apparently, if a man

24:07

couldn't afford to take a woman out,

24:10

she would discreetly

24:11

give him money before

24:13

the date, like slip him a little bit

24:15

of cash so he could take her out and

24:17

like pay on the date and like maintain this

24:19

theater of, you

24:20

know, oh, I'll get the check. Wow.

24:23

So to return to the hat anecdote, the reason

24:25

why it is allegedly funny is

24:27

that the man goes over to her house expecting

24:29

they're going to like stay in in the parlor and

24:32

talk and she has a hat on

24:34

indicating she is expecting to go out. Like

24:37

these two things were existing

24:39

at the same

24:39

time. Fellas don't you hate it when you show up

24:42

to her front porch and she's wearing a hat? But

24:44

then what's so interesting is obviously

24:46

all of these norms are completely fucking fake.

24:49

There's nothing like biological about dinner and a movie. You could

24:51

easily like go

24:52

on a walk for your first date. This is something you hear

24:54

in like conservative political discussions

24:57

too, right? Where they're talking about returning

25:00

to like a natural order by

25:02

doing X, Y and Z. And it's like there

25:03

is no fucking natural order. Yeah, it's all fake.

25:06

All of these norms are constantly evolving and

25:08

shifting. Exactly. And the previous order

25:10

was also fake. Actually, I disagree. The one true

25:12

God given order is where you have to

25:14

hang out with her parents in a parlor texting

25:17

my voice like I'm crushing it. They're

25:20

giving me more tea. What's also really interesting about

25:22

the creation of these like totally fake norms

25:24

is that people immediately start

25:27

chalking them up to biology. In

25:29

the book, she says contrast these structures

25:31

with advice on dating etiquette from the 40s and

25:34

50s. An advice book for men and

25:36

women warns that girls who try to usurp

25:38

the right of boys to choose their own dates

25:40

will

25:41

ruin a good dating career. Fair

25:43

or not, it's the way of life. From the Stone

25:45

Age when men chased and captured their women

25:48

comes the yen of a

25:49

boy to do the pursuing. People control

25:51

your impatience therefore and respect the

25:53

time honored custom of boys to

25:56

take the first step. So this

25:58

is this is all about honoring.

25:59

an literally ancient

26:02

time when men

26:05

captured and presumably raped women.

26:07

That's the norm we're trying to adhere to implicitly

26:10

here. When life expectancy was like 27. She

26:13

points out in the book that even in the

26:15

40s and 50s, people would write columns

26:18

being like, this is fake. In

26:20

living memory, we didn't have this. This is not how

26:22

our moms dated. On

26:24

some level, it's a little bit obvious that

26:27

the shit that they're saying in the rules in 1995 is

26:30

like, yeah, horrific dating advice to women in

26:32

the 1940s and 1950s. I

26:34

read another really interesting article called

26:37

The More Things Change, The Rules

26:39

and Late Eighteenth

26:40

Century Conduct Books

26:42

for Women by Barbara Darby, who

26:45

says this whole thing of women these

26:46

days are too aggressive. People

26:48

were literally saying this in the 1770s. She

26:53

quotes letters from Erasmus Darwin.

26:56

It's like we're basically in this constant state

26:58

of fretting about

26:59

women these days, right? They're

27:02

just too aggressive. Envisioning

27:05

an era where everyone was just

27:07

a little more prim and proper and upright.

27:10

Return with a V. Yes.

27:12

The next section of the book is

27:14

about how to act on the first

27:17

date. How should you behave to ensure

27:19

that you get to the second date with this gentleman? I

27:22

am going to send you some of their

27:24

tips and tricks. It's too late

27:26

for you, but it's not too late for the ladies

27:28

out there. Now that you look the part, you must

27:31

act the part. Men like women.

27:33

Don't act like a man, even if you are head of

27:35

your own company. Let

27:38

him open the door. Be feminine. Don't

27:40

tell sarcastic jokes. Don't

27:42

be a loud, knee-slapping, hysterically

27:45

funny girl.

27:46

This is okay when you're alone with your girlfriends,

27:48

but when you're with a man you like, be quiet and

27:50

mysterious, act ladylike, cross

27:52

your legs and smile. Don't

27:55

talk so much. Wear black sheer stockings

27:57

and hike up your skirt to entice the opposite

27:59

side.

27:59

You might feel offended by these suggestions

28:02

and argue that this will suppress your intelligence or

28:04

vivacious personality.

28:06

You may feel that you won't be able to be yourself, but

28:08

men will love it. Men love it when you're not funny.

28:11

Yeah, you might think that I'm suppressing your personality,

28:14

but what if I told you men would like it?

28:15

Yeah, but instrumentally it will be effective.

28:18

There's a weird thing here where it's like, how

28:20

are you setting yourself apart as like a human being,

28:22

right? Yeah, every woman is just

28:24

like black stockings not

28:27

talking much acting mysterious.

28:29

What's your like individual appeal?

28:31

This is such a fascinating theme in the book too where

28:33

they start and they return to this over and over again, this

28:36

idea of like being a creature unlike any other.

28:38

But then you're turning yourself into this like very

28:41

generic, right, client,

28:43

ha ha ha, great joke, Steve.

28:46

Right. Date that just like doesn't really have any

28:48

of your own personality.

28:49

Steve, you are absolutely hilarious. Unbelievable,

28:52

Steve. Sorry about the sarcastic back there. We

28:55

both did Elizabeth Holmes voices for that. Don't tell sarcastic

28:57

jokes is just such bad advice to

28:59

me personally. Yeah, it's such

29:02

a green flag for me. Like if someone

29:04

is just like a little bit sarcastic like that.

29:06

Like if she just like sat there waiting

29:08

for me to talk, I would absolutely

29:11

loathe the whole date.

29:12

Yeah. Well, you were also looking for someone who you

29:14

like. Right. None of this advice is about

29:16

trying to find somebody you like. Right.

29:19

Or just like

29:20

presenting as someone who a guy

29:22

is interested in, but not

29:24

a fully formed human being. More

29:27

as like this like ethereal creature

29:29

that they want to get closer to because

29:31

they don't understand it, but it seems sexy. Yeah,

29:34

they want you to be a woman who fails the Bechdel test.

29:37

I wanted to ask you about this aspect of it too.

29:39

Another piece of advice they give, which

29:41

as a gay person is super fucking

29:43

baffling, but maybe there's like some sort of wisdom

29:45

in this. So they say don't

29:47

be too serious, controlling

29:50

or wifey. Don't mention

29:52

the M word, not even

29:54

to mention that

29:55

your brother recently got married. And

29:58

then they say in various other chapters. they say,

30:00

don't mention words like marriage, wedding,

30:03

kids, or the future. Those are subjects for

30:05

him to bring up. He must take the

30:07

lead. They also say, on dates

30:10

or in phone conversations,

30:11

don't use the words nurturing,

30:14

relationships, bonding, or

30:16

talking about getting your needs met. You

30:19

don't want to sound like a walking relationship

30:21

book. In the early stages of dating,

30:24

staying light is essential.

30:26

Do

30:26

you have this magic word thing? I think

30:28

it would be so weird. If

30:31

I was at a friend's wedding last weekend,

30:33

and I was on a date, and he's like, what'd you do last weekend? I was like, I

30:35

was with friends. I was sitting in a smoky

30:38

room, wearing a small

30:40

black dress and not speaking with anyone. This

30:44

is

30:44

bizarre. Would you even notice if somebody said

30:46

that while I went to my friend's wedding? No. Oh, she

30:49

knows what weddings are. Do not say nurturing.

30:51

It will only make them think of being nurtured.

30:53

There's a very good essay by

30:55

Taffy Brodesser-Achner

30:56

in 2019 talking about how

30:58

she used the rules when she was younger.

31:01

A lot of women, I think, fell

31:03

for this stuff. I think this was something that was often

31:05

passed down from mothers to daughters, it seems,

31:08

in the 90s. This book actually casts a very

31:10

long shadow. Her

31:13

insight after pretending to be this person

31:15

and obviously at not working, and then eventually

31:17

she was herself and met a guy, she

31:20

says, the problem with the rules isn't

31:23

that it shouldn't need to exist, though, yes.

31:25

The problem is that if you are someone who needs

31:27

them, you are probably incapable

31:30

of following them. A lot of this advice

31:32

is basically just like, be a different person.

31:35

First of all, people can't really

31:36

do this on any

31:38

long-term basis. Secondly,

31:41

what is the point of that? Even

31:43

if the person loves you, they love someone

31:46

who isn't you. I almost feel like with

31:48

books like this, you mentioned how specific these

31:51

rules are, and it feels

31:53

like the operation of that is just

31:55

to make it such that no person could actually

31:58

follow them, such that any failed

31:59

can just be chalked up to the failure

32:02

to adhere to the rules. Also, a lot of

32:04

this stuff is very qualitative,

32:06

right? Like, be funny but not too funny. Yeah.

32:09

It's like, well, how do you even follow a rule? Right. Oh, I was too

32:11

funny. I made that sarcastic remark. So

32:13

the next section of the book is about sort

32:15

of dates two through five, like

32:18

this kind of early dating stage where you're still

32:20

not totally sure if you like each other, but

32:22

you're seeing

32:22

more of each other. We're still two years

32:24

from having sex. Yeah. So

32:29

this is really the part of the book where it

32:32

really tips from like, whatever, a little

32:34

bit of flexibility into full on just inconsiderate

32:37

and manipulative behavior. So

32:40

rule

32:40

five is don't call

32:42

him and rarely return his calls.

32:46

Rule six is always end

32:48

the phone call first. They recommend

32:51

getting a literal timer, because it's

32:53

the time before smartphones. So you set an actual

32:55

kitchen timer for 10 minutes. I guess

32:57

when it dings, I don't know how he's not going to hear the ding. But

33:00

when it dings, you're supposed to say something vague of like,

33:02

oh, got to go, and just get off the phone

33:05

really quickly. Again, you should always leave him wanting

33:07

more. Every phone call ends with like, my

33:09

pie is ready, got to go. I

33:12

wonder how much of this is like,

33:14

from a time when if

33:17

you were dating, you would have like one

33:19

person you were interested in, and that

33:22

was it, right? Because you could only meet people at

33:24

like events and shit like that. Now,

33:27

if you're on Bumble, you're

33:29

messaging with five people at once. If

33:33

one of them is showing markedly less interest, they

33:35

just fall off the map.

33:36

I do think that an

33:39

unfair criticism of this book would

33:41

be to hold it to the standards of

33:43

now when like the paradigm of dating

33:45

has actually shifted a lot. Like a

33:48

huge amount of the book is about

33:50

like answering machine etiquette. It

33:52

would be fun to dunk on that. But

33:55

also, it's like, whatever. Of course it's written with that in

33:57

mind. That's the way that people were dating at the time.

33:59

But they've updated the book.

34:02

So there's like the rules for online dating, and

34:04

there's like not your mother's rules, which is really

34:06

silly because it's actually like your grandmother's rules. But

34:09

in the modern iterations of this, they

34:11

say you should always wait four hours before

34:13

texting back. Obviously, you should never

34:16

message a guy under any circumstances. Don't like

34:19

leave a star or like a poke or whatever

34:21

they have on these websites. Bumble, the app

34:23

for dumbasses. Yeah. Ladies,

34:26

get on hinge. They're actually very anti-Bumble,

34:29

like very explicitly. I saw a thing they did on CNN. I

34:31

love that. They say you should wait 24 hours

34:34

to respond to any email that you get

34:36

on a dating website as well. So it's

34:37

the same kind of thing even though we don't call each other anymore.

34:40

Okay. Rule eight is

34:43

don't accept a Saturday night date after Wednesday. They

34:45

explicitly say that if

34:48

you don't have plans on Friday

34:50

or Saturday, you shouldn't answer the phone. And

34:53

if you have roommates or whatever, then they should be like, oh,

34:56

she's not here, but like not give any more

34:58

reason. So you're explicitly lying.

35:01

You're also like amiserating yourself. Like,

35:03

yeah, you're

35:06

not even having fun on Fridays and Saturdays anymore. Rule 12

35:08

is always

35:08

end the date first. Got

35:13

to go. Yeah. Imagine

35:16

dating someone who's just like

35:18

constantly hanging up on you and just running

35:20

out of dates. And you're

35:22

like, wow, she is a beautiful and mysterious

35:24

woman. They also, some of this stuff

35:26

is true. Sociopathy.

35:28

They have like a list of tips. One

35:30

of them is when he asks you out, silently

35:33

count to five before saying yes. You

35:36

will make him nervous. And that's good. And

35:38

then this one is so fucking cold. It's

35:41

when walking down the street, drop

35:43

his hand first ever so slightly. Oh

35:45

my God. It

35:48

just means. There were times when

35:50

I was reading the game where you're reading the stories of these men

35:53

and they have like gamified

35:55

every component of their relationship

35:57

with women to the point where they pretty.

35:59

clearly no longer enjoy

36:02

it for what it actually is. And

36:04

that's what this feels like too. It's like

36:06

every second of your experience

36:09

with the person that you're trying to form

36:11

a relationship with is gamified

36:14

and turned into something that's sort of inherently

36:16

unpleasant. And

36:18

it sort of ends up asking the question, like,

36:20

what are you looking to gain out of this? Is

36:23

this actually making you happy? Is this just a... The

36:26

same thing with the game. Is this just a display

36:28

of dominance over the other person and

36:30

that's the enjoyment you get out of it? Because

36:32

clearly you're not getting any genuine

36:35

feelings of affection out of it. It's

36:37

also not clear to me remotely

36:40

how effective it would be. So

36:42

we're gonna read another one

36:44

of their little examples. Okay.

36:47

Act independent so that he doesn't feel that you're expecting

36:49

him to take care of you. That's as true on the

36:51

first date as the 50th. Jill

36:53

remembers that when she went bed shopping for herself

36:56

with Bruce, her boyfriend of six months, she

36:58

deliberately bought a single bed rather

37:00

than a queen's size.

37:01

An adult in a single bed. It

37:04

killed her to have to do this as she was hoping he was

37:06

the one and knew if they were going to get engaged

37:08

and married, she would have no use for the bed.

37:11

But the fold out couch she'd been sleeping on

37:13

was broken. Rather than consulting Bruce

37:15

on the bed purchase, asking him what kind of bed he liked

37:17

and what size he liked, as if to suggest this might be

37:19

the bed they would be sharing one day, she bought

37:21

the single bed as if she had no intention

37:24

of getting married soon.

37:25

It was important not to let Bruce know

37:27

that she was buying a bed with him in mind. So

37:30

you're in the sixth month of

37:32

a relationship. This is self-immiseration.

37:36

I bought a bed covered in needles

37:39

and nails to let him know

37:41

that he was not wealthy.

37:43

Also, by the sixth month,

37:46

isn't he sleeping over sometimes? Can

37:49

you just want to have a bed that you can both fucking

37:51

fit in?

37:59

like a child because the man can't

38:02

possibly fit in it. One

38:05

of the weirdest threads

38:07

of research for this episode, because we

38:10

look at these

38:10

books and you always want to do a little bit of research to

38:12

be like, okay, is the central premise of

38:15

this book true? Yeah.

38:16

And I was like, I guess I sort of have

38:18

to Google, like, does playing hard to get

38:21

work, even though that's ultimately an unanswerable

38:23

question. Yeah, it means

38:25

so many things, right? Yeah. And

38:27

as it turns out, there's like an entire body of research

38:30

on this. And like, this is a question

38:32

that people have investigated since the 1970s, like what dating

38:36

strategies actually work. And

38:38

so a fairly basic

38:39

principle of human relationships

38:42

is reciprocity. If there's

38:44

a new coworker at your job

38:46

and you find out that like the new guy, Bob

38:48

and HR likes me, you're more

38:50

likely to like him back. Sure. This

38:52

is like a fairly well-established principle. It's not clear

38:55

if it applies to dating because

38:57

just the stakes of dating are much higher, right?

39:00

You're looking for a soulmate, not just like someone to kind of have casual conversations

39:03

with. So there's been various

39:05

attempts to figure out whether

39:07

this like reciprocal uncertainty

39:09

kind of principle applies in

39:12

dating. Most of the research

39:14

honestly is like total garbage. A lot of it

39:16

is just like surveys.

39:18

They're like, guys, do you like it when a woman

39:20

is passive or when she's aggressive?

39:22

And so most

39:24

people, men and women say

39:26

that they like being pursued. I think

39:28

because it's kind of risky to pursue

39:31

someone else emotionally because if you're like, hey,

39:33

I like you and they're like, I don't really like you

39:35

back, it hurts.

39:35

I like it when a girl

39:38

who has never made a joke is

39:40

always leaving early and hanging up

39:42

on me.

39:43

So there's also various attempts

39:45

to measure this with like laboratory methods.

39:47

They do this thing where they show women

39:50

a bunch of like Facebook, like fake Facebook

39:52

profiles of dudes and they're like, this is Jeff

39:54

and he really likes you. And like, this is

39:56

Steve and he doesn't like you. Like

39:58

which one do you want to go on?

39:59

on a date with. And that

40:02

yields some fairly interesting results, but it's kind of so

40:04

fake that you don't really have to go

40:06

on dates

40:06

with these guys. And people know they're in a study,

40:08

and it's mostly college sophomore. Has anyone ever done

40:11

a controlled study involving

40:13

the timing of text responses or something

40:15

like that?

40:15

Well, there is a meta-analysis that

40:18

looked at 18 studies, like every

40:20

study that has been done on this. And

40:23

it's very much in line

40:25

with everything that we always

40:28

say on this show, that basically

40:30

it works on some people and doesn't work

40:32

on others. Yeah, yeah. Some people want

40:35

to reduce uncertainty. People

40:37

who have kind of more anxious personalities,

40:40

they really don't like this play hard to get stuff. And

40:42

most of them will just give up, because they're like, well, there's people

40:44

that I know like me, and I'm not going to waste

40:46

my time on someone who I can't tell. That's just irritating

40:49

to me. And then there's other people who

40:51

really do have this thrill of the hunt thing.

40:54

And they really like the idea of winning

40:56

somebody

40:56

over. Right. There's also all the research

40:58

indicates that that's not gendered at all. That

41:01

basically, once you know that somebody is

41:03

an option, you immediately start

41:05

looking at, well, what are my other

41:06

options? Right. My wife tries

41:08

to talk to me every day. And it's

41:11

like, come on. Where's the excitement?

41:13

You should be ignoring me for weeks at

41:15

a time. There's a good quote from one

41:18

of the authors of this meta-analysis.

41:19

She says, my

41:21

work shows that playing hard to get may only

41:23

be attractive to target partners if optimal

41:26

levels of perceived uncertainty and

41:28

difficulty are achieved. In other words, individuals

41:31

who are too easy to get or too hard to get

41:33

are perceived as less attractive

41:35

than individuals who are moderately difficult

41:37

to attract and moderately uncertain

41:39

about their interest toward the target partner. All

41:42

of these dating books that have all these strategic

41:44

things of how long to wait after

41:46

texting, whatever, all of them are making

41:49

the same mistake as

41:51

nudge, where they're favoring

41:54

structural elements over fundamentals.

41:57

Ultimately, this mostly comes down to whether

41:59

you're

41:59

attracted to somebody and whether

42:01

you enjoy spending time with them. If

42:03

someone is hot and you're clicking

42:06

on the dates, whether they wait 15 minutes

42:08

or four hours to send a text back, does

42:10

that really matter?

42:12

If you're not attracted to them

42:14

and you don't really like hanging out with them,

42:16

can they really convince

42:18

you to like them

42:20

by being withholding? As

42:22

she says in her quote, they're being too eager. I

42:26

love you after the first date, obviously that's

42:29

sort of extreme. It's weird. Also playing too

42:31

hard to get, people are eventually just going to lose fucking

42:33

interest if you're not showing any reciprocation.

42:36

There's actually a very wide window within

42:39

those of just like, yeah, it seems like they like

42:41

me, but

42:41

they're not coming on too strong, they're not coming

42:43

on too weak. It seems like what you're saying

42:45

is that there's this research showing that there is

42:48

a broad spectrum of acceptable

42:50

dating behavior. It

42:53

feels like basically like always ending dates

42:56

and never making jokes

42:59

and hanging up on the guy. It

43:01

feels like that's probably outside of that acceptable

43:04

spectrum. One thing

43:05

I kept thinking as I was reading this was like, I try

43:08

to conduct my interpersonal

43:10

relationships like some set of ethics

43:12

and morals. If I was

43:14

seeing somebody who like never reciprocated

43:17

my invitations, never texted

43:20

me back, was constantly ending

43:22

dates, ending phone calls. I'd be

43:24

like, this is a person who doesn't like me

43:26

and they're trying to spare my feelings or there's

43:28

some reason they don't want to tell me that. As

43:30

like basic consideration to this other

43:32

human being, I really need to stop

43:34

making invitations. By the

43:36

logic that they're putting forward, men

43:38

should be attracted to like just

43:41

all the various women in their lives that

43:43

pay them no mind at all. Exactly.

43:45

This is what it's entrenching is this idea

43:48

that you should like wear a woman down because

43:50

the signals of you liking someone

43:52

in this fucking book are also the signals of not

43:55

liking someone.

43:55

Right, right, right.

43:58

This is something that I grew up with. hearing

44:01

as dating advice that like girls

44:03

can't show interest. And

44:06

the conclusion you draw from that is like, you

44:08

need to sort of press the issue constantly,

44:12

which ends up just resulting

44:14

in anything from like women's like

44:17

physical and emotional space being invaded to

44:19

like sexual assault, right? Like all

44:21

of these terrible things are downstream of this. So

44:23

much of this

44:24

advice seems designed to

44:26

attract a guy that adheres

44:28

to like every toxic gender norm

44:31

imaginable. He's picking you up in public.

44:33

He's asking you to dance. He keeps pursuing you

44:35

when you give him no indication that

44:38

you're attracted to him. This is like

44:40

bait to the fucking worst

44:42

men and the worst tendencies of men. This is my

44:44

wife. She's actually never spoken

44:46

to me. Yeah, she openly

44:49

hates me at all times. So this is like literally

44:51

part of like the fucking dentist system in Always Sunny.

44:54

Your aloofness implies

44:57

that you are of immense value. Oh,

45:00

she is off in the corner not talking

45:02

to anyone. She must be

45:04

so cool. You can sort of see

45:07

that working in like the micro.

45:10

Once you are engaged in a relationship

45:12

with another person, it immediately becomes

45:14

sociopathic. This is the next stage

45:17

of relationships

45:18

in the book that we're gonna talk about. We have not gotten to the

45:20

bad parts of the book yet, Peter. The

45:22

next section of the book is about sort of once,

45:25

once you're in a long-term relationship, right? You're

45:27

on the runway to marriage. We

45:29

get to rule 24. Don't

45:32

open up too fast. Yeah, yeah.

45:34

So here's this. Men must always remember you as

45:36

mysterious on the first three dates.

45:39

Their initial impression tends to go a long way.

45:42

If and when things get serious, you can casually

45:44

tell him about your difficult childhood and some of

45:46

your fears. Even then, tell

45:48

him in an easy, short, simple way. Don't

45:50

be dramatic about your past. Don't go

45:53

into long details. Don't be burdensome.

45:55

Don't burden him with your memories and thoughts. Let's

45:57

say you are a recovering alcoholic.

45:59

He takes you out for a drink on your first date and to dinner

46:02

on the second. He notices you only ordered club

46:04

soda both times. He's about to order a

46:06

bottle of wine and wants to know if you'll join him. Don't

46:09

say,

46:09

no, I never drink. I hit a terrible

46:12

bottom with drugs and alcohol two years ago and now

46:14

I'm sober in AA. Just

46:16

say, no thanks, and smile.

46:18

After a couple of months when he's madly in love with

46:20

you and you feel that he would not judge you for your

46:22

drinking problem, you can tell him something

46:24

like, I used to drink a lot in college. It

46:26

really made me sick. Now I'm in AA and I don't

46:29

drink anymore. I feel better. Then

46:31

smile and go on to other more

46:33

pleasant conversation. You

46:36

can't believe it's real, right?

46:39

You're like, did Mike add

46:41

that last part? She's like,

46:43

anyway, did you see friends last night?

46:45

He's like, wait. Exactly.

46:48

Also, this guy has never been like, do you not drink? Come

46:51

on. These aren't real human dynamics.

46:53

The idea that you wouldn't want to tell

46:55

somebody a deep, important,

46:58

serious part of yourself on the first couple of dates makes

47:00

total sense to me. Fair enough. But what's

47:03

fascinating to me is they say even

47:05

when a couple of months has

47:07

gone by, even then tell him in

47:09

a

47:09

breezy way. Never

47:12

show emotional vulnerability. That's

47:14

a woman who doesn't get married. In the section

47:16

where they're talking about getting into a real relationship,

47:18

they say,

47:19

now you can show more of yourself. You

47:21

can talk about your feelings as long as you don't

47:24

get too heavy or play therapist or

47:26

mother. Exhibit warmth, charm,

47:28

and heart. If his dog died or his football

47:30

team lost, express sympathy.

47:32

We're back to

47:34

football. The things that make boys sad. Look

47:36

into his eyes, be attentive, and a

47:38

good listener so that he knows you're a caring

47:40

human being, a person who would make a

47:43

supportive wife.

47:44

Don't give him the third degree about past relationships.

47:47

It's none of your business. Don't overwhelm

47:49

him with your career triumphs.

47:51

Try to let him shine. Don't

47:53

plague him with your neuroses. Remember,

47:55

you won't have to keep such things to yourself

47:57

forever. Just for the first few months. until

48:00

he says he's in love with you. And then it

48:02

ends with the bleakest fucking sentence

48:04

I've ever heard. They say, eventually,

48:07

you will become

48:08

more of yourself. Oh, no.

48:11

Oh, my god. Months. You're

48:14

waiting months. And

48:16

then he's like, I love you. And she

48:18

slowly turns to him in a horror movie,

48:20

and a creepy smile overtakes

48:23

her face. And she's like,

48:23

I'm an alcoholic. They

48:26

do have one of the weirdest fucking sections.

48:29

One of the rules is about never move in with him first.

48:31

That's just not even conceptually offensive

48:33

to me. That's just logistically offensive. You

48:37

should know his dishes

48:38

habits before you

48:40

decide to spend the rest of your life with somebody. But the

48:43

whole basis for it is basically,

48:45

well, you might move in with him, and

48:48

then he won't like you anymore. They say, oh,

48:50

he might not like the

48:51

way you slurp your coffee or how you look in the mornings.

48:53

Yeah, that's the whole point of moving in

48:55

with someone. Yeah, you're going to do it when you

48:57

get married. It's

49:00

like you said reading Thomas Friedman. You're like,

49:02

does he understand metaphors? This

49:04

whole book, I was like, do these people understand

49:07

relationships? What is the point

49:10

of doing this? It's also starting

49:11

to feel like they believe that you will cross

49:14

a threshold where he is functionally

49:16

trapped. And so then you can

49:19

start letting all this stuff out, and it will

49:21

no longer matter because he can't exit.

49:24

But if your actual fear is that

49:26

your real personality and real history

49:29

and real life will be viscerally

49:32

unappealing to this man, then

49:35

you're not going to escape that by holding it in.

49:37

This

49:37

entire section of the

49:39

book, once you're in a relationship, is mostly

49:42

about manipulating him into

49:44

proposing to you. So

49:47

this is the section where they

49:49

talk about how to get him to finally pop

49:52

the question. In general, the way to get

49:54

a man to ask you to marry him in a reasonable

49:56

amount of time is not to live with him

49:58

before you're engaged or married.

49:59

married and to continue to see him only three times

50:02

a week, even though by this time you want

50:04

to be inseparable. Three times a week? If

50:06

that doesn't work, you might have to shake things up a little

50:08

bit. Go away for a weekend with a girlfriend,

50:11

cancel a Saturday night date, get very

50:13

busy at work, mention that you are renewing your

50:15

apartment lease, and be mysterious about

50:17

your activities. Remember,

50:21

men don't necessarily propose when you're

50:23

cuddled up on the couch watching a rented video,

50:26

but do so when they're afraid of losing

50:28

you.

50:28

Definitely just straightforward manipulate

50:31

his emotions. This is a lifelong partnership.

50:35

You are also stuck with this guy who you

50:37

have manipulated into marriage

50:39

theoretically for the rest of your

50:41

life. They

50:42

specifically say you shouldn't

50:44

tell him that you're pulling away because you're

50:46

frustrated that he's not proposing to you. Well,

50:48

of course not. Just be like, just work is busy. This

50:51

isn't like, oh, I'm not telling him I have IBS

50:54

on my first date. This

50:58

is just psychotic behavior.

51:00

I will say there is one good piece of advice in

51:02

this. Be mysterious about

51:04

your activities. It's like, oh, where

51:07

are you going? Places with my friends.

51:10

They

51:10

do actually say numerous times, you should

51:12

never give him any details. He's

51:15

like, oh, can you hang out this Saturday? And you're like,

51:17

no. You want your behavior to be

51:19

indistinguishable from someone who has a second

51:21

family. Every

51:26

time when we're reading books like this, all

51:28

I can think is like, you are not happy.

51:31

No one who's doing this is happy.

51:33

This

51:36

is exactly where we've ended up, Peter.

51:38

This is the destination. I'm sending you the longest

51:42

excerpt so far. This

51:44

is from another weird thing about this

51:46

book is they don't seem to understand what a rule is. So

51:49

rule 33 is do the rules and

51:52

you'll live happily ever after. OK.

51:55

So they're

51:55

talking about what are the benefits. Sometimes it's

51:57

hard to not call this man back.

52:00

to be withholding constantly? What can

52:02

you do to keep the

52:04

discipline going? How do you motivate

52:06

yourself? So they then list

52:09

all of the benefits of doing the rules,

52:11

everything you're going to get if you continue

52:14

on this plan. So here

52:17

is the list. The biggest

52:19

payoff first. He wants to marry you.

52:22

When you are seated at a booth in a restaurant, he slides

52:24

over and sits next to you. Sitting opposite

52:26

you is just too far away when he's truly

52:28

in love. He sends you roses

52:30

after you have sex. Every single time. When

52:33

your rose budget is $25,000 a year. He

52:38

writes love notes or poetry for you and tapes

52:40

them on the refrigerator door.

52:42

He finds your idiosyncrasies harmless

52:44

rather than annoying.

52:45

He gives you little presents, jewelry, and flowers

52:48

on every possible occasion. He

52:50

gets involved in every aspect of your

52:52

life. You don't bore him. If

52:54

you call him at work, he'll always want to talk to you even

52:57

if he's busy. He calls you from work

52:59

a lot. He

53:02

doesn't like to work late because he wants to see more of you.

53:04

When you have a cold or become ill, he still

53:06

wants to be with you.

53:08

He gets angry

53:10

when you don't pay attention to him. He doesn't ignore

53:12

you. He's always walking into whatever room

53:15

you're in. You are never a football widow.

53:17

He wants to do everything with you. Oh god,

53:19

this is bleak. He

53:22

always wants the phone number of where you are so he can

53:24

get in touch with you even though you're not telling

53:26

him where you're going. Even though he doesn't know. He says, I'm busy

53:29

this weekend. He doesn't like it when you go to bachelorette

53:31

parties. Great,

53:34

great science. There

53:37

are

53:37

like 10 bullet points in here and there's at least like 14 red

53:40

flags. Some of this stuff is

53:42

perfectly fine. Some of it

53:44

is like a baseline expectation.

53:47

When you have a cold or become ill, he

53:49

still wants to be with you. It's like, you're married. We're

53:52

both adults. No one's like this.

53:55

He gets angry when you don't pay

53:57

attention to him. All right, this is the worst paragraph.

53:59

Like the worst bullet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He

54:02

gets angry when you don't pay attention to him. He doesn't ignore

54:04

you. He's always walking into whatever

54:06

room you're in. This

54:10

is my nightmare partner. Like I'm

54:12

someone who needs like alone time.

54:14

Yeah. And the idea of a partner who's

54:16

just constantly barging into the room I'm

54:19

in is like genuinely my version of

54:21

hell.

54:21

Still fine, Peter? You still fine?

54:23

You okay in there, Peter? What's happening in your cave?

54:26

Oh, God, man. This is unhinged. The

54:29

thing that I kept thinking in this section,

54:31

I mean, this is the perfect encapsulation, but like throughout the book,

54:33

is that like the whole paradigm

54:36

here is just a child's

54:38

understanding of what love is. Yeah.

54:41

Right? You have this man who's like worshiping

54:44

the ground you walk on. He's writing

54:46

you poetry. He's constantly

54:49

giving you gifts, but also he

54:51

gets jealous when you're away from him.

54:53

He's checking in on you all the time. He's

54:56

emotionally volatile. There's

54:58

also this weird thing where in the book

55:00

they keep saying stuff of like,

55:02

we all know when

55:04

you go on the first date, you're naming

55:06

your children together in your head, but

55:08

don't show it to him.

55:10

There's like this weird normalization of

55:12

like infatuation. Again,

55:15

the authors are 36 and 38 when

55:18

this book is published. And it reads

55:21

like it's like a nine-year-old who's been raised

55:23

on like Disney movies. The game

55:25

is like this in a different way, but it's just like the

55:28

complete dehumanization of the

55:30

other person. Totally. Like what's

55:32

a good man? A good man is someone

55:34

who is obsessed with you. There's

55:35

also this part, I mean, the whole book made

55:38

me so sad, but like, especially this part made me sad.

55:41

They sort of drop in that like the

55:43

rules can be useful in other

55:45

parts of

55:46

your life too. So they say

55:49

another reason to do the rules is so

55:51

that men, women, bosses, and parents

55:53

treat us well. When we don't do the

55:55

rules, we inevitably get hurt.

55:57

When we do the rules, we find out who's in the room.

56:00

Who really loves us? Oh, no. Why

56:03

did you have to make

56:05

me sad, Michael? It makes me

56:08

so sad. Oh, God. That is a huge bummer.

56:09

It's this total inversion of

56:12

the kind of, this is for self-esteem and confidence

56:14

message that they start the book with.

56:17

This isn't the prescription of someone who's

56:19

confident. This is the

56:20

prescription of someone who's really scared

56:22

and who's so afraid of forming

56:24

adult relationships with

56:26

someone that everything is about

56:28

holding yourself at a distance for

56:31

other people and never risking anyone

56:33

getting to know you. Oh, I

56:35

just want to keep it light. I'll tell you I'm a recovering

56:38

alcoholic, but

56:38

not in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable.

56:42

They're pursuing love in

56:44

this

56:45

completely detached abstract

56:48

where it is missing the

56:50

part of it that's fulfilling.

56:53

The part of it that is good

56:55

and reducing it

56:58

to someone else is

57:00

paying constant attention to me. Yeah,

57:02

which is not love. That's infatuation.

57:05

It's almost less than an infatuation. It's

57:09

like I'm someone's pet. Right, or vice

57:11

versa. Yeah,

57:14

there's just so little in this

57:17

about how to have a healthy

57:20

and fulfilling dynamic with another

57:22

human being. The only

57:23

saving grace of this part because I'm like,

57:25

how could a 36-year-old and a 38-year-old write

57:28

like this? How could you think this? I'm like, well,

57:30

maybe they're just doing this cynically. They're

57:34

telling women what they think women want to hear, but

57:36

that's also maybe worse. It's definitely

57:38

not better. Maybe we'll talk about

57:40

this later, but was there any

57:43

coverage of this that was concerned men

57:47

upset about the premise? This

57:49

is not fucking true, but a

57:50

lot of men say that the

57:53

game was a response to

57:55

the rules. It's like, well, if women are going to play games,

57:58

then we're going to play games back. Not

58:00

true. Yeah tricked women into sex for like

58:02

a lot longer than like 1995 literally forever It's

58:04

not true, but it is a narrative

58:07

that I think was very convenient

58:09

for men right? It's like they're all conniving

58:11

We can't trust anything they say we can't

58:14

trust the way that they look because they're wearing makeup, etc

58:16

To be fair these women are wearing makeup

58:18

while jogging True

58:21

sociopaths. Yeah Do you want

58:23

to do you want to see the bad parts Peter? Of course. I

58:25

want to see the bad parts

58:27

All right, here's here's as bad

58:29

as it gets this is toward the end So this

58:31

is right after they say what you will get

58:33

if

58:34

you follow the rules This is where they talk about what

58:36

you won't get still another incentive

58:38

for doing the rules is what you won't get

58:40

no messy divorce He'll take care

58:42

of you when you're old. He really really

58:45

loves you a rules marriage is forever

58:48

No outside counseling. He has

58:50

no interest in couples therapy That

58:54

thing that guys always want to go to When

58:56

you do the rules, he doesn't have big issues

58:59

with you He doesn't wish you were this that

59:01

or different his love for you is unconditional

59:04

No physical abuse when

59:06

you do the rules he treats you like a fragile

59:09

delicate flower He cups your face

59:12

rubs your back when you've had a hard day and strokes

59:14

your hair as if it were silk You don't have

59:16

to worry about being battered This

59:18

is not me like taking this

59:21

out of context to dunk. They mentioned

59:23

this numerous times They

59:26

say later they say abuse

59:28

doesn't happen in a rules relationship

59:31

Oh because when

59:32

you play hard to get and he works like hell

59:34

to get you He thinks you're the most beautiful

59:36

wonderful woman in the world. Even

59:39

if you're not Precious

59:41

jewel, this is fucked up. It's

59:44

Super fucked up dude. This

59:46

is one of those things where like I I feel like we shouldn't

59:49

have to like debunk it per se But

59:51

I will do it for the sake of it like Abusive

59:55

people are not abusive because

59:57

they like don't love you enough

59:59

weird shit like that and you can't craft

1:00:02

a certain type of love that

1:00:04

will resist abuse. The

1:00:06

other part of this is that the

1:00:09

last excerpt we read was like, he will get

1:00:11

angry when you don't pay attention to him. I'm

1:00:14

sorry, but these things don't comport.

1:00:17

In the rule where they talk about

1:00:19

how you're not supposed to have sex with him on the first date,

1:00:21

they say, oh, he might try to

1:00:23

invite you to his house or something and you'll say no. They're

1:00:26

like, well, he might get angry that you're not giving

1:00:28

him sex. They say, but don't worry, anger

1:00:30

indicates interest and you might be surprised

1:00:33

for he will probably call you again. They

1:00:36

say this numerous times that

1:00:38

if he's mad about all these

1:00:41

arbitrary fucking rules, like why didn't you call me? I've

1:00:43

been calling you all week. It just means he likes you. Also

1:00:46

the prior bullet is like, they

1:00:49

get to like, oh, he won't physically

1:00:51

abuse you bullet and you forget that the prior

1:00:53

one was also just absurd. Oh,

1:00:56

you won't need counseling because his

1:00:58

love for you will be unconditional.

1:01:01

First of all, no, you have created

1:01:03

the conditions of his love. The whole book is

1:01:06

about manufacturing the conditions

1:01:08

where he loves you. It's not unconditional.

1:01:10

There's no such thing as unconditional love.

1:01:13

It's fine. It's a silly concept. When

1:01:15

people say unconditional love, what they mean is like he

1:01:17

loves you even though you have diarrhea. It's

1:01:19

not like you can be whatever

1:01:22

type of human being you want to be. The

1:01:25

whole book is premised

1:01:28

on creating a fake

1:01:30

persona

1:01:32

that he will fall in love with.

1:01:34

You can't then say, oh, he loves you for

1:01:36

you. This is also the part of the book where

1:01:39

you realize that this is not

1:01:41

a dating guide. They want you to do

1:01:43

this forever. Rule 21,

1:01:46

don't tell him what to do. Rule 22, let

1:01:48

him take the lead. Rule 23,

1:01:52

don't expect a man to change or

1:01:54

try to change him. Rule 44,

1:01:57

even if you're engaged or married, you

1:01:59

stay.

1:01:59

still need the rules. Starting right

1:02:02

now, don't call him, don't beep

1:02:04

him, and don't stay on the phone for more than 10

1:02:06

minutes

1:02:06

when he calls you. Don't initiate

1:02:09

sex, even if you want it badly. Let

1:02:11

him be the man, the aggressor in

1:02:13

the bedroom.

1:02:14

A lifetime of misery.

1:02:16

A lifetime.

1:02:18

I also don't understand how these

1:02:21

align. Like, there was a thing

1:02:23

that's like, you won't be a football widow.

1:02:25

And then it's like, actually, you're going to do whatever

1:02:27

he wants to do to create less friction in

1:02:30

his life. It's not

1:02:31

funny, but it's kind of funny to have this whole thing of like, learn

1:02:33

to compromise. And then they're like,

1:02:35

he likes scary movies and you like

1:02:37

romantic movies. Maybe you'll learn

1:02:39

to enjoy the scary movies after all.

1:02:42

That's not compromising, you're just giving him his way.

1:02:45

You are trying at all times to emulate

1:02:47

a hot mannequin. And he's

1:02:50

talking to you and you're not

1:02:52

saying anything back. And then

1:02:56

you will eventually get married and

1:02:59

he's just carrying you around the football games.

1:03:01

And make, I mean, this is another thing that just made

1:03:03

me so fucking sad, right? We've talked

1:03:05

about these other like, best selling

1:03:07

self help books from the 1990s. And they're just

1:03:10

fucking garbage, right? It's like they pretend to be like a communication

1:03:12

guide for couples. And then Men are for Mars is

1:03:14

just like, this is how women should ask men to do the

1:03:16

housework, like tricking him into actually like being

1:03:19

an active partner in the relationship. This

1:03:22

book, which is written by women and cast

1:03:25

as this kind of like breezy, fun dating guide

1:03:27

is word for word. The same thing.

1:03:30

Right? Don't try to change him. Don't nag

1:03:32

him. Don't make it difficult. They have a whole thing

1:03:34

of like, if he comes home and he's tired

1:03:37

and you've cooked a nice dinner for him and he

1:03:39

like doesn't care, then like, don't

1:03:41

worry about it. The reason he's at

1:03:43

work so long is so he can take care of you. And

1:03:45

it also feels like maybe built into

1:03:47

this is this belief that like,

1:03:50

okay, yes, there are these sort of like unfair

1:03:53

gender norms and like things that

1:03:55

are asked of women that are not asked

1:03:57

of men, but we will.

1:03:59

overcome that by adhering to

1:04:02

it so rigidly, by doing

1:04:04

it so perfectly that everyone

1:04:06

will like us. Yeah. There's

1:04:09

something deeply sad about that. I

1:04:12

will do everything that everyone has ever

1:04:14

asked of women all the time.

1:04:16

I read a lot of reactions to this because thank

1:04:18

fucking God this book was extremely controversial when it

1:04:20

came out and a lot of very good

1:04:23

articles have been published about just how poisonous

1:04:26

this book is. One

1:04:28

of the things that a lot of the actual feminist

1:04:31

responses to this book point out is that there's

1:04:33

really no such thing as

1:04:34

a dating advice book

1:04:37

because you can't give people meaningful advice unless

1:04:39

you know their situation. Essentially

1:04:41

all of these dating advice books, what they really are

1:04:44

is the

1:04:45

expression of a worldview about

1:04:47

how men and women should relate to each other

1:04:49

in the world. That's what they're doing. They're

1:04:51

presented as on the surface, oh,

1:04:53

you should do this. Don't call back too fast. What

1:04:56

they're really doing is this is how we think men and

1:04:58

women should be. We

1:05:00

talked in the Men are from Mars, Women

1:05:02

are from Venus episode about how in the early 90s

1:05:04

there was this heightened visibility of

1:05:07

sexual harassment due to Anita Hill and Clarence

1:05:09

Thomas. A lot of women were elected

1:05:11

to Congress. There was this extra

1:05:13

visibility of feminist issues in the early

1:05:15

1990s. The rest of the decade, there

1:05:18

were all of these gender essentialist,

1:05:20

basically backlash books. The

1:05:23

best way to understand this book is

1:05:25

a way for women to sell

1:05:27

this anti-feminist backlash back to

1:05:30

women. They're saying, we're

1:05:32

feminists. We don't have any real

1:05:34

problem with feminism, but it doesn't work.

1:05:37

Or just feminism

1:05:39

designed as like, you can have a job, but

1:05:42

men will rule over you in every

1:05:46

other component of your life. Of course,

1:05:48

as a man, I would love to blame women. I

1:05:51

would love to blame women. Men

1:05:53

obviously want to embrace feminism, but it's women who are

1:05:55

stopping.

1:05:56

You're one of the good ones, Peter.

1:05:58

But I do wonder how much. of

1:06:01

how much of that dynamic where you have women

1:06:03

prominently critiquing feminism is because they

1:06:05

are like effective vessels for

1:06:07

the critique, right? For the anti-feminist

1:06:09

movement, right? To be able to say that

1:06:11

the critics themselves are women has

1:06:14

value to the broader reactionary movement.

1:06:17

Also another thing that I realized

1:06:20

researching this episode, and I've

1:06:22

updated my views as a result

1:06:24

of the research for this episode. For

1:06:26

the last kind of 10 years, I've been sort of like fretting

1:06:29

about the rise of online dating. It seems

1:06:31

like a paradigm that is very similar

1:06:33

to like shopping in ways that

1:06:36

make me uncomfortable. People have this

1:06:39

perception of

1:06:40

infinite choice that makes them discard other

1:06:42

people very quickly. It seems like

1:06:44

there's just a lot of consternation and a lot of like

1:06:47

hurt and there's just a lot more rejection

1:06:50

associated with dating

1:06:50

now. I've always been like, I don't know if this is like the best

1:06:53

thing. Another one of these kind of perpetual

1:06:55

crises is like the end of courtship.

1:06:58

You've been getting these takes since

1:07:00

the 1890s when like kids started going

1:07:03

to like diners with each other. You had the same thing. Kids

1:07:06

don't court each other the way that they used to. I

1:07:09

think that like the shift to online dating

1:07:11

is really worth

1:07:12

noting, right? We're basically speed

1:07:14

running this paradigm shift that

1:07:16

happened in 60 years at the end

1:07:19

of the 1800s. We're doing it in like 10 years now.

1:07:21

Also, I was looking at the

1:07:23

numbers the other day of like how people meet and like

1:07:25

in 1940, 60% of

1:07:28

people met through their family

1:07:30

or met in elementary, middle

1:07:32

or high school. That

1:07:34

was bad. That was basically

1:07:37

like quasi-arranged marriages and

1:07:39

a huge number of people getting married

1:07:42

very young either because it was like shotgun weddings

1:07:44

or something

1:07:45

or just because like that was expected of you and you

1:07:47

had a high school steady, you would

1:07:49

get married at fucking 19 and you end up in one of

1:07:51

these awful loveless marriages because

1:07:53

like women couldn't get bank accounts and there was no no-fault

1:07:56

divorce. I

1:07:58

am less pessimistic about this. stuff than

1:08:00

I was before I started researching this episode.

1:08:03

I will say this. I was one of the guys who

1:08:05

did great on the apps, and it's for one reason

1:08:07

and one reason only. In my

1:08:10

profile, I said that I had

1:08:12

an in-unit washer dryer. If

1:08:15

you live in New York City,

1:08:17

that is a killer profile line.

1:08:20

I think the only reason you did well is because you weren't a podcaster

1:08:22

yet. If you're

1:08:23

like, I'm a podcast bro in Brooklyn,

1:08:26

like no. I'm in Queens for

1:08:28

do not denigrate me. My

1:08:32

wife met me five years ago and

1:08:35

she met and started dating a

1:08:38

corporate lawyer. And

1:08:41

now she is married to a full-time podcaster.

1:08:44

That's the kind of thing you can't anticipate. And

1:08:46

had she followed the rules, it wouldn't have happened.

1:08:49

I know. If only she had treated you like shit. It's

1:08:52

never too late.