Once upon a time I had a roommate who was way, way into pickup artist tactics. It bothered me on a fundamental level. His bedroom was practically a revolving door for college girls from West Philly—a habit I honestly would have not minded at all, had I been ignorant of the tactics by which said girls were attained. It was, for lack of a better word, icky.
His penchant for seduction strategies was actually became a bone of contention between us but a few weeks into our shared residence. Another roommate and I were discussing a mutual friend of ours who was seeing an unworthy gentleman.
Smugly, our pickup artist roommate proclaimed, “Well, all women like assholes. That’s what you really go for, anyway.”
I felt heated. ”That’s not true.”
“Sure it is—come on, didn’t you say your ex-boyfriend was a jerk?”
“But I don’t go for guys just because they’re assholes,” I protested.
It was a useless argument. He would never get it—after all, he had so easily pigeonholed me and the rest of the so-called fairer sex into sweeping category. It’s no wonder these seduction tactics attract the most lovelorn of men; only someone with completely defunct interpersonal communication skills would so readily buy into a scheme that completely ignores the myriad quirks and differences to be had in humanity.
Not to debunk the effectiveness of such tactics, of course; from what I’ve seen, they do work, and amazingly well at that. But that’s the problem with these strategies; only a woman completely lacking in self-respect would fall for them. Observe: once, we held a gathering at our house for the Mummers’ Parade on New Year’s Day; he invited his Mystery-worshiping friends, and we invited our Teach For America ones. His friends did not hesitate to fling their acidic come-ons upon ours: “Entertain me,” said one butthead to two miffed young ladies. Predictably, their otherwise airtight lines flopped with our friends, for typical women in TFA have had to excel at the most competitive colleges, demonstrate masterful leadership over other adults and children, and exhibit a steely core that allows one to stare down the welterweight 16-year-old eighth grader who is simultaneously letting loose a stream of profanities and verbally doling out sexual harassment. These superwomen are not easily rattled by “negs” meant to lower their self-esteem.
No—the type of women these tactics work on are those who consider Cosmopolitan their bible, who dress exclusively for men, who work out to look cute in a bikini and not also for the health benefits, who dare not speak up in bed, who at the end of the day truly believe that their femininity is so unworthy on its own that it would appear their entire identity revolves around the presence, or lack thereof, of a man. In a way, these ladies also follow Rules of their own: Never ask a guy out. Always fake it. Never call first. Never challenge or disagree. Pretend to like sports and beer (even if you don’t). And their game is lame too, because it is just as guilty of compartmentalizing and shoving fully-forged adult personalities into one confining stock character. For both sides, the Game works, but no true long-term relationship can come of such charades.
When you teach, you learn how to deal and communicate with many different types of people. And that’s the only secret to finding someone worthwhile. You get to know them as an individual, and learn how to communicate with them as an individual. It probably wouldn’t make for a good VH1 dating reality show, but it’s the troof.
