Sweetening or Festering?

An interesting question from Seraphic Alumna Shiraz:

But -- here is my but -- I have a pet theory about this. [My now-husband and I] were both young [when we met] (early twenties) and he was really very sweet and excited to have a nice girlfriend (he had had prior non-religious girlfriends who turned out to be Not Very Nice), so that helped. 

Also, I've found, and friends have found, that as the men you are dating get older, some of this sweetness dissipates. My friends have found that older guys expect more, and faster, whether religious or no. They are also more likely to play games, e.g. texting only after a time lag of a certain length, not signalling whether or not they are dating only you or others too, etc etc. I was wondering: what do you think about this? That yes, it depends on the guy -- you'll find jerks and non-jerks distributed through the religious and non-religious population, but that also that game playing and sexual expectations seem to increase with age? Does this hold true for anyone else, or is it just my friends who've seen this pattern?

Guys playing games sounds like "Game" to me. And "Game" is the plaything of men who are so frustrated by women, they begin to see us as a kind of commodity for which they are in competition with other men. And, unfortunately, some of the psychological tricks of Game work on some women.

Occasionally I try to imagine what it is like to be a man. This isn't as hard to do as you may think as men write so many books--especially novels--about being men. Also, I had brothers and I generally mined boyfriends for stories about their lives. (Poor boyfriends.) Two themes crop up: the beastliness of bigger boys towards smaller boys--the awful violence of childhood that damps down to adult competitiveness--and the mystery and confusion of women.

When I was a child, the boys I knew were very nasty to girls, and so boys seemed to improve as I got older. Although boys in my elementary school class were fond of obscene language and sexual harassment, boys I met in high school were not at all like that. They were rather sweet, now that I think about it. My principal crush objects from that era married shortly after they graduated from university. The only real trouble I had from Men Who Expected Stuff was from someone who assumed all Western women were sexually active and from a Gamer in his late thirties who was very possibly insane.

I suspect I sidestepped a lot of garbage by avoiding non-Catholic dating sites and by usually dating only guys who were Catholics or work buddies.

The reflection on guys I knew in high school gives rise to a hypothesis. My hypothesis is that sweet men--men who believe in love--form attachments at a relatively young age, and hang on like limpets to their beloveds. Most of them get married young, too, or move in with their beloveds in such numbers that, yes, it does indeed look like "All the good ones are taken."  Asses--men who believe they deserve a non-stop smorgasbrod of sex--tend not to form stable, loving attachments when they are young.

However, some of these sweet and tender limpets get scraped off by their beloveds, for not all young women are sweet and loyal (Exhibit A: the young Seraphic, whom I advise all Eavesdroppers to avoid should they ever have access to time machine), which makes them available again. And either they are still sweet, or their broken hearts make them bitter.

If bitter, they are encouraged in their bitterness by the Asses. And the Asses make misogynist jokes which shock but also amuse the Mr Broken Hearts, and if the Mr Broken Hearts admire the Asses, they try to be more like them. And they can do this quite easily if they start reading Pick Up Artist blogs or even shelling out the cash to take notes in Pick Up Artist seminars.

(I've noticed that PUA is never about finding ONE gorgeous woman who will MARRY you and HAVE YOUR CHILDREN and MAKE YOUR HOUSE LOOK NICE and STAND BY YOU when your HAIR FALLS OUT.)

The thing is, though, that there are men who carry on like Asses in their teens or twenties and suddenly, or not so suddenly, feel ashamed of themselves and want to be better men. In short, they grow up and get married--possibly to the women who inspired such grown-up thoughts--and have heart attacks fourteen years later when their little girls appear at the dinner table dressed in stripper wear for their first high school dances.

And those are my thoughts. In short: most sweet men settle down young, some sweet men become available latter, some asses have conversion experiences, and some rejected sweet men fester and join the remaining asses.

My own solution to the problem, were I a merry widow, would be to look for such delightful, unbrokenhearted, unattached and still-sweet young men in their twenties who admire ladies in their forties, and with that I shall now go look up what the PUAs have to say about COUGARS.

Update: Since we are talking about men's experiences, it's okay for Eavesdroppers to leave comments today. However, it's not Gentleman's Day, so I am removing my strict protection and code of conduct. Y'all can fight. No bad words, though.

Update 2: Game for women? Okay, this post is rather, um, frank and, um, coarse. But it has some good points, mostly gleaned from Why Men Love *itches. Incidentally, why do some women think it makes them sound more authoritative to use coarse language? My gym teacher never did, and when she said, "Jump", we darn well jumped.

Update 3: I have been reading another blogpost , which boils WMLB down (up?) to 100 points, and gave up at 37 because the points made me sad. The war between the sexes is, for me,  primary evidences for the lingering effects of Original Sin.  How nice if we just let our yes be yes, and our no be no, and nobody ever needed to tell anyone not to be a booty call.

Update 4: Once I got an email from a Catholic guy who said that Game really helped him, even though he understood that PUA culture was really disgusting. And so my loathing of Game wavered a bit. But today I saw this:

• Several Heads Are Better Than One – like wolves hunting in packs, this chapter teaches you how to get your friends to "wingman" for you. With these teamwork techniques, the ladies won't stand a chance and you and your friends will be enjoying the results one night after another after another after another!

Wolves hunting in packs. "The ladies" won't stand a chance. You and your friends will be enjoying the results. Hmm, how very gang rapey. Gross, gross, gross.

Brilliant But Weird

How can  I best exploit Seraphic's obvious crush on me?

I am sick in bed, so to cheer myself up I will tell you all that I watched the first two episodes of Benedict Cumberbatch's "Sherlock" last night and when I woke up this morning I discovered I had a crush on the title character. A completely fictional and actor-dependent entity has a hold over my imagination. Alas!

I'll tell you why it is. It is because Sherlock is brilliant but weird--which is to say, my type. As types go, it is not a good one to have. Brilliant men figure out your weaknesses relatively quickly, and weird ones behave in unexpected and often anti-social ways. How I wish my type was as simple as "bookish blond."

At this point you will naturally think, "But what of the delightful, funny and good Benedict Ambrose you have married, who protects you from any self-destructive desire on your part to get involved with brilliant but weird men?"

Yes, there is B.A., and thank heavens for him. However I am reasonably sure I fell in love with B.A. because he did such a good imitation of brilliant but weird. Naturally I had googled him, and a former student had said online that  B.A. could take on ten wannabe philosophers at once and reduce them to ashes, so that meant brilliant. And then there was the constant playing of lute music, the manic grin and the proposing after ten days thing, which indicated weird. Also there was the photographic evidence that he spent his undergraduate days disguised as Lytton Strachey, a very weird person to resemble if you are as fond of women as B.A. is.  And then there are the puns. 

Someone or other decided that puns are the lowest form of humour, but each pun is a sort of simple riddle from which the hearer catches the double-meaning, notes how the pun overturns his expectations and reacts with laughs or groans. The pun creates a two-second carnival of nonsense. Brilliant but weird men are ringmasters in their own carnivals of nonsense. 

Because he is addicted both to puns and to serious reading, Benedict Ambrose will never bore me. Last week we had one of our very rare screaming fights, and it was about the nation-state. I have certainly had screaming fights with boring boyfriends, but they were never about the nation-state or anything particularly interesting. 

But happily B.A. is not actually weird. Brilliant but weird men don't usually have many friends, which I have discovered from dating brilliant but weird men, and B.A. has many friends. They tend to be clever, laugh at his puns and indulge in serious reading. Neither he nor his pals are sociopaths, which reminds me of an amusing exchange in "Sherlock" when a police officer calls Sherlock a psychopath, and Sherlock says "I'm not a psychopath, Anderson. I'm a high-functioning sociopath." I can't tell you how refreshing it was to hear one of them admit it. Serious catharsis here. 

It was a great breakthrough to realize that I became interested in men only when they showed evidence of being brilliant and weird, and my spiritual director thought this knowledge would be a great protection, but actually it is as much a protection against brilliant-and-weird as the knowledge that you have the measles protects you against the measles. If you're attracted to weirdos, knowing that you're attracted to weirdos doesn't automatically stop you from being attracted to weirdos. However, I suppose the knowledge prompts you to make an emergency appointment with your spiritual director when you meet a new one. 

I remember once only noticing a young man for the first time because he kept telling me I looked like a model. As I did not in the least look like a model, that was pretty weird. Also he had given up a brilliant career to become a male religious, and it is exceedingly weird for male religious to tell women we look like models. A young male religious telling a serious-minded female that she looks like a model is probably the psychological equivalent of a Pick Up Artist in a bar telling a glamour girl she looks like a dirty little snowflake. It's the shock value, and whether it is intended or unintended, it works on women like me.

It occurs to me, as I lie in bed writing,  for writing is an even better pain-killer than reading, that my friend Lily would point out that I too am brilliant but weird, as if this had anything to do with anything. Sadly, I am not brilliant at anything that makes great pots of money; I am just a moderately good conversationalist who is great at editing academic papers on a variety of subjects in a way that makes them  more comprehensible and less maddening for poor profs to read. I may be slightly weird, of course. 

But I don't think any quality of weirdness has ever helped me attract a man; keeping it under wraps has been the best policy. When B.A. fell in love with me I was demurely clad in a sky-blue shift dress and pearls, my mad hair tied tightly in a bun and my tendency to make frank and abrupt remarks silenced by an awful head-cold. I often think how lucky it is that I came down with that terrible cold, and that I brought a dress and pearls with me to Scotland. You must always bring a nice dress whenever you travel to see people; you never know if you might not be invited to a dinner party.  

Auntie Seraphic & Young NFP Fan

Ah, the things boys say. Here is a very good and useful letter from someone under 25, somewhat edited by me:

Dear Auntie Seraphic,

I am one of those readers who is at the age where my brain is not yet fully developed apparently, and so I think I would like to vent to you. I'm not really upset by this event, but I have dwelt on it somewhat so I ... just want you to confirm what I already thought. 

There's this NCB  I have known for a very long time...  He is a person I have a lot of respect for and [recently] we  talked about many different pro-life issues; [this] led into also mentioning NFP and NaPro technology. 

I have been diagnosed with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), and the only reason I know and am being treated is due to NFP so I'm very grateful. I don't fit the classic profile, so people wouldn't expect it and it would probably take the average doctor much longer to have figured this out. Obviously it's somewhat disconcerting to me but because of my station in life and the fact that I'm pretty young it's not something I worry about a lot. It's also not something I throw around to everyone, mostly because not many people like to hear about people's health issues, but I'm not embarrassed about it and I'm grateful for the knowledge.

So because it fit into the conversation we were having I mentioned my diagnosis and that I was able to know pretty quickly because of Creighton charting and was lucky to have done it. He didn't know what it was, and so I gave a brief explanation and mentioned that infertility is a possible factor. 

His response was jokingly "Maybe this is one more sign you're supposed to be a sister" (There is a running joke among my friends that I am meant to be a religious sister.) It didn't even register at the time but every once in awhile it still pops in my head a month later. 

I'm sure he has no idea it bothered me, but I'm not crazy that it did a little, right? God doesn't work like that even if I somehow do end up a sister. It might be a ways off, but I don't like to think I can't have babies or that this will deter men. Like I said, I'm sure he simply spoke without thinking but maybe you could just tell the eavesdroppers that women--at least a NCG-- doesn't ever like to hear that they would be bad mothers or may not be able to have kids which means God is telling them they should just enter [religious] life. 

I'm sorry because this must hit a bit of a nerve with you. You are in my prayers and you are an amazingly wonderful spiritual mother to us all. 

Blessings,

Young NFP Fan 

Dear NFP Fan,

As this happened a month ago, the NCB probably doesn't remember what he said. In fact, I bet he couldn't have remembered if you asked him about it half an hour later. My guess is that he said whatever just came into his head because he was embarrassed. (You will never know, though, as guaranteed he can't remember.) 

Teenage boys--and maybe boys in their very early 20s--think about sex all day long--they can't help it--sexual thoughts just flow through like a river through a river bed--so it really isn't a good idea to talk to them about your reproductive system. You're a girl. They're guys. You aren't interested in them, and maybe they're not interested in you, but sexy thoughts about you will pop into their heads anyway because they can't help it. And that will embarrass them.   

Meanwhile, the easiest and best way to keep boys from blurting out foolish remarks about what infertility might mean for you is NOT to tell them that you could be infertile. This is not information you should share with anyone except someone who is courting you for marriage [i.e. a boyfriend who loves you]. It is serious TMI.  

Will some boys be deterred if they think you are infertile? Yes, definitely. And as you are not, as far as you know, infertile, you really must not talk to boys or to gossipy girlfriends about your Polycystic Ovary Syndrome.

Does the fact that you have PCOS mean God wants you to be a nun? No, definitely not. Religious life is not where women go because they can't [i.e. might not be able to] have babies. Religious life is what women embrace when they are so excited about serving God, and making a whole gift to themselves to God, while living with a community of women who love God as much as they do. Fertility or infertility has nothing to do with it. God is not a eugenicist. 

I hope this is helpful.    

Grace and peace,

Seraphic 

***

By the way, it's not that adolescent brains are undeveloped, it's that they are rewiring themselves for adulthood. When you're a kid you have a really astute kid brain, and hopefully by the time you're an adult, you have an astute adult brain. But getting from kid brain to adult brain is a difficult journey over which teens have little control and can, incidentally, completely screw up with drugs and alcohol.

(I doubt my reader above is using drugs and alcohol, but I'm just throwing that in there because a recent Catholic school graduate back home, a habitual pot smoker, recently flipped out, pulled out his genitals and a knife on some girls on a streetcar, yelled obscenities at an armed policeman who raced to the scene, made a very ill-advised step forward and died in the proverbial hail of bullets.) 

One great life lesson is that young men are usually not as smart as young women about young women's feelings, unless they are gay or unusually manipulative. And, therefore, it is really not a good idea to tell young men super-sensitive stuff about anything--as young men themselves know. When I was in my late twenties, I told a male friend, an ex-boyfriend in fact, that I felt sad that I had never met Mr Right, he joked that I should give up and try women.

It wasn't that he was mean or stupid. In the five seconds before I got enough breath back to start crying, he began to apologize profusely. No, it was because he was a guy, and embarrassed, and to cover his embarrassment he told a joke. Ah ha ha.

Talking to men about super-personal stuff as if they were women opens you up to a world of hurt.  And, meanwhile, since men in the pro-life movement are the men who care most about babies, it is really, really, REALLY a bad idea to involve them in the drama of your own reproductive issues. Men gossip so much, and telling one guy that you have ovarian cysts could mean him telling any guy who asks him about you that you are actually infertile. Would you date a guy who was known for being sterile? Maybe you'd be okay with it at 40. Maybe not so much at 20.  

Aunt Seraphic Defends Discretion

Hello, dear poppets! I have returned from my week's holiday in England, where I had no internet access. It was the longest time I had gone without internet access in over ten years. Instead of going crazy, I constantly wrote in my diary while people around me looked uneasy and asked if I were going to write a book about the trip. Ah ha ha ha!

Occasionally I thought about my last post and whether it had been totally responsible and whether anyone would be as mad as a snake that I didn't open the combox to cheers and rebuttals. However, there is always my email and I came back to many emails. If I haven't answered yours already, send it again. I deleted a lot of stuff--accidental bank drafts worth half a million pounds and all that sort of thing.

Someone wrote a very intelligent email about my parting remarks about not publicizing your sexual sins. To sum up, she suggested A) that you can use them to warn fellow women and B) that telling a suitor about some murky action or episode in your past was a good way of testing whether or not he is an angry, judgmental type. If he ditches you for your all-too-human sexual peccadilloes--"Begone, Scarlet Woman, fallen spawn of Satan!"--that just goes to show you're better off without him.

Well, maybe. I think there are safer and faster ways of determining if a man is an angry, judgmental type than telling him your deepest, darkest secrets. And also there are some very good people, very good and gentle people, who just cannot handle your deepest, darkest secrets and so it is best that you not burden them with them unless or until you absolutely have to, e.g. your dearest friend come weeping to you about something terrible she or he did that you have done, too. Oh, and to foil the machinations of blackmailers.    

This is a nasty world, and even (or especially) religious enemies will try to take you down via your sex life, real or imagined. I will not dignify (or endanger) him with a link, but one of our brothers in Christ, who condemned me as a feminist heretic in trad's clothing, salivated over my blog, looking for clues that Auntie S is not as pure as the driven snow. He published his excited suspicions on his soi-disant Catholic blog. I was pretty mad, but I would have been a lot madder had I not a husband and at least one brother who now wants to go to his house and thump him.

Here is my response to your fellow reader:

Dear Reader,

Your past is your past. You own it, and you can tell people about it or not as you choose. Many women, however, think they owe the world--or men they date--complete access to their past in a spirit of "keeping it real." So first of all, I am trying to encourage young women to keep what is theirs, theirs. 

Second, people do judge us on our past sins, even sincere Christians who know they shouldn't judge. (The world judges mercilessly.) We have no control over what people choose to do with the information we give them, or how they feel about us once they have it.  [So we really do have to be careful.]

Third, men are extremely visual, and many (most?) of them have a hair-trigger sexual imagination. They simply do not like to imagine their sweethearts with other men, but they almost can't help it, if they are told about it. This is too bad, and I hope they can get over this without at the same time losing their instinctual protectiveness for women they admire. I think "getting over it" most probable in a man who has discovered himself head-over-heels in love with a woman and couldn't care less what she has done in the past, as long as she loves him back. 

Fourth, this tendency of being disturbed by the idea of women-one-knows as sexual sinner is going to be most likely among religiously conservative men, especially if they grow up fearing and resenting sexual sin. Pro-lifer activists I have met have been like that,  probably because sexual sin leads so often to ab*rti*n. I have never forgotten an otherwise very sweet pro-life teenage colleague, who adored both his mother and his sister, saying to me, "There's a difference between a slut and a Sunday School teacher." 

Fifth, I firmly believe men take their cues about a woman from other men. Men who hear Sally-Sue say "Men use me and dump me" are most likely to conclude (if only subconsciously) "Sally-Sue is the kind of woman we use and dump." But men who hear Sally-Sue say "Men treat me like a princess; they're so nice to me!" are most likely to conclude, "Sally-Sue is the kind of woman we compete for." 

For all these reasons, I think it is dangerous for a Single woman--and possibly a married woman, too--to use episodes of sexual sin from her life as a teaching method. It strikes me that it would be much safer if she were to write a novel about it. My guess is that many a truth-embracing novel has inspired women not to make the same mistakes as the heroine. Heck, I have never touched cocaine because of a character who died the first time she tried it in the Sweet Valley High stories. 

There are safer ways to test whether or not a man is a judgmental son-of-a-gun. [Just listen to how he talks about others, particularly women.] And, of course, the longer you know a man, the more likely he is to see you as you and not as his image of you-- angel, feminist, devil, or whomever--so the longer  a woman can hold off sharing the darker spots of her past the better. 

And this might indeed take discipline because for whatever reason, many women seem to want to confess to the men they love, either to test the bounds of their unconditional love (which I am not sure men have for their wives, anyway--their mothers, yes), or to feel "forgiven." However, only God can give that kind of all-healing forgiveness; we cannot find it in men. 

I hope this is a helpful explanation of my "don't tell" policy!

Grace and peace,

Seraphic 

Let's Tell Men What to Wear

How much if you throw in the lot?

Kidding! I'm just kidding. I belong to the "Accept them as you find them, or leave 'em alone" school of thought. That title was just to spark a discussion about what we like men to wear. I suspect men are interested in what women like them to wear even though if we told them what to wear they would get all mulish, like a ten year old who has decided he is old enough not to have to listen to his mother's opinion on the topic anymore. And fair enough.

But I think it sad that clothes are so ugly now. Last night B.A. and I went out to see  Du Rififi Chez Les Hommes, a French film noir of 1955, and I was charmed by how, even on their way to a heist, the French crooks wore snappy suits. The street scenes of Paris showed every man, young or old, in a smart suit and every woman, young or old, similarly well-turned out.

Where did you get that hat?

Okay, sure. The crooks walloped their ex-mistresses or slapped their wives on their behinds and said "Run along now, chérie." I'm not holding up the Paris Underworld of 1955 as some sort of model society. But their clothes were better than ours.

This is what I was thinking as our double-decker bus stopped at stop after stop, and I looked down (literally) on the crowds of people in black, grey and denim blue jackets, sweats, jeans. Urgh.

Fortunately, this is Scotland, and here many men choose to wear kilts to sporting events. Unless they were bought for £20 by a tourist in a tartan tat shop or worn without socks, kilts are inherently smart, even with a rugby shirt. A guy who goes to a rugby game in a kilt, knee socks and rugby shirt or (better) cable-knit pullover is infinitely better dressed than 99% of the men who don't.

Also infinitely better dressed than the average guy at an Edinburgh bus stop is a Young Fogey in tweed. No matter how wild the neuroses and opinions of a Young Fogey become, at least he presents a pleasant appearance.

Feel free to tell the men of the world via my combox what they should wear. They can't see you, so they may actually pay attention. Continuing this week's "let's praise men" theme, emphasize the great outfits you've seen men wearing.

Now Let Us Praise Good Men Again

Recently the shipment of my library arrived at the Historical House, and after B.A. put together four bookcases, I began to take the books out of their boxes. Oh, my little beauties!

One of the books is super-trashy, the sort of book you would hide from your mother if you had it, even if it did not constitute an occasion for sin for you, and I found it on a sale table for something like $2. But the thing is, this book contains splendid advice on getting along with men. (What a hoot!) And so it has strongly influenced how I get along with men, even though there are parts of this book I cannot read in good conscience and I am now hiding it from B.A.  As we graduates of Jesuit schools like to say about the weirdest stuff, "God in all things!"

The first message of this amusing-and-useful-but-shameful book is that in order to get along with men, you must repeat a mantra in your head, the first part being "Men are wonderful" and the second being "I am wonderful." The book's premise is that if you convince yourself of these beliefs, men will flock to you. If you truly believe not only that men are fabulous, but that you are fabulous and fun, attractive and clever, says this book, then men will also think that you are fabulous and fun, attractive and clever.  And speaking as a woman who is fabulous and fun, attractive and clever, I think Amusing-If-Shameful Book Lady has a point.

Complaining about men is an enjoyable female hobby, mostly because coming to a consensus makes groups of women feel cozy and knitted together, supported, loved and understood. Also, not only can you get high on remembered disappointment and rage, everyone listening to your story can get high on it too. Anyone who was ever actually jilted at the altar could dine out on it. Then her hostesses to say to other women, "You know, I once met a woman who actually WAS jilted at the altar." ("No! Really?" "Yes, she was actually, right there, in the church, in her wedding dress, and the organist played Pachebel's "Canon in D", like, six times before he called it quits.")

However, complaining about men (says Useful-if-Trashy-Book-Lady) is bad for your inner man magnet. She doesn't provide advice about how to not get sucked into complaining about men at a women's complaint-about-men fest, but I recommend saying, "I'm not going to say anything bad about men because I don't want to mess up my inner man magnet." This will turn the conversation to what an inner man magnet may be.

The easiest way to stop complaining about men is to find some very nice men to hang out with. For example, when I went to theology school, I met some really great men. They were mostly male religious, aged 28 to 90, but that didn't matter. What mattered was that they were really great. They were clever, devout, interesting, friendly and on a mission from God.

And, although, yes, life still threw a rat or two in my path, after my stint in theology school, I met other great men, men who reminded me at least slightly, or on a subconscious level, of the great guys in theology school. My ex-boyfriend Volker, for example, whom I dated when I was in Boston, was definitely of the Great Guys at Theology School calibre. And I ended dating on a high note because of course some time after we broke up, I met B.A.

I am now tempted to ponder whether I should have been taken out of my elementary school, to get me away from all the baby rats before they gave me a negative attitude towards men, but that would be complaining about men, and potentially mess up my inner man magnet, which I need to keep B.A. happy, so I will focus on good men.

As far as I know, all the men I have met in Scotland are great. Scotland itself has quite the violent crime rate, so this is not because Scotland is an earthly paradise (except in terms of scenery and historical houses). I think it is because my inner compass has been set to "Good Guys like Jesuit Pals and B.A.," so firmly that I can't even see the bad guys. And, actually, if B.A. or any of our friends says something egregiously naughty, I almost never hear it. I know someone has said something, but that's it. Along with selective good-guy vision, I have selective good-guy hearing.

Cynical eavesdroppers will suggest that this is because I work from home and the only men I meet are at church. But this is not true, for I have also met some of my husband's non-church friends, and they are also great guys. And I have also met friends of church friends at parties and events, and they also seem to be great guys. The very workmen who come into the Historical House to look for bats or examine the pipes or test the appliances seem to be great guys or, since I never really have proper conversations with them, nice men. The only bona fide, proven lousy guys I have had to deal with in Scotland were (A) a big group of probably drunk foreigners who snatched at my friend and grabbed my head (Mendy!) and B) two probably drunk locals who objected to my coat (fur) and my hat (posh and Tory-looking).

But I refuse to end this post with lousy guys, so I will recall the carpark after Mass this week, positively thronging with good men, aged 24 to 65, festooned with tweed and pin-striped suits, colourful ties, audacious pocket squares and interesting socks. Positively scrumptious, my dears. Now go and write about how marvellous men are in the combox.

Maybe They're Called GENTLEmen For a Reason

Once upon a time, the "gentle" in "gentleman" meant that a man came from the upper classes. Later, especially in more democratic America, "gentleman" came to mean a man who was friendly, obliging, thoughtful and polite.

As I don't understand Korean, I have no idea what the pop star Psy means by "gentleman." His video for "Gentleman" illustrates a goodly number of pranks no gentleman should ever do. The stunt with the treadmill was particularly mean and dangerous.

However, the appearance of the portly pop star on MTV is my big treat when I am on the treadmill at the gym, so here is his silly video. As there is much clothed-yet-lewd behaviour with telephone poles, it is not safe for little brothers. (Actually, nothing in this video is safe for little brothers, since Psy acts like the world's naughtiest 10-year-old.) The Korean dancing girls are less trampily dressed than the usual women who wiggle across the TV screen, though.

Update: I had a look and although the lyrics--I have a hard time hearing lyrics without having read them-- are not entirely innocent, he is singing "I'm a mother-father-gentleman."

A Boy's House

I saw Ibsen's A Doll's House on the stage yesterday evening and feel wrung out. I had read the play and heard all about it in one or more of my university courses, but I had never seen it staged. I hadn't realized how incredibly offensive Torvald is. Of course, I had never been married when I studied the play.

The version I saw was set in Edwardian London, and it was only incidentally amusing that Edwardian London seems to have been populated by Scots. Torvald had been renamed Thomas and given the post of a Cabinet Minister. I'm not sure about renaming one of the most famously pompous husbands in world literature, but it made sense to put him in the Cabinet. I'm a little vague on the restrictions placed upon women who wanted to borrow money (essential to the plot) in Edwardian Britain, but I am willing to imagine they were not so different from those of Ibsen's Norway of 1879.

Ibsen was a genius, of course, and part of his genius was seeing things from women's point of view at a time when most men seemed psychologically incapable of doing that. Ibsen shook off any accusations (or praise) of feminism by saying that in Nora he was describing humanity. (Or so says wikipedia.) Well, good on Ibsen for noticing that a woman is a human being before she is anything else.  One can imagine Ibsen listening to a man roguishly teasing his wife about how much of his money she must have spent on Christmas tree decorations and wondering how the wife must feel. ("If it were me," I imagine Ibsen imagining, "I would want to punch him.")

Torvald (or, in this version, Thomas) is exactly the kind of man who gives his wife a hard time about how much money she has spent on Christmas tree decorations. He has no clue that his wife is actually an extraordinary good saver because (for reasons of the plot) she cannot tell him this. And because she knows what she knows, she puts up with his tsk-tsking with very good grace.

In fact, Nora spends her marriage pretending to be something she is not and is assisted in this by Torvald, who is happy to strut about, talk down to her and say such things as "You have no idea how important I really am" and "I own you." It is very important to Torvald that his wife be a sexy simpleton, and loyal Nora does her best to look like one. And, indeed, she is indeed simple in some ways: you become what you do, after all. She believes her husband loves her--after all, he keeps telling her he does--and he certainly finds her sexually attractive, and she has a gift for pretending and hiding, so she copes. And if she couldn't cope, every women in her society would assure her that of course she's not as stupid as her husband makes her out to be.

I'm trying not to put plot spoilers in here, so I will just say that Nora's big mistake is taking Torvald at his own estimation. Their family friend Doctor Rank tells her that Torvald is just a little boy at heart, and I think this is true. There is something stunted about Torvald--instead of acting like an intelligent, adult man, he acts like a boy pretending to be a man: lording it over his wife in a pompous way while completely wrapped up in his own interests, his own problems, his own friends, his own desires, and his own importance. He is also, as we discover, childishly spiteful.

Men so often exasperate women that I have counselled before that when we feel deeply resentful of them, we should try to imagine what they were like as babies or little boys. This is a variation on the "Bless their little hearts" strategy, and it's meant to get us in touch with that compassionate part of us that is also our greatest strength: motherhood. No-one on earth has as much power, emotional or physical, than a mother over her child. And no doubt that is why men really hate it when the wrong women attempt to "mother" them.

Still, I suppose it is hard to see men your own age as boys, and it is frustrating to find yourself stuck with a boy when you would rather be with a man. One of the good things about getting older is that the men my own age have had more time to grow up. Another good thing is that I see twenty-somethings from a completely different perspective. It is easier to see and remember that under the protective shell of adult masculinity, many of them are still boys with a lot to learn. And it is easier to love them for it. Twenty-something girls want twenty-something boys to be great husband-and-boyfriend material. Forty-something women just want twenty-somethings to have good manners and be reasonably amusing. Thank heavens young men are usually attracted to young women; if they weren't cougars would corner the market.

Plot spoilers ahead:

Nora's tragedy was that she was not mature enough to forgive Torvald  and accept him for the boy he still was. Her ultimate attitude was that of the teacher who flees the nastiest child in her classroom when the bell rings. Torvald's tragedy is that he did his utmost to treat Nora as a child, which prevented her from growing up enough to help him grow up. And as I once was Nora, I know what I'm talking about. The great mercy is that when I slammed the door, there weren't any real children on the other side of it.

Asks for Number, Doesn't Call

It is one of those mysteries of Single Life. Why do men ask women for their phone numbers and then not call them?

My guess is "The goldfish."

Recently I skimmed a news article on a goldfish who had lost its roommate (bowl-mate?) of 30 years. The article assured us readers not to worry about the survivor's grief: the goldfish memory is only 5 seconds long.

Some men, especially cute, happy-go-lucky, friendly men, are like goldfish.  "Hey, you're pretty! What's your number? Cool! I'll call ya. Hey, YOU'RE pretty! What's your number? I'll call ya!" At the time they are absolutely 100 % sincere. They honestly believe they are going to call you because right at that moment they want to call you. But then they forget as soon as another pretty face swims into view or as soon as they have slept off their hangover.

I believe it was Greg of He's Just Not That Into You who was refused a phone number by a woman who said she was tired of giving her phone number to men who didn't call. She said something like "My surname is Cupertino. If you really want to call me, find me in the phone book." Stung, poor old Greg called up every last Cupertino (or whatever) in the phone book until he found the girl. This is because Greg really, really, wanted to call that girl.

Another reason I think men ask for phone numbers is that they think they should as a polite gesture. It could be the man equivalent of you saying to another woman, "Oh my gosh! We should have coffee some time!" when what you mean is that it might kinda sorta be nice to have coffee some time, or it would be nice if you really did wish to have coffee some time. (If non-British, non-American, non-Canadian readers have no idea what I am talking about, you should understand that a lot of Anglo-Saxon social life is made smooth by what we call little white lies. It's almost a genetic disease. Having read St. Augustine on lying, I can't stand it, but I probably do it.)

Asking for phone numbers could also be a form of social insurance. For example, the guy may be thinking, "If tomorrow I remember this girl, it would be helpful if I had her number already." The operative word here is "If."

For the record, this is not about you. This is most definitely about them. A man will forget about meeting a woman who looks like Cindy Crawford if his subconscious has long been in thrall to women who look like Ava Gardner, or his kindergarten teacher, or his first babysitter, or his first girlfriend. Sure, he will acknowledge that the Cindy Lookalike is cute when she's right there in front of him, but after she's gone, it's Ava as usual. He'll just about kill himself to see an Ava-type again, even if he has no idea why.

***
That reminds me. I should write a whole post on this, but what do you think of going to events celebrating a famous singer, actress, writer, et alia, whom you resemble? Of course not many of us look like film stars, but say you are a dead ringer for the young Ayn Rand. Would it not make sense for you, despite not being a Randian yourself, to check out the local Objectivists' club?  The drawback , of course, would be meeting men whose beliefs might be entirely and uncomfortably different from yours. Still, I think it an amusing idea. And what could be more charming to some bloodthirsty Objectivist than a woman who looks exactly like Anne Rand asking him to explain Objectivism to her? Or to a Rita Hayworth fan than discovering himself beside a red-headed girl in the intermission between Hayworth films?

When She Chooses Him Over You

Here's one of the most painful facts of female existence. There are women who will put their latest romantic/sexual relationship before any other consideration in life: before their friends, before their children, before their jobs, before their marriages, before their health, before their sanity.

Sexual infatuation is a drug, and some women become addicts. Other women are just--well--ordinary human women. Most women naturally want a special man in their lives and make him their Number One priority. Marriage is supposed to make this tendency a safe, good one.

But it does hurt at least a little when your best friend falls in love or gets married. Quite obviously she loves some guy better than you, even if she has known you for twenty years and him for six months. Whoa. Ouch. Life.

If you are under twenty-five, the tendency of women to privilege some man over their female friends may come as a shock to you. If you are over twenty-five, you may have noticed this already. If you are over thirty, you're probably used to it. Life--you know? (Shrug.) Whadayagonnado?

Pop music is full of wonderful songs about "men come and go, but sisterhood is forever." It's a lovely idea, but come on. Although women don't usually compete with each other with the same bloodthirsty gusto as men, women do indeed compete with each other, and if it has something to do with a man... Whew! Look out. Even the nicest, kindest, women-loving women can go crazy with jealous rage.

But I should stress that not all women battle or compete much or often over men. One of the most annoying things about being a Single woman is going to a party of married couples where the Married women act like a you are a vixen in the hen-house just because you are having a conversation with one of the Married men. I should also stress that not all Married women are like that, either, although few things annoy Married me more socially than watching a Single woman chase any man around a party. "Sit still, woman," I think. "If he wants to talk to you, he'll talk to you."

But I'm not really thinking about the occasional social unpleasantness between the Married and the Single. I'm thinking about young women discovering that they have been displaced in their girlfriends' affections by their girlfriends' boyfriends. I am especially thinking about the young lady whose friend is now dating her ex-boyfriend.

Treason, we howl. Treason! How dare she? How can she be on his side, let alone at his side? AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!

Really, it hurts. It really, really hurts. But it happens. And only if you are really lucky will she discuss it with you first. She is much more likely to sneak around or lie about it because she doesn't want to hurt you or feel like a bad friend, etc., etc.

So what do you do? Well, there are a number of things you might do.

First, admit to yourself and God that you feel betrayed and disrespected and even disbelieved, if you told your friend that your ex-boyfriend is a rat-fiend from hell.

Second, admit to yourself and God that as you fell for the guy, you know better than anyone how easy might have been for your friend for fall for the guy.

Third, ponder the faults of your ex, and feel compassion for your friend because now she has to deal with them. Pray for her. Go talk to a good priest about it all.

Fourth, draw some boundaries for yourself and for her. Her love life is her love life. You don't have any right to know what she does with her love life, and she has no right to impose her love life on you. If you don't want her to talk to you about Scooter, say "Because Scooter is my ex-boyfriend, I don't feel comfortable talking about Scooter." If you don't want Scooter in your place, tell your friend that as much as you care about her and want her to be happy, you don't want your ex-boyfriend in your place. She, of course, is always welcome.

This is not forcing your friend to "choose between her friend and her man"--that staple of so many boring and painful high school and college dorm dramas. This is you choosing to remain friends with your friend, but not being forced to have a relationship with her boyfriend.

It's a tricky situation, one that calls for compassion, patience and strength. Friends respect their friends' boundaries, so if the girl who is dating your ex still wants to be your friend, she must respect your boundaries: if you don't want him in your living space, or to have to talk about him, then you must say so as kindly yet firmly as possible, and she must respect that. And you must respect that her love life is her business, not yours. It is not for you to complain about to mutual friends, and you can't tell her what to do or not to do.

Fifth, allow yourself to grieve a little--in private or with someone paid or trained to keep their mouths shut. The juiciness of "Mary's dating Anne's ex-boyfriend, and Anne is totally gutted" is too much of a temptation for the average college student not to share. "Mary's dating Anne's ex-boyfriend, and Anne seems totally cool with it" is not only a million times classier, it's too boring for others to want to talk about much.

It may be that you will never see your friend in the same light again. I know. And that's sad, and maybe she dreads that, but truth is what is, as Saint Thomas Aquinas taught. Forgive her and also remember that you have other friends. She wasn't put on this earth to be your Lifelong Special Confidante; you probably have other women in your life to confide in, women who won't tell your ex what you said about this or that. (Another newsflash: women often talk to our boyfriends and husbands about what our friends did or said unless doing so feels like real betrayal.) Meanwhile, continue to do whatever girl-time stuff you could still enjoy together: studying, watching films, going dancing, baking a cake, organizing mass pedicure parties, messing around with chemistry sets, electric guitars or fabric scraps.

So. Compassion. Boundaries. Forgiveness. Adjusting. And hope.

***
Help B.A. support his colonial wife's unpaid-blogging lifestyle by pre-ordering Seraphic's Ceremony of Innocence today! 

Guarding Your Heart

I found an email this morning asking for practical tips on how to guard your hearts. Guarding one's heart, this reader suggests, is really hard when guys seem to show some cautious interest and then do not follow up.

That sounded very familiar to me because I come from one of those towns where Cautious seems to be every man's middle name. I know a Latina who got very depressed after moving to my hometown in Canada because men didn't seem to notice her anymore, and of course I am always charmed in Italy when seventeen year old boys roll their eyes at me and say "Bellissima!"  Complete nonsense, but flattering nonsense, especially when you're 39+.

Anyway, my heart-guarding advice can be divided into having a good defense and a good offense.

The good defense is 1. being rooted in reality. This means constantly telling yourself the truth about some guy you like, even (especially) if that truth is just that you don't even know him. It is just so easy to fixate on a handsome face and make up a story to go along with it. Not that I was fixated on him, but my shock when I first heard David Beckham's voice---!

Sad to say, the only proof that a guy is that into you is that he figures out a way to spend a lot of time with you in person, and not for free therapy, either. If all he wants to do on what you thought was a coffee date is talk about your beautiful best friend, then he's not into you. And why bother thinking all day long about a man who would prefer your friend to you, anyway?

If you really cannot stop yourself from thinking obsessively about some guy, then I recommend that you give him a fake name and write outrageously adventurous or romantic stories about him. This is better than mooning about for it is productive and will underscore the difference between fact and fiction.

Meanwhile 2. don't tell people your secrets, m'kay? Don't try to speed up intimacy (by which I mean a deep, soulful, meeting of hearts) by telling new friends or crush objects or your date The Whole Truth About You, Warts and All.  Your secrets and deepest feelings are precious, and there will be emotional payback if you share them with the wrong people or even with the right people too soon. You should approach all first and second dates as if your happiness depended on projecting that you are happy and confident and your life is practically perfect and no man has ever done you wrong, and (if you are asked about him) your ex-boyfriend was a great guy; you just had different goals.

The good offense is 1. light flirtation. Light flirtation means acting and speaking as if you are a fun, confident person who isn't afraid of men, thinks they are awesome and loves a good joke.

I belong firmly in the Don't Chase Men School of Thought, but this doesn't mean I don't belong to the Reel Him In School. Actually, when you think about it, there is the Hunting Him Down School--for "modern women"--and the Fishing School--for "trads."

I recommend the Fishing School. You go where the fish are, wearing fishing lure colours, sit quietly and stealthily, and when a fish comes slouching along and says "Hey," you reel him in with your smile, your sense of humour, and your other-centeredness. Other-centeredness means that when you talk to somebody, you are 100% conscious of your audience and the effect your conversation is having on him. It means noticing, for example, that he is wearing a sharp tie, and saying, "Hey, sharp tie!"  You cannot sit like a lump; now is the time to shine. Fake it till you make it.

The late Queen Mother was apparently an absolute genius at being able to talk to everyone in a crowded room while giving each and every one the impression that he was the one she had come to see. This quality is called charm, and I think it a very useful quality to have.

Now, it was pointed out to me in my last year of Singleness that I only ever flirted with people that I was obviously never going to go out with, e.g. my female friends and elderly Irish priests. Flirtation when you are Single is like a high-wire act without a net, but I suppose one needs to be bold--and to pretend we don't care what happens if we tell the guy we've had a crush on for six months that he has beautiful eyes. (For the record, I think that is okay as long as you don't contact him afterwards. By the way, if his friend should afterwards sneakily ask you what you think of him, say you think he is a great guy--"Why do you ask?")

Meanwhile, once you have chatted lightly and brightly with your fish, you must let him go and go on your way, forgetting all about him until he swims into view again. Easier said than done, I know. If it's any comfort, this gets easier with practice and age. Practice on the guy behind the counter at Starbucks.

Guarding your heart does not mean looking and acting like an icicle. It means staying rooted in reality and dealing with men as they are and not as who you would like them, or fear them, to be. It means not filling your head with stuff you make up but with facts. It means not forcing deep, soulful conversations or telling your secrets to the wrong people or too soon. Paradoxically, it also means unleashing your inner Scarlett O'Hara--talking to men as if they are delightful, amusing people whom you are lucky to know but don't take too seriously. In short, project happiness and confidence, even if you have to fake it, which we all do at least some of the time. People like happy, confident people.

And don't call them. Let them call you. If they don't call you, forget them. Men generally show what they want to do by doing it. Simples.

Those Confusing Foreign Guys

We are nearing the end of the Seraphapalooza questions, and have come to the question about dealing  with confusing foreign guys. What a treat! So exciting and so much to say! Where do I even begin?

I shall begin by saying that although everyone is unique, everyone belongs to a culture and all men are men. Therefore, although everyone is unique, everyone, consciously or unconsciously, acts according to what is normal for their culture and all men are going to be extremely influenced by their masculinity. Migrants can become bi-cultural, and how successful we are at this has something to do with our age. As a mid-life migrant to Scotland, I will always sound Canadian, but I no longer worry I am now surrounded by alcoholics.  

Social life is all about encountering people who are different from you and trying to get along with them anyway. This is particularly challenging, however, when they are so different because A) they are men and B) they are foreigners--real foreigners, born in a country different from your country.  Perhaps they are visiting your country. Perhaps you are visiting their country. Perhaps they are recent  immigrants. Perhaps you are the recent immigrant. At any rate, you and they may have different social expectations. You may have have radically different senses of humour and radically different senses of what is appropriate. My very first boyfriend of the "would you consider marrying me" variety was from the Middle East. He once shocked the stuffing out of me by glaring at an oblivious stranger on the Toronto subway and hissing, "Jewishhhhh....!" 

Yeah. 

Poor old Aziz worked in a hotel and got hit on a lot by women guests, apparently, and so had a very one-sided view of what Canadian women were like. He was greatly surprised that eighteen year old Canadian Seraphic was a lot more like young women in his country than like the women he had met in my country. In retrospect that must have been nice for him although personally I got tired of having to give him The Talk over and over again. Also in retrospect, he might have found The Talk reminiscent of home, too. It probably led to the marriage proposal, to which I replied "We'll see," but even at eighteen I was not so confident Muslim-Catholic marriages are a recipe for happiness. 

But I digress, and the point of that anecdote is to illustrate that foreign guys have ideas about the women of your country that may have been caused by actual sexual encounters with women of your country (or po*n produced there). And this is why I heartily recommend dressing like women in whatever country you may be visiting, so as not to stand out too much from local women. (I don't mean national costumes: I mean the actual reality of what women of your age and education wear.) In your own country or in conversations abroad,  I recommend firmly arguing against whichever misconceptions foreign men may have about you based on what they have heard about or experienced in your country. Just because foreigners have heard Swedish schools have sex education programs that would make our heads explode does not mean Swedish girls are easy.  

[Update: Other men will just proceed according to how women are like in their country. I remember being chatted up after Mass by a Latin American, who took me out on a very job-interview like date at a doughnut shop. I never saw him again until we accidentally met on one of his subsequent trips to the doughnut shop. This time he was with a young woman who looked rather like me. Of course, I have no evidence, but I think he was simply doing what we wish all Catholic boys would do, and simply picking girls out from girls who go to Mass and taking them to doughnut shops for a coffee to see if we were marriageable. Ah ha ha ha! Okay, it is also funny, but good for him. ]

This reminds me that most of us know very little about foreign cultures and mindsets, and I have discovered that one of the best ways of figuring them out--because we don't usually know enough to know which questions to ask the foreign guy before us--is to read travel guides, particularly the travel guides for business people. I hasten to add that these guides are about REAL foreigners, and not the fifth generation Japanese-American you have a crush on. A fifth generation Japanese-American is not Japanese but American.  Same goes for the second generation Polish-Canadian--not 2013 Polish, just Canadian with perhaps some 1980s conceptions of Polishness. The guides may be helpful in the case of young men who have just migrated, and I believe they most definitely are when it comes to foreign students and tourists. 

Another source of information, and quite hilarious information, too, can be found on our dear friend the internet, as adventurous English-speaking girls cut a swath through the men of the world and publish their findings online. If you are lucky, you will find a long comment stream of the reflections of outraged English-speaking foreign men underneath. Here is a very funny Der Spiegel article I read years ago on the subject of German men. It is not exhaustive, believe me. 

(Seraphic's Number One Tip about German men, gleaned from experience and conversations with Foreign Girlfriends of Germans after German class: never say anything bad about Germany. No matter how much a German man complains about Germany--and they do--never agree. Tell him all the things you love about Germany and don't budge. Germany=perfection. Then you'll get along with German men.)

People often behave very oddly on holiday, which they often see as a suspension from reality. And this is why you must be careful about men on holiday you meet in your own cities, and about men you meet when you are on holiday. My best friend in high school was seized by an elevator boy  when she was on the school trip to Turkey. She was only 16 or so, and since the elevator boy was cute and she didn't know what else to do, she made out with him in the elevator. She also got at least one marriage proposal from a waiter. Men who work in service jobs in Egypt, Turkey and other such places are often absolutely desperate to get out and they see female tourists as tickets to earthly paradise, so watch it. 

Meanwhile, some vacation hotspots in the Mediterranean, like the Greek islands, have contests regarding which man has managed to bed the most foreign women that season. Now, if hordes of middle-aged German and British women throw themselves at local men when they are on holiday, imagine young Frenchmen, young Germans, young Irishmen, et alia, when they come to your town. So don't get snookered by a cute accent.  

Of course you will occasionally fall in love on holiday. Come to think of it, that is why I am married now. However, most of the time holiday romances are very short and trying to spin them out past one's departure date just an exercise in frustration. It's much better just to honour the happy memory of a holiday romance and possibly to write a book about it. That reminds me, I just got a postcard from Volker. 

Finally, foreign students. Ah, foreign students.  I once was a foreign student, and most of the time I hated it, although that was because I was a Canadian in the USA, which is completely unlike any other kind of foreignness, unless it is like being Austrian or Swiss in Germany. (I loved being a foreign student in Germany.)  To understand men who are foreign students, it is wise to consult, not only businessmen's guide to social etiquette abroad, but the university literature for foreign students telling them how they may be feeling. Foreign students go through a long and painful psychological thing. 

It is a bad idea to ask foreign students who have been in your country for only six months if they are planning to settle in your country. At six months, the foreign student may be in the grip of homesickness and culture shock and get angrier than he might later at the  very idea that he would give up his own beloved nation for your slum of hamburger-munchers. There really is no reason to ask such a question until you are actually dating and, frankly, I have a lot more hope for European Union relationships working out than transatlantic ones. Europe is a small place and European travel relatively inexpensive. The same goes for Canadian-American relationships, since Canadians and Americans have border-hopping in the blood and most Canadians live within 200 km of the American border. 

I could go on forever, but I don't think the nerves of all my foreign guy eavesdroppers can take much more, so I shall stop now. The one thing I will add, since I married a Foreign Guy, is that B.A, who is Scottish, and I, who have a third-generation Scottish-Canadian mother, have distinct cultural ISSUES that we are still working out. It turns out that anglophone Canadians really do still have a distinct culture after all.  Now, to the combox! 

Like a Brother

One of the questions asked at Seraphapalooza concerned girls who act imprudently towards a man because "he's like my brother!"

This was one of the more disapproving questions, i.e. one obviously about Other Girls and not about the questioners, so I will proceed carefully. For one thing, many girls and guys do indeed have "brother-sister" relationships which they both acknowledge. Sometimes when a girl says "he's like my brother", the para-brother is all smiles and quick to assure any other pretty girl around that "she's like my sister."

He's only like your brother if he thinks you are like his sister.  And unless he has actually told you (or other women) that you are like a sister, you aren't. You are a potential mate. (Oh, how exciting to write the words "potential mate" at 9:36 in the morning. That should wake everyone up.)

And, therefore, if you do not have a scrap of romantic interest in some guy, it is not kind to shriek "Snuggles!" and throw yourself in his arms unless he thinks you are "like his sister" or his heart is covered in rawhide. It is also not kind to wander about him in a state of partial undress or, if he has no wife or girlfriend, to pour your heart out to him about your man troubles. 

Because I can hear Alisha's shrieks of protest from afar, I will acknowledge that the entertainment community is incredibly huggy and kissy and snuggly and, for all I know, whole casts of musicals cuddle down under a duvet together to watch "A Star is Born" on TV. But I don't think this is such a great idea for anyone else. I realize that I am ruining the fun for various Catholic guys who think actually it would be great to cuddle with a whole lot of girls under a duvet watching TV, as long as another guy didn't touch them by accident, but too bad. I live in the UK, where no guy but my husband ever hugs me, so I have no time for your polygamous duvet yearnings. 

In short, just because a girl thinks a guy is (or should be) as sexless as a muppet doesn't mean he actually is, so take care and have some respect. This does not mean creeping about in fear because some innocent soul will be damned to hell if he sees your knees. It mostly means not rubbing up against a guy like a cat and then dashing his erotic hopes by saying, "Oh, but you're like my brother!"

For the record, I have a super-formal Anglo-Saxon family, and the adults hug about twice a year. If I laid my head on one of my brothers' shoulders, he would think there was something seriously wrong with me. Meanwhile, if in close quarters and scantily clad, we wrap ourselves in long Afghan blankets crocheted by my mother which trail behind us like the more dramatic togas. I never got why brother = super-casual affectionate behaviour, but I realize families are different.

Another Glimpse into Hell

I want to get this over with as soon as possible. In short, a reader sent me a link into the black heart of the manosphere to read a post on seducing virgins. It was simply the most disgusting thing I have read for a very long time. It was like listening to the chuckling of demons.

My response was to thank God that, so far as I know, I know only decent men, good men who would never target, trick, hurt, exploit and discard young, inexperienced women and then brag about it online. 

Your fellow reader thought someone should expose the tactics of these freaks, which work along the same lines as negging. Frankly, I don't even want to think about them, but I'll do it because it fills me with horror that such men exist and of course they get away with such things. One of the men in the combox claimed he was operating in Poland. He was amazed at how many 20 year old virgins there are in Poland. I hope he is caught by Polish guys and beaten within an inch of his life.

So here are the tactics. (I'm certainly not linking to the post!) By the way, I would like to remind you for about the twelfth time that you should not tell anyone except your mother, doctor, confessor (if necessary) and your fiance, if you have one, if you are a virgin or not. Do not bring it up in conversation with your female friends because there is a strong chance they will talk about it later, perhaps around male friends, who will tell their male friends...

The Demons' Tactics:

1. Express disappointment that the girl is a virgin. The freak author goes on and on to his victim about how he's only into "fun sex" and how sex with virgins is such a drag.  (I assume this is to shock and confuse her if hitherto everyone has been telling her what a special thing virginity is. This is also to insult her and make her feel less valuable.) 

2. Tease her about it. He says things like "How can you have lived twenty percent of your life without experiencing the greatest thing on earth?" 

3. Tell her he would not want to have sex with a virgin. In a caring way, he tells his victims that they should find someone who will do it in a caring way. He simply doesn't want the responsibility, blah, blah, blah, blah.

4. Put up with the initial awkwardness and physical suffering of the girl as an investment in the (short-term) future. This was the most disgusting part, so be warned. In short, the demon disguised as a human being knows perfectly well that sex is a learned skill. It is not necessarily enjoyable the first time or the second. However, said the DDAHB, if you plan to keep the girl around for at least a month, after the boredom and the hassle of early sex you will be able to get her to do all kinds of sex acts that more experienced women wouldn't do because she is too inexperienced to know what is normal. She will be eager to please, etc., etc.   

The reader sent me to this post because guys have tried these tactics on her, although at the time she did not know they were tactics. She says she would have been devastated if she had succumbed to them and read this post later, so I hope anyone who has succumbed to these things and is feeling wretched will now go and talk to a good friend or good priest about it.  

The reader also wanted to know what I would say to this post, so here is what I have to say.

1. "Game" tactics work on some women and not on others, and this doesn't seem to have anything to do with how smart, educated, religious, high-earning, kindly or beautiful they are. Some women fall for them, and others do not. End of.

I believe they work because they are confusing. They mess with a woman's expectations so that her brain scurries around trying to sort everything out and putting everything back into order, as in Tetris. Lots of women got almost addicted to Tetris. 

It is confusing and unsettling when a guy talks casually and flippantly about such a personal thing as a girl's virginity. It is confusing and unsettling when a guy says it is a bad thing a guy should run from, not a precious thing he (like Don Giovanni) covets or (like a man who loves you) honours. It is confusing and unsettling when a man tells you he's a bad guy, not a good guy, because would a really bad guy tell you that he was a bad guy?

Yes. A bad guy will tell you anything to get laid. ANYTHING. Anything they think will work, and thanks to Game and the internet, the kind of men who think women are living sex dolls share their miserable store of magic words.  

3. And this is one of the reasons why I am adamant that teenagers and young women should not tell anyone other than your mothers, your doctors, your confessors (if necessary) and your fiances (should you have one) that you are still virgins. The subject should just not come up. Ever. If the subject does come up in casual conversation, you should consider keeping the guy who brought it up at arm's length. 

I realize that by saying this I am standing up against a lot of professional chastity educators, purity rings, and the whole "I'm a Virgin and Proud" movement. Yes. I think they are moronic. If you put your head over a parapet, expect it to be shot at. It's okay one thing for married old toughies like me to be attacked; it's another for inexperienced, innocent and sweet teenage and twenty-something girls who just want to be loved. Old married ladies have a lot of armour; young Single girls, not so much.

4. You should also--this was mentioned at Seraphapalooza--keep away from occasions for sin. A cute funny guy whom you still like and think is cool and funny even after he has told you he would never have sex with a virgin because he prefers "fun sex" is a walking occasion for sin.

As we are all sexual beings, we all have to be humble. No matter how good and pure others tell us we are, we are all subject to sexual temptation, and the reason why we are not tempted, if we aren't, is not because we are all that and a bag of chips but because a serious occasion for sin hasn't arrived yet. So when one does, get out of there. 

5. Meanwhile, don't chase men. Game tactics are all about a man chasing a woman while pretending not to, creating just enough interest so that the woman, craving his approval, will chase him. If you train yourself not to chase men, not to pick up the phone, not to send him the text, you will be safer from the tactics of the demons of the post I hope soon to expunge from my memory.

At theology school we were warned against seeing demons in human beings. However, community standards rule that I can't use bad language. And believe me, whoever the guys on that post are, Satan is definitely calling the shots in their lives.   

Auntie Seraphic & the Nervous Guy

Dear Auntie Seraphic,

As a male former reader, I stopped reading your blog because it is your clear wish. However, I have a story, which might possibly be of interest to your readers. As a young Christian guy, it's not easy to fight against your fears and sometimes you really mess it up and feel having acted like a psychopath, like me recently.

I fought against myself being too afraid to pursue an amazing girl, though she was very kind to me. In the end, I oversteered in the other direction, and in heavily fighting against my fear, I nearly went crazy.

Since she is a very outgoing person, I sought to impress her with (excessive) [energy]. I didn't touch her, but in another way, I didn't respect boundaries.

I'm a good and sincere guy and I was shocked by my behaviour. So, in the end, I was even happy that she drew a clear line and doesn't want to continue to see me outside of church-related activities.

Looking back, I even betrayed myself because I played the role of being the cool and active guy, which I'm not. While I played the role, I also neglected my own wish to just be able to talk with her for longer than 30 minutes.

Part of the problem was that I wanted to win her friendship first while leaving the way open for more. So I was too afraid, to just ask her to have a coffee with me, since this would mean something like a date. Instead, I made too many idiotic proposals for group activities with 3, 4, or more people. In the end, I have just become egocentric....

For me it is nevertheless a good step forwards. Surely, I have oversteered, but at least I have begun fighting against my fear of approaching a nice girl.

If it is helpful, you can publish it. If not, I wish you much success with your important ministry!

Nice greetings from [German-speaking nation],

Nervous Guy

***

Dear Nervous Guy,

Listen, you might as well read my blog because the guys at my parish do, no matter what I say!  The combox, of course, is usually just for girls. 

I am not sure what it is that you did, but I can see that you are sorry.  Since you didn't touch her or, I presume, lock her in a room with you, it was probably not criminal or even crazy, just inappropriate and embarrassing. Of course you will respect her boundaries now. 

Your email will be of interest to my women readers, as they often wonder what men are thinking. It could be quite helpful to them. But something else would be very helpful to them and to me. Could you explain to us (it will be anonymous, of course) why it is that you were afraid to ask this nice girl out for a coffee?

You see, I have never been able to understand why young men are afraid of women, even of women who are friendly and kind. You are not the only guy like this; there are many, many Christian guys who seem to be afraid of women, and we don't understand why. Many of my readers wish very much that Christian guys would ask them out for coffee, and wonder why non-believing guys seem so much more likely to ask them out.  If you were to explain how you feel about it, this would be very helpful to us, and maybe we could help you, too.

Grace and peace,

Seraphic  

***

Nervous Guy has not written back, but I contacted the two young male colleagues visible in my Facebook messaging window yesterday. Both are confident, outgoing and popular with girls. I asked them my question, and one wrote "Boys can be more sensitive than girls."

The other wrote that there is a terrible risk of rejection, or being told that the woman is already attached, which he said is even worse than being rejected. Approaching women at all is "one of the scariest things to do as a man, especially if you're sober."

This still puzzled me until a female friend pointed out that women feel rejected all the time, so we're a little more used to it than men. For example, many women just feel rejected because absolutely has nobody has asked them out. Most men don't feel rejected just because no woman has asked them out. To feel rejected, they actually have an incident. And when that incident happens, it really, really hurts.

"Like man flu," I suggested. 

Story of a Good Man

It has blizzards, peril, chivalry and rescue. What a nice story I have been sent! So here it is (with permission) for you all to read:

Seraphic,

First, my thoughts are with you and the rest of the Catholic world today after hearing the news from Rome. 

Second, I wanted to share a story of a good man. I live in an area that was really hit hard by the blizzard this weekend. We got 2.5 feet of really heavy snow in just over 12 hours. I was home alone, my roommates having left ahead of the storm, when our power went out around 11 pm. When I sent a griping text to this friend about my situation, he insisted that I could not spend the night alone in my house with no heat. He walked out in the blizzard, got his car, and came to rescue me. That may make it sound easy, but was the most horrific weather I have ever been out driving in and required much shoveling out of snowbanks on his part. I then spent the weekend safe and warm on the air mattress in his living room until my power came back on. 

It was maybe not the smartest thing that either of us has ever done, but it is certainly the most chivalrous thing anyone has ever done for me, and I wanted to share. I would love to scream it from the rooftops, but I suspect that this friend would be embarrassed if I made too much of it to our mutual friends.

Rescued from Snow

I love a good Good Man story! I think we should tell them at parties because, my goodness, if men eavesdrop on us at Seraphic Singles, you can bet that they eavesdrop at parties. Good Man stories would make them feel pleased by association and like they have a handle on what we think is Good Man behaviour.

Incidentally, it is necessary to say a praiseworthy man is "such a good man," not "so nice" because men don't like the word nice, and if you say another man is "so nice", they (or some of them, especially from certain countries) think "wimp."

There is space in the combox for more Good Man stories.

Auntie Seraphic & Changing Men

This letter has been entirely rewritten and compressed to protect the innocent!

Dear Auntie Seraphic,

Do men change? My mother says that they never do, but she's always been pessimistic about men. My boyfriend has made changes when he found out something he said or did really bothered me. And anyway, what about men who are striving for holiness? Don't they change?

Sincerely,
Changing Men

Dear Changing Men,

It was my mother's opinion that men do not change after the age of 30, so if you expect a man to change, you must snaffle him before then. 

However, I think she must have meant major tendencies of character, like zeal versus laziness, intellectual vigour versus dullness, and kindness versus malice. It is certainly possible and likely for a kind man to change how he behaves around a woman if he knows certain things he does or says make her upset. It is less likely that a malicious man will do so. 

The good thing about marrying older is that one and one's husband know exactly what they're getting by way of a spouse. A twenty year old man is not going to be the same man at thirty. However, a thirty year old man will probably be the same man at forty. Technically a twenty year old bride and groom are expected to "grow up together" although the notion makes me shudder. What a risk. 

The important thing is that you marry only a man that you really love and who really loves you. If you are thinking the man you are with needs a major overhaul, don't marry him. Yes, a man who loves Christ will strive for holiness, but my guess is that one should see some of the fruits of this already in a man of 30-odd. A man who goes to confession for staring too long at a bare-chested woman who popped up in an ordinary film is rather a different man from the one who has a deep-seated porn addiction. 

I hope this is helpful. To summarize: major changes after 30, probably not (although one must leave mental room for the workings of the Holy Spirit); little changes in keeping with his overall character, yes.

Grace and peace,

Seraphic