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Read other letters about this article
I was thinking about something.
A lot of what men seem to be looking for in social interactions with women is a set of hard-and-fast rules. Women seem to be actively trying to screen that out. Is this true?
I think it's partially true. The thing about being hot is that it isn't a natural attribute. It's a set of behaviors, some of which are relatively benign and some of which are actually unhealthy. Brandeis found an inverse correlation in women between health and attractiveness, but when you think about what it takes to be attractive, this is no shock. So there's a signal going on here: "I am willing to submit myself to expense, fuss and even physical pain just to please you." It's not hard to see why some would find this attractive.
However, that "you" isn't general. It's all done for a specific type of man, and that's the man the douchebag is trying to either be or emulate. Big muscles and dark tans indicate money and leisure for things like gyms and tanning beds, or maybe even tropical beaches. Expensive clothes and jewelry = money. Willingness to look like an ass in public without feeling like an ass = status. Willingness to behave in ways that might risk losing a woman = confidence.
There are rules here, and they work, for both sexes.
What about when it doesn't work? Because there are other things to screen for, and one of them is the kind of empathy and self-assurance that lead to flexibility and confidence in social situations, including intimate ones. It's someone who really "gets" you and likes you, whether you're male or female. Getting this, though, requires a situation without rules, or at least without the kinds of rules that govern the above-defined subculture. In this situation, you have an ongoing negotiation, but of a less visual kind.
One thing that has puzzled me is how a lot of wannabe PUAs bemoan the fact that ugly women have even higher standards than hot women. This is how it might be true. Mr. Good Catch might very well be financially stable, ripped, tanned and peacocked, but if he fails an early test for empathy, that 6.5 who should be grateful that he gave her the time of day might very well ditch him in favor of the chubby loser in the 3-year-old tech fair T-shirt.
Well, thinks Mr. Good Catch, he must have money and he's using her for sex.
Probably not, knowing the men I know who look like that. What he might have, though, is social comfort and flexibility, which isn't signaled the same way, and he might be seeing something similar in the 6.5 that he values over hotness. He might also be trying to be anti-cool, which is yet another set of signals and another set of rules.
I think there are other kinds of signals, too. I know some actual rock stars and the women who love them, and that's a whole 'nother world, even though many rock stars are douchebags and the women are often hot. I dangled a toe in academia many years ago, and found yet another set of social signals. I also know that there are kinds of protest signals, where people do the opposite of the hot/douche thing but also don't have the social skills.
What I'm thinking, though, is that there tend to be several streams going on at once in different directions, and dating dissatisfaction often comes from wanting all of those streams to align. They want a high-status mate who is also high comfort and empathy, and can also ditch the trappings of status at random without undergoing any kind of emotional or physical change.
Unhappiness, they've found, often lies in the space between reality and expectations.
It's a theory, anyway!
