How to Lose Your Woman

Someone posted this article, titled, “How to Lose the Woman You Love for Good” on Facebook the other day, and it made me want to vomit.  It should be titled, “What Stereotypical Women Want.”  Listen, I don’t believe that women and men are the exact same thing, but I also don’t think that women are so fucking simple.  Here are five suggestions from this article, along with some gems in quotes, along with my response:

1. Stop doing the little things like holding her hand and looking into her eyes – “Touching her hair, letting distractions pass when she’s talking, and kissing her goodbye are the golden moments she lingers over in her mind’s eye when you’re away.”   Golden moments she lingers over?  No.  You know, it’s possible that the golden moments she lingers over are her own successes and accomplishments, or good conversations or fun times you’ve had together.  I’ve never met a woman who said, “Thank God my man touches my hair, it really lets me know he cares.”

2. Don’t ask her questions or get to know her – “For a short period of time, you might be able to hold her attention through flattery of her physical appearance, but women are smart and they’ll eventually sense the emptiness of your connection.”  Incorrect.  Please flatter my physical appearance a lot.  Also: I know I’m smart, and you being physically attracted to me does not lessen that.  It’s not an either/or.  Again, continue with the flattery. 

3. Don’t listen to her when she talks to you or even better yet, interrupt when she’s sharing her heart with corrections to her thinking and answers for her problems - “Women solve problems and soothe their own stress by talking to someone that will listen. If you don’t hear her out, she will talk faster and faster repeating herself over and over again, getting louder and more emotional until she just finally stops trying.”  Getting louder and more emotional?  Is that, perhaps, because you’re having a robust dialogue?  As noted above, “women are smart,” and can totally take someone challenging our thinking.  We’re also smart enough to start a sentence this way, “I just want you to listen here, not offer suggestions,” if that’s what we want.  As far as this, “soothe their own stress by talking,” that is a gross supposition to apply that to all women.  You want to know how I soothe my own stress?  I hit the fucking treadmill, hard.  God. 

4. Don’t allow her to feel safe and relax into your love – “When a woman is falling deeper into love with you she will push back a bit, test you and question your actions, words and motives to see if you’re the real deal.”  Barf.  Oh, the women, we need to set up the tests.  Because, you know, we’re women, and we can’t just say what we want or feel.  And what does that even mean, “relax into your love?” You want me to relax?  Don’t be a dick.  Period.

5. Don’t make her special or allow her to relax into knowing she’s your woman – “By keeping the doorway open to many others through Facebook flirts and cute little text, you’ll ensure that there’s nothing special between the two of you other than sex.”  Actually, I am a secure goddamn woman, and I can take it if you want to, you know, have friends who are women.  And I’m also smart enough to know that a man who’s going to take up with another woman is going to do so whether I am a loser who doesn’t even want him to so much as text another woman, or I let him do whatever he wants.  And again, what’s with the “relax into?”  Wait, there’s more: I am my own woman, not anybody else’s.  I don’t need to be labeled as someone else’s belonging to feel okay.  Really. 

Bottom line: Women are not fragile flowers, constantly in a state of anxiety, and unable to articulate our actual thoughts and feelings. This kind of “women are sensitive and mercurial creatures” writing does nothing to emphasize that women are strong people, capable of managing ourselves and speaking our minds exactly as well as the boys.