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Kryptogal (Kate, if you like)'s avatar

Couple thoughts:

1. Women (well, certain women) could indeed help a lot of men, though the problem is that the men who are most in need of help would be the most resistant and hostile to the very idea of women helping them. Which I guess is okay, because who needs the worst and most difficult clients, anyway?

2. It would be better to have a team than a single woman. At least to start. Because everyone is different, and you don't want one random woman teaching a guy all the stuff that SHE happens to like but that is totally not going to work with other women. Like if you ask me, guys shouldn't pay for stuff on dates generally, but if you ask another woman, she'll say they should always pay, so you need a team to give their opinions and let the guy choose how to work out the different opinions. That's useful in and of itself because you want to get him out of the mindset of "follow X+Y/Z formula and get ABC reward anyway.

So if one issue gets a resounding and adamant consensus, he should probably follow it. If it doesn't, he should probably go with the advice of the woman he best vibes with. Working with a team would also be better as far as "going out" and practicing, bc the fundamental problem most of these guys have is not being socialized IN GENERAL -- not just with women, but with people overall. They need to learn to be social with a friend group in the first place, because actually if they fixed that problem, they're very unlikely to have a woman problem at all.

3. As far what could go wrong, the obvious answer is that the client falls in love or lust with his mentor. This would be a huge problem actually. I don't know the work-around here. Even if you put in the contract that they cannot date and she's prohibited, that just leaves him thinking/hoping that she WOULD if only that stupid contract wasn't in the way.

4. Here's where I think the big benefit lies: it would be a way for women to give a guy real advice without lying to him. I think one of the main problems in "gender relations" is that women are just way, way too nice to men and protect their feelings all the time. Basically, they lie constantly, even if it's not even conscious and they just think of it as "being nice".

But it's such a deep-wired instinct that you almost can't get a woman NOT to lie to spare feelings, unless you pay her and sign a contract that you WANT real advice. Men can't really conceive of how fundamentally against female nature it is to purposely hurt someone or inflict emotional pain if we view them as at all vulnerable. Someone in charge and high up? Sure, of course, hurt away. But it is anathema to the point I think most women truly cannot bear to bring themselves to do it, to purposely hurt someone vulnerable. You can call it empathy or you can call it manipulation, but whatever it is, it exists in a way I don't think most men can conceive of.

Mothers lie to their sons because they're fully deluded about them, so I guess those aren't even lies, they're just delusion. And other women do it out of sympathy. About the only time you get the full truth, if it's hurtful, is either in an anonymous forum or when you've hurt and angered a woman so much that she's willing to say the truth because she temporarily doesn't care about hurting his feelings, while enraged. But in default state, it goes against every fiber of her being to tell a guy "you smell bad" or "you're not good looking enough for me" or "the way you always recite movie quotes as if it's hilarious is really lame" or "I liked you until we kissed and then my body just had a repulse reaction, I can't help it" or "you have been talking for 40 minutes straight without once taking a breath" or "you are incredibly boring and show no interest in anyone else" or "your attempts to make yourself seem aloof are transparent and just come off as insecure and defensive."

I think women being too nice causes problems. Because some men, in particular the ones who aren't well socialized with peers, actually believe it all, and then when they start finding out the truth as an adult, they get extremely hostile. Or maybe they never find out the truth and just remain clueless and make up their own false theories. I have noticed that men who had older sisters who were a few years older are almost always MUCH more successful with women. And that's because if they had a teenaged sister who was older, they had a woman who was mean to him and told him the truth all the time -- older sisters DNGAF. But that's about the only time that actually happens.

In sum, I think your idea is good, and the fact that men with older sisters are generally considered more desirable by women bears this out. Being a likeable and sociable person that people enjoy being around is a skill acquired like any other, through practice. Though I think the ones most in need of this type of help would not want it.

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Rajeev Ram's avatar

I'm absolutely the last person who is qualified to comment on the effectiveness of this approach, or this discussion in general (both because I'm not into women and because I would have no trouble pulling them left and right if I were), but I do like the ideas put forth here, and the willingness to explore.

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