by Pete Waters

It’s Tuesday again, and time for the second installment of “With a Little Help from Our Friends”, in which we at AskRomeo present three of the most interesting articles we’ve run across by other writers on the area of dating and relationships.

Why Are Men So Angry?

Writer Kay Hymowitz recently just published “Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men into Boys“, and also just wrote a widely-circulated and widely-discussed excerpt from it, titled “Where Have All the Good Men Gone?“, in (of all places) the Wall Street Journal.  (By “widely discussed” I mean over two thousand comments at the WSJ and 116,000 “Likes” on Facebook.)  Kay followed it up with this piece in The Daily Beast, titled “Why Are Men So Angry?”, in which she said, ”Some men didn’t like it [the WSJ article]. As in, ‘cancel-my-subscription-the-writer-should-contract-such-a-bad-case-of-carpel-tunnel-syndrome-she-never-writes-again’ didn’t like it… [which] unwittingly proved my point—and another one: Men are really, really angry.”

Kay makes a number of awesome points in this second article, but for me, the most interesting paragraphs were these:

Women may want equality at the conference table and treadmill.  But when it comes to sex and dating, they aren’t so sure…

… But there’s another reason for these rants, one that is far less understood.  Let’s call it gender bait and switch. Never before in history have men been matched up with women who are so much their equal — socially, professionally, and sexually.  By the time they reach their twenties, they have years of experience with women as equal competitors… 

That’s the bait; here comes the switch.  Women may want equality at the conference table and treadmill.  But when it comes to sex and dating, they aren’t so sure.  The might hook up as freely as a Duke athlete.  Or, they might want men to play Greatest Generation gentleman.  Yes, they want men to pay for dinner, call for dates — a writer at the popular dating website The Frisky titled a recent piece “Call me and ask me out for a damn date!” — and open doors for them.  A lot of men wonder: “WTF??!” … 

Sure, girls can — and do — ask guys out for dinner and pick up the check without missing a beat.  Women can make that choice.  Men say they have no choice. If they want a life, they have to ask women out on dates; they have to initiate conversations at bars and parties, they have to take the lead on sex… 

Read, as they say, the whole thing. 

How Not to Break a Date

Next, blogger J at SoberSingleDC contributes (perhaps without meaning to) to AskRomeo’s series on “Guys, Don’t Do This.”  Like Elle C. Grace in our previous episode, J tells of boorish, or at least uncool, behavior by a guy she’d been dating.  While the transgressions of J’s boyfriend might not seem as bad as those of the “Sex Pest” that Elle wrote about, in a way it was worse — it’s clear from J’s blog, in which she describes previous dates she had with “Cameron” prior to his breaking a date via text, that she was actually interested in the guy:

I wasn’t even that annoyed that he cancelled on me.  But I was annoyed about the haphazard way in which he went about informing me of all this, especially because now two or three weeks would pass from the time of our last date to when we would potentially hang out again.  I don’t think I’ve mentioned this previously, but Cameron and I have never spoken on the phone before.  Nor have we emailed.  Meaning all communication not done in person has been done through texting.  Really?  Are you a sixteen year old girl?  Can you seriously not spare five minutes to call me and tell me you can’t keep our dinner plans because you’re traveling to a country immersed in political strife?      

Follow the above links for the sad details.  And remember:  guys, don’t do this.  If you have no choice but to break a planned date, be a man about it and call.  Texting, tweeting, Facebook or regular e-mails… it’s disrespectful, and that’s just uncool.  It’s the coward’s way out.

Man Law 84

Our inestimable colleague Ethan Bishop of The Unbreakable Man Laws has released Man Law 84 – Picking Up Women Is Not A Hobby – Find One.  Excerpt:

There is one message that I repeat throughout the blog in one form or another and that is – your life should never center around one person. Specifically, your happiness should not be dependent on someone else’s livelihood.  Albert Einstein put it this way:

“If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.”

… There are a number of people who believe that by putting their significant other first that they are performing an honorable and noble act. They are tying their personal happiness to a specific individual. Should we sacrifice our own happiness for the sake of others? That’s a question without an answer and one that would likely receive ten different answers from ten different people. At some point after putting others before ourselves, you have to step back and take care of yourself – re-energize. There is only one point in your life that the answer of putting someone else in your life should come before your own and that is when it comes to your children.

Read the whole thing.

Until next time,

Pete