Dating Rules

I recently had a girl invite me to watch Sex and the City with her. She'd newly discovered the television show after never having really watched it before, and was suddenly addicted.

"Ugh," I said. "No thanks. But knock yourself out."

"Come on, please!" she protested. "It's so much fun!"

"Fun for women," I replied. "Men do not enjoy Sex and the City."

"That's not true!" she said. "It's a great show for men AND women!"

"It's a bunch of women who have no idea what they want doing the same things over and over again, never able to realize they're trapped in a perpetual loop of meaningless emotion–chasing," I responded. "There's little self–discovery, and loads of gossip, which is of course quite interesting to women, but like nails on a chalkboard to men."

She started watching an episode by herself, and soon called out to me, "You're right, I can see why women really like this and men don't!"

But I wanted to think about it some more. Why do women like that show so much, and why don't men? Certainly, there are exceptions – women who think it's trite, and men who think it's wonderful – but they're not the norm.

What I realized was that it's part gossip – women use gossip to stay informed on who's a desirable mate, who's an available mate, and who isn't – which is pretty useless to men but pretty vital to women – but it's also about time orientation... a little thing most people don't think much about, but that has huge implications for their dating lives and relationships.

This is Part I of a 2-part series on dating younger women. In Part I, we'll be focused on social factors that have changed and why there's so much pushback against older men dating younger women in the West. Part II will be our "how-to" - that is, how to date younger women as an older (or younger) man.

There's something of a stigma in the West right now against older men and younger women (while younger men and older women is often considered right as rain - and maybe even ideal!)... younger woman / older man couplings, you'll frequently be told, are a Bad Thing.

But travel the rest of the world, and this stigma is largely nonexistent.

Throughout history, it's been common for older men to select younger women as their brides, across cultures, nearly universally.

It would appear we live in a strange and rather unusual period in history, where sexual norms have been turned upside down and positioned on their heads.

But look a little closer, and you'll see that even in the West - even in the United States, bastion of feminist sentiment right now - steer clear of unattractive women with bones to pick, and you'll quickly find that - at least among pretty younger women - this "stigma" against older men dating younger women is primarily the figment of a small group of the media's imagination.

Let's sweep aside the deliberate confusion of the rabble-rousers and have look at what actually goes on out there in the real world of older men and the younger women they date.

While my normal recommendations are that guys stay far out of boyfriend-territory and focus on sealing the deal with girls they like on the first date, the truth is sometimes you're going to move too slow by accident, or not feel confident enough moving quickly with a girl, and you'll wind up as a boyfriend candidate after all.

So what do you do then, when she's not seeing you as a lover, and you can't move fast?

Just give up?

Or do you play the game the way she wants you to play it... but with your own twist?

I'm going to introduce you to the concept of date compression in today's article - making dates count for more than a single date, and having a full boyfriend-candidacy dating process in a short amount of time, rather than the protracted courtship these frequently turn out to be.

In the end, you'll be able to take girls who view you as a boyfriend candidate as lovers and as girlfriends much more quickly and reliably than the men who stretch things out - and often lose the girls they like after plowing time and money into trying to get them.

Let's talk about speeding up the entire dating process without skipping steps.

Plenty of Fish - as chances are you already know - is an out-and-out treasure trove of young, cool, attractive girls who want to meet cool, sexy guys and... well, it's a dating site.

Thing is, it's a free dating site, which means it's open to the masses... which in turn means the most beautiful women on POF get inundated by messages from hopeful (sometimes desperate) men - so much so that the average pretty girl with options doesn't last longer than a few weeks on the site before throwing her hands up in frustration and resignation and abandoning her account.

And the ones who stick around? Grizzled POF dating veterans who cut through newbie online dating hopefuls like female paramilitary troopers trained at mercilessly crushing and cannibalizing the unready and unprepared.

In this article, I'm going to take you through what I learned in four (4) years of using Plenty of Fish to meet, date, and sleep with tons of new girls, including some of the hottest girls on POF in Southern California.

So sit back, relax, and let's get you doing what most of the rest of the online dating crowd can't do: lining up dates and taking pretty new girls to bed by the bushel.

In the piece on how to treat a woman, a reader shared a tale of having a wonderful date with a girl, ending it by holding hands with her as they walked together, her talking excitedly... only for things to fall apart and her get suddenly uncomfortable when they arrived at his place. He then commented this:

“I am in my 40s, well-paid mid-level manager in a prestigious organization. Most of the women I meet are around 25. Even if I don't tell them what I am doing for a living, they just can tell where I stand. The problem I face quite often is "this guy is not in my league, therefore he must be just playing". Can't tease too much, must be careful to show not too high value, and sometimes the move fast approach back fires, as described above.”

Thus enters the status dynamic: the man who is sufficiently high status compared to the girl that she does not want to just sleep with him quickly and one-and-done him, but who is not so high status that he can ask for whatever he wants with her and get it.

He is, in other words, ideal husband material - or, to put it differently, a whole lot more valuable to her as a long-term prospect than a simple fling.

Something I've called, for a long time, the boyfriend dilemma.

It's time now for the 25th Carnival of Dating Advice - our last.

In our final carnival here - wrapping up one full year after we got started - we have a grab bag of solid articles, focused primarily on having great relationships and avoiding the bad ones, but also on getting over a breakup, and dealing with self-doubt.

So dive in, friends, and get ready for a nice sendoff of the carnival.

Without further ado, your articles...

Welcome to the 24th Edition of the Carnival of Dating Advice. We're winding the carnival down; this is our second-to-last go-round bringing you the best latest articles in dating, relationships, psychology, and more from around the web.

Short carnival this time, with four articles included - ranging from the gentlemanly to the emotional to reflection on success and taking action.

Here we go...