One of the things I love about my husband is the way he adores his mother and loves and cares for his sisters. He genuinely likes and respects women and that makes my heart at once swell and melt.
Do you like men?
I’m not talking about having been in love with men or lusting after men or wanting to find a man. I’m talking about really and truly liking men. There’s a difference.
If you’re a single woman trying to find love, ask yourself: “Do I even like men? And if so, what is it that I like? Do I recognize their virtues? Do I appreciate and respect men? How much time do I spend thinking positively about men?” Sometimes when I go online and read facebook posts of single women or the comments sections of dating/relationship articles or dating blog posts, I sense an underlying anger at men, a seething resentment at the entire male gender. To the point where I think, “I don’t even think these women really like men despite professing to want to be in a relationship.”
I get it: You’ve been hurt. Maybe you were cheated on or treated poorly or weren’t heard in your past relationship. Maybe you’ve experienced multiple bad relationships. But the truth is this: Men like women who like men, who celebrate men, who recognize that men bring a lot of great qualities into relationships.
Several months ago, I was sent a copy of Zan Perrion’s book The Alabaster Girl. Perrion is a seduction guru but not of the PUA variety. Per his website, he has traveled the world teaching men about women and, “over the years, his name has become synonymous with a more natural and enlightened form of interaction between men and women…the Ars Amorata, or the art of love.”
I’ve been slowly but steadily progressing through Alabaster’s pages. Regarding Perrion’s advice to men, his main point is simple yet profound, seemingly obvious yet under practiced. And here it is: women like men who like women. Plain and simple. Everything one needs to know about seduction flows from that one principle.
The same is true, of course, for men: That is to say, men like women who like men, who appreciate men, who see and focus on their good qualities, who cherish all that they have to bring to relationships, who believe men enrich relationships as opposed to believing they, more often than not, deflate them.
So ask yourself…
- Do you spent most of your time ruminating on the things you hate about men and lumping all men into one adjective because a few men from your past did you wrong?
- Or do you understand that not all men are like the ones from your past?
- Do you choose to focus on the things that you really like about men?
- What do you admire about male friends? Your male family members? The boyfriends and spouses of your girlfriends?
In my book Skin In the Game, I ask the reader to go through an exercise during which they write down answers to the following questions: “What’s good about love?” and “Why would you want to be in a relationship?” Sometimes people have a difficult time coming up with answers because they’ve spent so much time focusing on what’s bad about love and what’s bad about relationships and what they’re trying to avoid (pain, heartbreak, loneliness, sadness, etc.).
Likewise, sometimes you lose sight of what’s great about men, what fills you with a sense of wonder and curiosity and excitement about men, because your sole focus has been on what you dislike about them, on what annoys you about them, on how they just make life more difficult, on how they’ve ruined your life in the past.
Change your shift in focus on how you view men (and relationships) and you may just change the trajectory of your dating and love life. Become a woman who really and truly likes and appreciates men, and you’ll undoubtedly start seeing better results when it comes to matters of the heart.
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