The Tao of Dating by Dr Alex Benzer | Dating advice for smart men and women, Eastern wisdom, Taoism, spiritual dating » Dating for Women

Why do smart people make dumb decisions?

Dr Alex Benzer — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 19:17:47 +0000

Meet my friend Bart. As a surgeon, every day at work he’s entrusted with the lives of others, and he handles the job well. He’s a genuinely gifted fellow. He’s also fit, healthy, and well-rounded.

In other words, Bart has made a lot of great decisions in his life, and continues to do so every day.

Except that some time ago, he got engaged. And none of his friends thought it was a good idea. We all predicted disaster, of the Hindenberg up-in-flames variety.

Bart did get separated a few years later, and you probably know someone who was plenty smart who made a similarly disastrous decision. Whether it was taking the wrong job, buying a Hummer, selling off Microsoft stock in 1989 or launching into a destructive affair, this kind of thing happens all the time. Perhaps it’s even happened to you.

It’s easy to see all of this in hindsight. But what if you could see the faulty decision-making while it was happening? Then, instead of an “I told you so” story which helps little and irritates much, we may actually accomplish something useful — like helping avoid the error in the first place.

Psychologists who’ve studied our decision-making processes have observed cognitive biases that tend to get us in trouble.

Remember that these biases don’t make you a bad person — they just make you human. As far as we can tell, they’re deeply-ingrained features of our brain function. The more you’re aware of them, the better chance you have of avoiding them. There’s a slew of them, so I’ll highlight some of the big ones:

1) The fundamental attribution error.
This bias makes us attribute the failure of others to character and our own failures to circumstance. “Jenkins lost his job because he was incompetent; I lost mine because of the recession.” It also attributes our own successes to our competence, discounting luck, while seeing others’ successes as products of mere luck.

This lands you in hot water when you assume that bad stuff only happens to other people: you’re not going to be part of the 50 percent of people who get divorced, and the price of your house will go up even though 90 percent of them have dropped in price. I’m going to marry Charlie Sheen and make it work because I’m different; those 4,000 other women were just stupid. They did something wrong, but I know what I’m doing. The fundamental attribution error’s a pernicious one, and it nails all of us at some point.

2) The confirmation bias.
This one has two parts. First, we tend to gather and rely upon information that confirms our existing views. Second, we avoid or downplay information that goes against our pre-existing hypothesis.

Say you suspect that your computer has been hacked. Then every time it stalls or has a little glitch, you blame it on the hackers. Or you think that your boss has it in for you. Then everything she says or does you interpret as part of her plan to undermine you. It’s a bit like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If you identify with a political party, you probably do this all the time. If you’re a scientist, you do this inadvertently as part of the scientific method. And if you’re a trial lawyer, it’s your job to do this.

If you’re interested in moving an agenda forward, then the confirmation bias works in your favor. If you’re subject to this agenda and don’t like it, recognize the confirmation bias for its fallacy. And if you’re interested in the truth, start without preconceptions. Outwitting the confirmation bias means exploring both sides of an argument with equal diligence.

3) The overconfidence bias.
I call this the ‘my guess is better than yours’ bias. People’s confidence in their own decisions tends to outstrip the accuracy of those decisions. Your friend will say he’s “100 percent positive” about something — e.g. his choice of wife – and only be right 50 percent of the time. A disastrous form of this happened in the doomed 1996 Mt Everest expedition described in Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, resulting in the death of many climbers.

4) The availability bias.
We tend to estimate what’s more likely by how easily we can come up with an example from memory. The availability of our memories is biased toward vivid, unusual, or emotionally charged examples. So we tend to make those more salient, then come up with weird decisions based on them.

As a result, you may cancel your trip to the Canary Islands because mom tells you the biggest plane crash in history happened there. Or you stop going to hockey games because you heard someone in the stands got thwacked on the head with a puck last week. Or avoid investing in stocks because those crashed last year.

To bypass the availability bias, be sure to look at all the evidence around a particular decision, not the stuff that jumps to mind first. If only 1 out of 100,000 plane landings resulted in a crash, it’s safe to fly to the Canary Islands. If one out of ten million hockey fans gets nailed by a puck, you can watch a hockey game.

5) The sunk cost fallacy.
I call this the slot-machine effect. You put a quarter in a one-armed bandit, and pull the lever. You win nothing. No big deal – you put in another quarter. And another. This goes on for a while, and you start thinking, “Well, I’m invested in this machine now. It’s going to belch an avalanche of quarters any second!”

The truth is that every pull of the lever has the same winning probability of nearly zero, regardless of how much money you’ve put in. The money is effectively gone forever – it’s a sunk cost. There’s no quantifiable expectation of future return, so it’s not an investment.

This is a big one in jobs and relationships. You can be stuck in a crappy situation for a while, and then think, “But I’ve invested three years in this! I can’t just throw that away!” The fact is that those three years are never coming back – you’ve already thrown them away, so don’t worry about it! The sooner you cut bait and go for a better situation, the better off you are.

So next time you have smart friends who are about to make an unbelievably dumb decision, follow this five-step plan:

a) Look through this list, or an even more comprehensive one
b) Empathize with them for being human, coming up with an example of a time when you made a similarly boneheaded choice – “Boy, was I a goober!”
c) Instead of saying “What the hell are you thinking,” say “I have a lot of faith in your judgment, so help me understand how you came up with this decision.”
d) If you’re still convinced they’re smoking something funny, only then offer gently some insight on cognitive biases, and see what happens.
e) If they still don’t get it, take the frying pan from behind your back and give them a compassionate but bracing thwack upside the head. It probably won’t change their mind, but it’ll feel pretty satisfying.

This is Your Brain on Love

Dr Alex Benzer — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 19:00:30 +0000

Here’s a great summary of some of the current thinking on what happens to your noggin when you’re in love (or lust). The name of one of the researchers is Timothy Loving — you can’t make that kind of thing up.

(CNN) — Poets, novelists and songwriters have described it in countless turns of phrase, but at the level of biology, love is all about chemicals.

Although the physiology of romantic love has not been extensively studied, scientists can trace the symptoms of deep attraction to their logical sources.

“Part of the whole attraction process is strongly linked to physiological arousal as a whole,” said Timothy Loving (his real name), assistant professor of human ecology at the University of Texas, Austin. “Typically, that’s going to start with things like increased heart rate, sweatiness and so on.” Continued here

Why Really Smart Guys Have Tough Love Lives

Dr Alex Benzer — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:18:51 +0000

I had my first kiss when I was 19.

Her name was Emma. She was also 19, with an irresistible English accent and very cute to boot. I was pretty sure that I was going to marry her.

Except that she dumped me, pulverizing my heart into nanoparticles. It was the only time in my life that I got depressed: poor sleep, suppressed appetite, lotsa Kafka. It kinda sucked.

The next kiss didn’t come for another 4 years, when I was in medical school. That’s also when my career as a professional virgin came to an end. To understate things, I was a late bloomer in the realm of romance.

I wasn’t stupid or ugly. No hermit, either – knew most people on campus. No, I was just clueless.

Turns out that the skill set required to navigate the tricky waters of romantic interaction wasn’t in any book I had read or any class I had taken. Mom, dad, the sex-ed teacher – none of them had taught me any of this stuff.

This is a serious omission, since our relationships with others are the biggest determinants of happiness in our lives. And it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that most people’s lives revolve around their primary love relationship.

So towards the end of med school, I started to read some pertinent books and hanging out with guys savvier than me in this dating realm. Slowly, I caught on that everything I knew about dating and women was wrong.

A few years later, right about when I was a pre-med advisor to Harvard undergraduates, I noticed that my friends and advisees were in a similar pickle. Here were smart, funny, good-looking guys surrounded by single women who were dying to be asked out – and not a whole lot was happening.

See, I like smart people. Smart people created nearly everything that I value – Beethoven’s late string quartets, my HP laser printer, Feynman’s lectures, Four Quartets, and Zippy (my Prius*). I like to see smart people succeed — even created a blog for smart people.

That’s why I wrote The Tao of Dating for Men. Why should anyone suffer like I did? Clues cure cluelessness, so I provided some clues for the smart boys.

But the big reason why this is important is that I’ve seen entire lives derailed by romantic maladroitness.

I was pretty lucky to bounce back after a couple of months. Other friends weren’t so fortunate.

One of them, Victor, who is my age, is a superbly gifted man – equally talented in both literary and scientific realms. Since the bastard was smarter than me, I predicted he would go on to do great things.

He fell in love with the tall, blonde and comely Kristin in his sophomore year. The tumultuous relationship turned out to be his undoing. He ended up flunking out of his classes (really hard to do at Harvard – trust me) and being asked to take a leave of absence.

He’s doing okay now, happily ensconced in a stimulating career and engaged to a woman he loves. However, I can’t help but think how things would have turned out differently had his brilliant academic career not been derailed by romantic woes. Could he have been a world-class physicist, a literature professor, a top-notch entrepreneur, a Nobel contender? Who knows.

Another example is Mariana, currently a junior at Harvard (yes, she’s a girl, but the story still applies). She had one of the most impressive high school resumes going into college, having aced 20 Advanced Placement (AP) exams. For those of you a bit removed from the rubrics of high school achievement, just know that it’s kind of a big deal.

Once again, I predicted great things for her. And once again, a romance gone awry felled a rising star. After her breakup, Mariana flunked out of her classes and was asked to take a leave of absence. She’s back in the saddle again, and at the age of 20, she has most of her life ahead of her.

So this goes out to all my boys out there at places like Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, MIT, Columbia, Duke, Swarthmore, Penn, Cornell, Berkeley, Brown, Dartmouth, Oxford, and Cambridge. To all you who work at the likes of Google, Amazon, Microsoft, D.E. Shaw, McKinsey — all the geeks, nerds, grad students, techies, hackers, engineers and gadgeteers. It goes out to all the 20-year old virgins, the still-unmarried 45-year olds, and the already-divorced 30-year olds who don’t know what hit them.

I’ve seen a lot of preventable train wrecks out there, so let’s make sure the right information gets to people at the right time. If there were a dating bible for the smart man, these would be its commandments:

1. Don’t just wait to get lucky – make stuff happen.

As a teenager, I always wondered, when would it happen for me? When would some beautiful girl walk off the pages of Maxim, take me by the hand, look deep into my eyes, appreciate all my wonderful quirks and make out with me torridly?

Wake up, buddy. You create your own luck. If you like a girl, talk to her and ask her out. You don’t expect to ace an exam just by getting lucky, do you? So step up and put in some elbow grease.

As a man, on the dance floor of romance, your job is to lead. So advancing the interaction isn’t just a good idea — it’s your duty. Which brings us to…

2. Have a spine.

Wimpiness may be the root of all the dating woes of smart men. I can’t tell you in how many pernicious ways this manifests in the love lives of men. The deadliest part is that if you don’t work on having that spine and end up with a woman anyway, it’s a setup for failure downstream. She’ll either own you or get tired of the spinelessness and leave.

So quit being chicken already. Ask her out (again). Set up the whole date: where, when, how, and in what outfit. Don’t be afraid to ask for what you want or to get righteously indignant when warranted. Have strong boundaries. Worry less about offending people, more about having fun. Oh, and learn how to say ‘no’.

3. Be comfortable in your own skin.

You’re a science geek? Fine. You love computers, baseball cards, classical music, anime? Fine. You’re a horny little devil? Fine. Own it! Quit fighting yourself.

People only love us for who you are, not who we pretend to be. So that nonchalant facade you’re carrying around, the show you put on, all your efforts to fit in — chuck ‘em. Because even if the ploy works and you end up with someone, eventually she’ll catch on to the real you. And if the store is different from the storefront, she’ll walk, and you lose anyway.

I know it’s fashionable amidst the smart set to be dissatisfied with yourself and to keep striving for more, bigger, best. Hey, I’m all for growth. However, women will tell you that there’s nothing more attractive in a man than self-acceptance (which is not the same as complacency). So start where you are, and keep on growing. When you accept yourself, the world accepts you.

4. Accept the nonlinearity of women and romance.

As guys, a lot of what we did in physics and math class was to try to straighten crooked stuff out. Model it with an equation. Do a linear regression. Simplify variables. Round things off.

But you know what? They were all approximations anyway. And most things in life don’t follow linear equations – not your breath, not your heartbeat, not your Apple stock, and most certainly not women and romance. It’s nonlinear! It’s chaotic! It’s crazy!

So don’t come and tell me that women don’t make sense to you. That’s a bit like saying water is wet. Unlike thermodynamics, women are not intuitively obvious**. Sometimes she’ll come to you when you ignore her and leave when you declare your undying love – deal with it. Women have curves — that’s why we like ‘em. Love is paradoxical and counterintuitive. Realize that and work with it, not against it.

That’s the essence of Taoist thought: observing the world as it is, instead of wishing it to be as we want it.

5. Quit trying to buy your way into a woman’s favor.

This is how it works in the movies: the man does nice things for the lady – buys her dinner, presents – and the lady likes him in return. It may also be how your mom told you to court a lady.

Newsflash: life is not a movie. And I’m guessing your mom never courted a lady successfully. Of the two dozen reasons I can think for why this protocol sucks, here’s one: you’re trying to bribe her into liking you. And bribes don’t work! They’re given before the desired behavior has ever happened, so she has no incentive to like you. In fact, many times it has the opposite effect: “Why is this guy kissing my ass when he doesn’t even know me?”

In neurological terms, you want to give a positive reinforcer – like a present – after someone exhibits a desirable behavior. That increases the frequency of that behavior in the future. When you give the positive reinforcer before the desirable behavior, you reinforce nothing. So you’re increasing the likelihood of getting – nothing.

Here’s a second reason: the subtext of your action is that somehow your company isn’t enough, and you need to sweeten the deal with something else. What if you were so cool, so fun to be around, such an uplifting presence that women would be willing to treat you and buy you stuff? Wouldn’t that be an interesting world to inhabit? Chew on that.

6. Quit thinking girls should like you because you’re smart.

A smart guy values smarts above all – and thinks the rest of the world does, too. So he’s bewildered when the jock/frat boy gets the girl and he does not. But those lugs probably think Hubble is some kind of gum and Perl scripts are oyster recipes! How could she possibly choose them over him?

Well, it just doesn’t work that way, buddy. A woman will like you based on how you you make her feel. So make her feel stuff – preferably good stuff. That’s the essence of it. Write that down, engrave it on a plaque, tattoo it on your forehead backwards so you’ll read it every time you brush your teeth in the morning. It’s like, axiomatic, dude.

How do you make women feel good stuff? I wrote a whole chapter on that, but in brief: be compelling. When you’re compelling, people have no choice but to respond to you. My five favorite ways of being compelling:

Be a little mysterious. Leave some missing information to be discovered.
Be excellent. Do something exceptionally well. The movie The Tao of Steve is all about this.
Give her your undivided attention. It’s a rare thing nowadays, so it’s powerful when you do it.
Be outlandish. A little crazy without lapsing into clownhood is good.
Be fun. Bring the awesome. Be the party.

7. Go get rejected – a lot.

Smart people are used to success, not failure. So they’re reluctant to risk social rejection. They’re also frankly terrified of it, then rationalize that it’s just not all that important to be socially successful. A wise man once said, “People either play to win, or play to remain in their comfort zones while maintaining moral superiority.”

So if you’re not getting rejected, that means you’re not out exposing yourself to opportunity. You’re also not exposing yourself to danger, the crucible in which manhood gets forged. So be a man – get out there and get turned down.

Everything you want is outside of your comfort zone. Complacency never impelled anyone to greatness. So if you’re breaching your comfort zone early and often, you’re condemning yourself to a life of mediocrity and dissatisfaction.

Here’s the bright side of putting yourself out there: even if your success rate’s a measly 10%, after asking a mere 10 women out, you’ll have yourself a date. Fortune favors the bold.

8. Allow yourself to be pursued a little.

Evolution decrees that in the Homo sapiens sapiens mating dance, the male pursues and the female is pursued. Fine. But let up every once in a while. Just like water flows downhill and electrons go from high to low potential, there is also an attraction gradient. So be less interested in her than she is in you, or at least pretend you are, so she has a chance to move towards you.

9. Get good by practicing.

Like playing the violin or writing code, success in dating and romance is a skill: you get better at it the more you practice. It’s not some kind of god-given talent that you’re either born with or without. So seek out some good dating resources and put in the same amount of zealous effort that you’ve put into your achievements all your life, and you will be rewarded.

I’m restarting the new & improved version of my super-elite commando Metamorphosis training program for men starting Tuesday 16 Feb. The free preview call is tomorrow, Tue 9 Feb at 5pm. Sign up here to get on the call — if your love life has been in a slump as of late, it’s going to be a pretty good kick to the rear.

* Despite all the hoopla, just wanted to say that my Prius still rocks

Visit the blog for silly smart people

Check out the books The Tao of Dating for Men and The Tao of Dating for Women

Write to me directly

‘Happiness Project’ by Gretchen Rubin Video Review

Dr Alex Benzer — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 18:44:51 +0000

If Aristotle was correct in calling happiness the summum bonum of life — the chief good, the ultimate thing we all strive for in all our strivings — then The Happiness Project is a sure-fire recipe for having more of it.

A fun, funny and wise book written by Gretchen Rubin, a regular HuffingtonPost.com contributor, it’s a distillation of the wisdom of the ages on happiness. It provides eminently practical ways to amplify your happiness pretty much immediately (e.g. gossip less; exercise more; launch a pet project).

In this video review, I share my impressions on The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun. Be sure to check out also my interview with Gretchen, her excellent blog, and the supremely useful resources of her Happiness Project Toolbox.

If you like the video, please show signs of life by rating it and leaving comments!

Dating Advice: Your New Year’s Eve Midnight Makeout Plan

Dr Alex Benzer — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 02:30:18 +0000

Awright boys and girls. I’m going to make this quick and I’m going to make this sweet.

In 24hrs, you will have one of the best opportunities for ‘success’ with with the opposite sex, however you define that for yourself. Or at least of meeting someone new.

This is because Thursday, 31 December 2009 is New Year’s Eve. And in every country using the Gregorian calendar, it’s an occasion for serious merrymaking.

In the US, along with Halloween (Oct 31) and Valentine’s Day (Feb 14), it is one of the three best days of the year for meeting someone new.

New Year’s Eve is probably the best of the three aforementioned holidays. Why? ‘Cause everyone gets a ‘get out of jail free’ card for NYE. Engaging in borderline scandalous behavior is exactly what you’re expected to do — it’s like everyone’s in Las Vegas the whole time. And everyone is expected to be kissing someone at the stroke of midnight.

So first, the guide for the ladies:

1) Pick the guy you would like to be kissing in the next 15 seconds.

2) Look at him directly in the eye while making that ‘come hither’ gesture with your forefinger.

3) When he is in smooching range, proceed to make out with him. Unless you haven’t brushed your teeth in 5 days, he won’t protest. Trust me on this.

Okay, we’re done for the women’s part. Now for the boys. Here’s what I suggest for greater luck with the ladies on this fine day:

1) Wherever you go, show up as early as possible.

This is the most important tip, so I’m going to repeat it:

SHOW UP YOUR BUTT TO THE PARTY AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE.

Why? Well, straight out of ‘The Tao of Networking’ (aka How to Work a Room): when you get there early, you get to see who walks in with whom. Now you know which of the fine ladies is unattached, which has a date for the eve. This is key information which will save you a lot of work later.

Second, when you show up early and no one’s there yet, you will also feel like you own the joint. This is what I call ‘host physiology’: when you feel like you own the place, you act like it; and when you act like it, you can meet any woman in the room at will.

The third reason is also huge. Generally, if your goal is to get in the lip-lock position with a cutie of your choice by midnight, you want to get the conversation started as early as possible so you have a few hours of get-to-know you time under your belt. That way both of you can feel less sleazy about the whole sordid episode.

Yes, it is possible to start making out with a woman within minutes (or less) of meeting her (for more info on that, check out the Metamorphosis Program). It’s also a hell of a lot easier to get there if she knows, likes and trusts you somewhat because she got to know you somewhat. So get in early.

Fourth reason for getting in early is so you can choose the best girl for you. The choice a woman makes for whom she’s going to make out with at midnight may come down to which guy approached her first. So – be first! Don’t be all nonchalant and say, “Ahhh, I’ll get to that one later.” Big mistake! I’ve done it, and it sucks. Get to her now, before some douchebag latches on to her who’s so much less interesting than you and a far worse kisser. Yeesh.

2) Commit to just one party and plan on staying there the whole night.

This is a night when more is most definitely not better. Pick one party from the multitudes and stay there.

Strategically, you want to build a lot of rapport with a few people, so you’re best off staying at one place to optimize that. Also, you’re going to be toasted, and getting around while you’re drunk is a colossal pain in the rear (especially if any driving is involved – don’t even think of driving yourself around if you’re drinking, buddy).

And anyway, what would you rather be doing – partying or being in transit? A minute on the subway or in the car is a minute not spent in revelry.

You need revelry more than you need traffic. Go be stuck in traffic next week on the way back to work, you glutton for punishment you.

3) Go to a small house party with a few friends instead of some monster mega jam with lots of random strangers.

New Year’s Eve is a great time to get together with your buds. This is when memories are made, and whatever mischief you’re going to engage in, it will be more fun together. Also, the feelings of camarederie you’ll have from being with your friends will make you more effective with the ladies.

So pick a smaller venue like a house party where it’s not completely bonkers anonymous random people. The higher sense of rapport lends itself to better stories later and a more pleasant experience as it’s happening.

Also, the monster mega jams, in spite of the promise of having more people in them, aren’t usually all that good for meeting people. People tend to behave more like strangers towards one another when there are too many people. Once again, more is not better. Go for small.

4) Ask the magic question early and often.

Assuming your goal is to be making out with some hottie by or before midnight, and knowing that you can say pretty much whatever you want on this night and get away with it, you need to use the Magic Question a lot.

(Actually, the original Magic Question is “What’s important to you about that?,” straight out of the inimitable Tao of Dating for Men. For this New Year’s Eve performance, we have a substitute magic question standing in for the original one. The rest of the cast is unchanged. Enjoy the performance.)

And the Magic Question, NYE edition, is:

“Would you like to kiss me? ‘Cause it is New Year’s Eve, y’know.”

The addition of the ‘because’ clause tends to increase compliance by a good 70% or so, as we discussed in The Tao of Persuasion course, so make sure you have it in there. My suspicion is that some of you will have crazy stories to tell me with this one. If so, I want to hear them. Lurid details appreciated.

5) Drink moderately.

Okay, so you may be thinking I’m putting on my doctor hat here, finger-wagging and all about the eeeevils of alcohol. Umm, well, sorta. It is always a good idea not to drink yourself to oblivion. On this particular night, it’s extra-special important though.

Why? Because, silly — that’s why:

a) Your handsome charming self functions better that way and is more likely to make points with the ladies than your drunken buffoon self.

b) Should you get really lucky, the machinery will work better and you’ll feel more of the pleasure you were so eager to get to and

c) There will be lots of drunken wastoids in the arena, and in the interest of self-preservation from all the lunging, lurching biomass, it’s best that you had your wits about you, brother.

That’s it.

Go get ‘em, tiger

AB

Dating Advice for Women: Why Do the Smartest Women Have the Toughest Time Dating?

Dr Alex Benzer — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 23:43:07 +0000

I confess: I love smart women. I love it when she can write a sonnet, use Euler’s formula, code Perl, play a concerto, speak half a dozen languages, run a company, quote Chaucer, diagnose diabetes, compose a quartet and converse brilliantly. Especially in a big city like Los Angeles or New York, looks alone do not suffice. I need, nay, require the intellectual engagement, and legions of smart, educated men feel similarly.

So it pains me to no end to see my smart, educated, lovely female friends remain single, alone and lonely in spite of their best efforts. These are amazing women! Surely there is something wrong with the world if they remain single for so long. That’s what compelled me to write The Tao of Dating: The Smart Woman’s Guide to Being Absolutely Irresistible.

What compels me to write this article today is a recent trip to the Harvard-Yale Game festivities, reminding me of how smart, educated women routinely sabotage their own chances for romantic fulfillment.

Because, as fabulous as these ladies are, all of their failed relationships have one thing in common: themselves. And frankly, telling them that men are losers or even proving it conclusively doesn’t improve anyone’s plight. Useful advice is about something you can change.

Now I’ve been running and attending young alumni events for Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, MIT, Columbia, Duke, Swarthmore, Penn, Cornell, Berkeley, Brown, Dartmouth, Oxford, Cambridge and similar well-regarded institutions for a while.

I’ve also been privy to the dating woes of hundreds of men who wrote me subsequent to their reading The Tao of Dating for Men.

From these emerges this brand-new list which builds and elaborates on the earlier article, Why the Smartest People Have the Toughest Time Dating. Here we go:

1. Some smart women put themselves in a no-win bind when it comes to finding an intellectual match.

A smart woman wants to date a smart man, since men less intelligent than her frankly bore her to tears. She wants to be able to hold a stimulating conversation with her partner and to know that he’s at least equal to her (if not better) in this department.

However, once a relationship with Mr Smartypants is under foot, often she unconsciously starts to compare and compete with him. She feels intimidated by his intelligence: “Is he smarter/more educated/more successful than me?” Now she’s feeling silly when she doesn’t know something, or tries to one-up him and have the upper hand. The guy doesn’t quite know what’s happening, except that the very trait that made him attractive in the first place is now causing tension.

So stop competing, Ms Smartypants — love is not a contest. In the immortal words of Boy George, “You’re my lover, not my rival.” Instead, celebrate one another for the qualities you each have to offer. Speaking of Ms Smartypants…

2. Smart women bring their inner CEO to the date.

Let’s say you’re a CEO (or doctor, or lawyer, or some other authority figure). Your job involves managing people and telling them what to do. Occasionally, you have to cut them short and redirect their focus to what’s important, or argue to make your point in a pivotal meeting. All in a day’s work.

Here’s the key point to remember: when you’re on a date with a guy, you’re no longer at work. So if you unconsciously keep on doing those things that make you so effective at the office, you may end up alienating him – especially if he’s also a CEO. Strictly speaking, this does not set a man’s heart aflame (though it may give him heartburn).

In her insightful book on why men don’t call women back after a date, Rachel Greenwald lists this ‘Boss Lady Syndrome’ as the #1 reason men run, based on a survey of thousands of men.

Remember that guys admire and respect a woman who can take charge and kick ass. Guys respect and absolutely adore a woman who can take charge and kick ass but doesn’t feel the need to prove it around him. According to Marianne Williamson’s insight in A Woman’s Worth, “In intimate relations with men, I want to major in feminine and minor in masculine.”

3. Smart women don’t make love a top priority.

If love and meaningful companionship aren’t more important to you than a project, paper, or pet, then you can skip this part entirely.

But if love really matters to you and you don’t aspire to a monastic life, put in as much time and energy into dating and romance as you do into other things you excel at.

Dating is not an afterthought for when you’ve taken care of everything else. As far as anyone can tell, deep, meaningful relationships are the most important part of life.

So let’s not leave it to chance, shall we? If you like a guy, make him feel it. Give him at least as much time and energy as your spreadsheet, term paper, chihuahua or Facebook page. A smart guy knows exactly where he is on your priority list, and if it’s too low, he will move on.

4. Smart women mistake a person for real fulfillment.

Smart women can sometimes get really excited over a guy’s resume, especially when he’s gone to the right schools and held the right jobs. Then they get stuck in a miserable marriage and wonder what went wrong when everything seemed so perfect.

There’s minimal correlation between a guy’s resume and how good he can make you feel. Fulfillment is not a person; it’s a feeling. If his company isn’t fulfilling, you’re probably with the wrong guy.

5. Smart women overthink it.

All women are master overthinkers; smart women just have extra brainpower to burn on it. So they’re experts at twisting themselves into knots of doubt, indecision and self-sabotage. “Does he like me? What does he really think about me? What does he think I think about him? And what do I think he thinks I think about him?”

Stop. Simplify. Did you enjoy his company? Then see him again and see what happens. Otherwise, don’t.

6. Smart women underplay their feminine charms.

Newsflash from the cosmos: masculine things gravitate towards feminine things. So if you want more masculine things (e.g. guys) in your life, then cultivate your feminine energy. Men are suckers for your sensuality, the swing of your hips, the nape of your neck, the curve of your lips. They absolutely love it when you take pleasure in the physical world through touch, food and sex.

Men also love it when you’re open to needing and receiving their help. They like to feel useful and wanted, even though they know full well that you can open doors and run companies on your own. Receptivity is a quintessential feminine quality, so if you want more good men in your life, be receptive to their offerings.

7. Smart women are waiting for love to show up versus showing up as love.

My friends often ask me at parties to summarize all 280 pages of The Tao of Dating for Women in a sentence.

I do their ADD-addled brains one better by boiling it down to just three words: Be the light.

If you’re embodying joy, compassion and sensuality, telling him how great he is, making him feel like a billion bucks and the conqueror of worlds, you have no competition. Anywhere. Good men will come out of the woodwork to find a goddess like you.

So lead with love. You always possess the power to elevate others, so why wait? Dare to use it now. You’ll never say ‘all the good ones are taken’ again.

Check out The Tao of Dating for Women book and Project Irresistible coaching program
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Write to me at dralex(at)taoofdating.com

Dating Advice for Women: What to Do When the Beauty Fades?

Dr Alex Benzer — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 22:55:14 +0000

Here’s a great letter that a reader wrote to me recently. It brings up so many great issues — for younger women, older women, pretty women and women who worry whether they’ll stay pretty:

Hi Dr. Alex,

I’m depressed, bummed (child of 70s) and I need help. At least I hope you read this…

Some background: I’m from Nashville, an only child, and looking back I realize I did have a charmed background. I’m not rich but my parents gave me what I wanted.

Honestly, I knew I was drop dead gorgeous. And I thought it would last forever. Now, I’m over 50 – 56, actually. It sounds old to even write it. I’m in Tennessee, did I mention that? Key point — people in the South get married after high school. I’m still attractive but with wrinkles, etc!

So, I’ve been on the dating sites – and I have to admit most men over 50 are old in their heads. They don’t do this or that, just because – so they tell me. Absurd to me, so I tend to be attracted to anyone that doesn’t look old and act old.

But, bottom line is it doesn’t matter what I’m attracted to ’cause I think all men see is that number, and it is over 50. It’s like you’re 49 and 23 hours and one hour later, making 356th day, you hit 50 and the world has stopped and you’re ready for the grave. It’s crazy the way the US thinks of 50 plus, and it’s a fact I’m not dealing with well. Somewhere on this planet there must be someone, some age, within reason, that still is young at heart and acts that way, too. Plus, it helps if they have good genes and haven’t gotten a pot stomach like so many down here (think Budweiser). Gross.

I’ve read that in Europe older, over-35 women are admired and cherished – not here. Someone somewhere has got to get past the number and see me. It would take a long time to try and explain how I got here, single, and I’ve spent the last 2 years coming to grips with it and getting past the anger, though every once in a while that still creeps in, big time.

So, that might have been something someone “heard” – but not now. Just the 56. You say we are supposed to be happy, and blah blah, I know what everyone thinks, but reality is I’m really not. So, I’m wiritng with it all out there. I probably should be sending you 100.00 just for answering this email, if you have time. This is a huge imposition on my part so perhaps too, an apology is in order, for your time. At any rate, what I’ve seen and read from you strikes home more so than anyone else out there.

Best,
Sherilyn

Thanks for the letter, Sherilyn! In general, the short ones with a specific question tend to get a quicker answer. In fact the German word for letter is Brief, hint hint :)

You didn’t really have a specific question, so I’m just going to bring some things to your attention here.

Now that it’s been over a week, re-read the letter you sent me. Notice that the darkness in it is pretty unrelenting. I’m detecting contempt for where you live and its people, contempt for their values, contempt for yourself and your age, for potbellies, for non-European attitudes, how you’re an imposition on my time, etc etc.

We need to stop that immediately. It’s okay to go a little dark every once in a while. And going 100% Pollyanna isn’t the solution either. However, indulging in the darkness and wallowing in self-pity indefinitely is a Very Bad Idea.

This letter isn’t just an apology for being old and wrinkly, as you put it — it’s sounds more like an apology for living. We tend to get more of what we focus on, and we’re responsible for creating our own world, mostly according to our beliefs. So if you’re convinced that you’re undeserving and unappealing, then that’s the most likely outcome.

Now, let’s get down to the facts: attractiveness is the name human males give for the outward signs of fertility in a woman. Naked mole rats don’t think Heidi Klum is attractive; evolution has rigged things such that human brains find certain proxies for fertility — eg clear taut skin, youth — appealing. When the woman is no longer fertile, those proxies go away. Things wrinkle, sag, widen, rearrange in inconvenient ways.

At the same time, the deterioration of those surface proxies for fertility have nothing to do with the development of your soul. In fact, the more time you have on this earth, the more opportunity you have to grow through meditation, devotion and open-hearted service. Many women attain a glow and beauty in their older age that they couldn’t possibly possess in their 20s and 30s, when they were at the height of their physical beauty.

Here’s what I suspect is going on in this particular case: the only stuff that can come out of someone is what’s already in there. So if you’ve got a torrent of contempt coming out of you, it’s because it’s always been there. It was masked until now, since things had gone reasonably well. Now that the youth and beauty have diminished, it’s manifesting as anger.

My observation is that many gifted people — ‘drop dead gorgeous’ people amongst them — tend to have an underlying contempt for those who aren’t nearly as gifted as themselves. They use their accidental gift as an excuse to beat people down. Because of their appearance (or smarts, or athletic prowess), they always have attention so don’t realize that they have a problem. Moreover, they’re always getting positive reinforcement for whatever they’re doing, so they’re under the illusion that they have a working strategy.

This works for a few decades, during which they’re unconsciously cultivating contempt and ego-based strategies for relating to people. There’s also an opportunity cost here: they have put less time and energy into developing themselves as conscious human beings. Open-heartedness, selfless service, joy, elevating others – these are skills that are cultivated over time. You don’t practice them, you don’t get better at them.

What happens is that one day, some of these pretty people wake up and realize, “Holy cow. I’m not pretty anymore, and I’m lonely, and I have no idea what to do to fix that.” Because they haven’t developed the skills for heart-based connection for the past 20-30 years, they have no idea what to do. They become bitter and angry at the world that seems to have taken away their power for good.

Some resort to plastic surgery, dieting or other ineffective surface measures to get their power back. They don’t realize that no matter how much they change the wrapping paper, the gift contents won’t change. These people can remain unfulfilled for a long time.

Unless they wake up in time. Then they realize that they have a choice: at any moment of any day, they have the power to make people around them feel fantastic. A word of appreciation, a helping hand, a devoted glance — that’s often all it takes to raise someone from ho-hum or beaten down to fantastic.

Don’t be mistaken — this is real power. My definition of real power is ‘power that cannot be taken away from you.’ Status, phyiscal beauty, riches — those can be taken away in a moment. Spiritual beauty, on the other hand, is yours to keep, and yours to share forever.

So go ahead and dare to be the light. Make men (and women) around you feel fantastic. When you do that, you will start to glow. And the good men will have no choice but to notice.

I also want to examine briefly a couple of other popular issues Sherilyn brings up.

So, I’ve been on the dating sites – and I have to admit most men over 50 are old in their heads.

This is classic poverty-consciousness. Other versions of this: Men in their 20s are immature. Men in their 30s are too career-minded or just want to play. All the good ones are taken.

Poverty-consciousness, or the scarcity mindset, is the polar opposite of practicing abundance, which is the most important of the 5 themes of The Tao of Dating: The Smart Woman’s Guide to Being Absolutely Irresistible.

For every 50yr old man who feels old, there’s another one running for Congress and climbing Mt Everest. Your job, Sherilyn, is to work on yourself and be the most radiant, open-hearted version of yourself so when Mr Right comes along, he notices you’re ready. If the sign outside says ‘Closed’, people ain’t gonna knock, so make sure the sign says ‘Open!’.

Besdies, radiance and open-heartedness are their own reward. It just feels better that way.

But, bottom line is it doesn’t matter what I’m attracted to ’cause I think all men see is that number, and it is over 50.

Let me ask you: does thinking this way make you feel young or old? Which do you prefer? Go with the story that makes you feel better. You beliefs determine your experience.

Plus, it helps if they have good genes and haven’t gotten a pot stomach like so many down here (think Budweiser). Gross.

So let’s say a young-at-heart, handome, super-successful man comes long who abolutely adores you and gets along with you famously — but he has a pot belly. Would you say ‘gross’ and walk away?

Ladies — make sure the criteria you have for selecting a companion serve your long-term fulfillment, not the other way around. You may be shocked and amazed that 30% of married women report not even liking their future husband when they first met, let alone finding him attractive.

As a woman, you have the unique gift of reconfiguring your brain to make a guy who makes you feel good look good (guys aren’t quite so versatile). This is straight out of The Tao of Dating for Women, Ch. 5, ‘Understanding Men, Understanding Yourself’, p. 88. If for some utterly unfathomable reason you haven’t read the book yet, it’s time to get yourself a Christmas present.

Be the light,

Dr Alex

Dating Advice for Women – Trust Issues: Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Dr Alex Benzer — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:12:04 +0000

Hi Dr. Alex! I’ve been forwarded many of your emails from a friend and I enjoy reading them. Now I have my own questions…

Here goes nothing! So, I’ve been dating this guy for a little over a year now. He works in the same building as I do that’s how we met. He’s 15 years older than me…I thought dating an older guy was better because they’re mature and know what they want.

Anyway, at the beginning of our relationship he was really great! He knew what he wanted and I loved that. He was very caring and just on top of it. Now, I feel like he’s gotten comfortable. He’s a self-centered person. I concern now because I came from a relationship where the guy cheated on me. We were together for 4 years and ended up getting married and now divorced.

I’m scared this will happen to me again…this new guy has been very sneaky from…1. When we first started dating he was receiving texts messages from a girls nameStacie ….don’t know who she is, never heard any of his friends talk about her, nothing. But he claims they’re just friends. He said, “well, if it bothers you so much I’ll stop talking to her” and I told him it did bother me. 2. He doesn’t like me touching his things for example his phone. He has a game on there that I like playing and one day I happen to pick it up and was going to start playing not thinking it would bother him. He started yelling at me and saying never to touch his things! 3. One of his best friends wife told me to keep my eyes open with him 4. I went thru his phone and found text messages from that girl Stacie late at night saying ” Good night”. Then I found some with him and his friend. Him saying “I don’t give a shit! I still have a dick….I haven’t had any new pussy in so long. When I confronted him with this he started crying. His excuse was “it’s just guy talk”. I left his house but later forgave him and came back. 5. He started talking to one of his ex-girlfriends on Facebook 6. He blocked his phone so that the only way to open it is thru a password.

At this point I just don’t know anymore….Am I exaggerating the situation? Am I being over protective? Is this going to work? How do I end a relationship where I feel I’ve invested so much of myself. The truth is I love him and I don’t want to end it but I feel this relationship is unhealthy.

Thank you for taking the time to read this Dr. Alex… I look forward to your response.

Thank you!

Lisa, 24, bank professional, San Diego

Lisa-
Great story! Now, this is the question you have to ask yourself: “Is this sustainable for another 6mos? Another year? Another 5 years? Is this how I want to feel and how i want to be treated?”

If the answer is yes, then carry on. If not, then that means you have to break up eventually, and sooner may be better than later. You can do it deliberately with a clear head, or you can wait for nasty circumstances to do it for you (another incriminating text, finding him in bed with someone). I vote for the former option.

Remember that fulfillment is a feeling, not a person. Suspicion and mistrust, which is a lot of what you’re experiencing, don’t sound like fulfillment to me.

As for saying that you ‘love’ him: that may be true, but you have a duty to yourself and to the world to love yourself first. Being with someone who doesn’t value you and isn’t a catalyst for your flourishing into the best possible version of you, is not being loving to yourself. That always comes first — I don’t want to hear any of this Whitney Houston martyr complex nonsense.

Two other things:

You already know what he said to his friend is not ‘just guy talk.’ If you’re with a man who’s reasonably charming and experienced with women, unless he has stated explicitly that you are exclusive together, you should assume you are not. With the pre-existing trust issues you’re talking about, it’s a safe assumption that he’s pursuing other options. It may not be what you want to hear, but it is the way things are.

And you should not be messing around with his phone. I would consider that a massive violation of privacy, and he probably does, too. That one’s on you. However, if things were going well, you wouldn’t be snooping around anyway, so it’s a symptom of a much bigger trust issue.

Fulfillment is a feeling, not a person is one of the big themes of The Tao of Dating: The Smart Woman’s Guide to Being Absolutely Irresistible. If you want to find the fulfillment that you truly deserve, you need to read the book already.

The Writing of The Tao of Dating for Women: Video Blog #9

Dr Alex Benzer — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:58:27 +0000

Whenever someone writes a book, people ask, “How did you come up with the idea? How long did it take you? Do you really use a manual 1973 Smith-Corona typewriter to do your manuscript? And type it with your feet?”

But when a guy writes a dating book for women, the questions are more like, “What possessed you to do that? And what on earth qualifies you, a mere dude, to write for women anyway?” Yeah, yeah, yeah. This video addresses those questions.

If you like it, please share it with friends (via Facebook, Twitter etc) and be sure to rate and comment on it! Feel free to embed it on your own site, and if you’d like to get advance notification of the videos before everyone else, click on the ‘Subscribe’ button on the YouTube channel.

How to Love Your Enemies

Dr Alex Benzer — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:27:35 +0000

Many of you wrote in after video blog #6 asking, “How am I supposed to love my enemies? I mean, they’re my enemies! This makes no sense!”

Hey, I hear ya. So here’s a little explanation of that concept as I understand it. Make sure to rate the video and comment so I know you’re listening, and if you like it, share it with friends via Facebook and spread the good word: