If Books Could Kill - The Rules

Episode Date: June 29, 2023

In 1995 a bestselling book proposed a simple dating strategy for women: Lose weight, wear bright colors and become a completely different person for the rest of your life.Thanks to Moira Donegan for helping us with this episode! Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPodWhere to find us: TwitterPeter's other podcast, 5-4Mike's other podcast, Maintenance PhaseSources:From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s essay, “Stuff Your ‘Rules’” The More Things Change: The Rules And Late Eighteenth‐Century Conduct Books For Women Shrinking Violets and Caspar Milquetoasts: Shyness and Heterosexuality from the Roles of the Fifties to "The Rules" of the Nineties From Mountain Peak to Total Woman: An Evolutionary History of Pre-feminist Dating Advice The Mating Game: How Gender Still Shapes How We Date by Ellen Lamont So Many Rules, So Little Time Abiding by The Rules: Instructing Women in Relationships What leads to romantic attraction: similarity, reciprocity, security, or beauty? Evidence from a speed-dating study "Playing Hard To Get": Understanding An Elusive Phenomenon Egalitarian Daters, Traditionalist Dates Aspirational pursuit of mates in online dating markets Disintermediating your friends: How online dating in the United States displaces other ways of meeting Playing Hard To Get  Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

I'm rock I've got got so many zingers bouncing around in my mind. Do you want to do a couple do you want to try Fecta of zingers? I My favorite absolute dumbest one was something like The only thing I know about rules Michael is that I'm always breaking them Terrible Peter. That's terrible. I was I was ready to do it though. I was, give us the real one. Let's go ahead.

All right, go for it. Uh, Peter. Michael, what do you know about a book called The Rules? Finally, a set of arbitrary social guidelines for women. So the full title of this book is The Rules, Time Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Wright. The book came out in 1995, but it was a word of mouth hit and only started showing up on the bestseller list in 1996. It eventually sold two million copies,

which is objectively like a lot of copies, but also compared to the secret, which sold 30 million, or a manor for Mars, which sold 15 million. It's relatively small. Why follow a bunch of rules when 30 million, or a manor for Mars, which sold 15 million, it's relatively small. Why follow a bunch of rules when you can just manifest a man? Yeah.

Hahaha. It's written by Sherry Schneider and Ellen Fein, who are essentially just two random women. They are 36 and 38 years old when it is published. I was not able to find any background information, specifically on these people. All I could find is that they're both just freelance journalists. And then they wrote this book and immediately started doing

like seminars and you could pay them $45 for a 15 minute consultation, which I honestly seems cheap for this kind of like self-interpreting. That's like, it almost feels like it's not a grift. They're just doing it because they really want women to get laid. Since this book came out, they've essentially spent the rest of their lives just doing like spin-offs and extensions. So we have the rules for online dating, the rules dating journal, the rules handbook, the rules too,

the rules for marriage, the complete book of rules, the new rules, and not your mother's rules. Oh, God. It's like, air Jordans every year, a fucking new one comes out. Do you know anything about the premise of this book? I do not. No.

Do you really not? You never heard of it when it came out. I have heard of this book through one channel, and that is listener demands that we do this book. I do not. Do you really not? You never heard of it when it came out. I have heard of this book through one channel and that is listener demands that we did this book. So this is from the intro of the book. It says, the purpose of the rules is to make Mr. Wright obsessed with having you as his by making yourself seem unattainable. In plain language, we're talking about playing hard to get, follow the rules, and he will not just marry you, but feel crazy about you forever. That's what we're promising.

Happily ever after, a marriage truly made in heaven. Got it. So, a couple of things. One, it doesn't matter what gender is directed at, every dating guide is like, be a little bit unpleasant. Just be sh-y. Such that, like, create a weird distance between you and the person you like, and they will want

to bridge that gap. And then maintain, maintain that sense of desperation in your partner for the rest of his life. I was thinking, as I was reading the book, about a woman reading this and a man reading the game, and just neither one of them ever does anything with each other The girl is ignoring him and the guy's just shouting insults from across the room So as opposed to many of the books a shocking number of the books that we've covered on this podcast This book was actually pretty controversial when you know

Yeah, because you can do you can write a whole book about disrespecting women, but if you're talking about manipulating men, all of a sudden, we're gonna need congressional hearings. To give you a flavor of some of the debate around the book, we are going to watch a segment from Date Line. Oh, fuck yeah. So you went after it.

You made the first move with guys. You asked them out. You even paid for dinner once or twice. But you're still not married. Shari Schneider and Ellen Fine say it's because you've been playing the dating game all wrong. First of all, we take the thinking out of dating. You take the thinking out of dating? Basically, there are just some innate things that you must do when you're dating. that's why they're called rules and if you follow the rules you will inevitably have a man's crazy about you. God 90s hair right now. The first time you called don't rush to call him back right away. No actually don't call him back at all.

We really tell him not to call back. Yeah that's right. And when you finally do talk to him you end the phone call first. Yeah definitely. I know you're going to get 15 minutes. 10 to 15 minutes. He has to get to know you slowly. Men don't want to get to know you slowly. We force them to. And you can talk on the date. But end the date first.

You just look at you once. You go, oh my god, I have such a big day tomorrow. Don't tell him what you're doing. Living the rules means no more than casual kissing on the first date, holding off from sex for as long as possible. The author suggests six to eight weeks, never offering to go dutch on a date, even if you make more money than he does. And to stop dating him altogether, if you don't get a romantic gift for your birthday

or Valentine's Day. And if you two are a woman who has an easier time getting into menza than getting menza attention. The help you need may be just a rental away. The authors of the rules say women should watch love story and follow it like the Bible. She's not that nice. She doesn't chase and she doesn't pursue him. He likes her. You know, this rules thing may be about the M word, but doesn't stand for marriage.

What we're talking about here is manipulating man, aren't we? Oh, yeah, poor little thing. That's a good one. So I'm kind of like a rot-wilder puppy ready to be trained. I love them. When you need to grow, you like to call her early. You'll never believe it's training though. You're going to enjoy it so much. You you need to grow you like will call her early. You'll never believe it's training though. You're gonna enjoy it so much

Wish we could convey the faces that the interviewer is making So this is the mid 90s, which means we're like two years into it being socially acceptable for women to approach men in this way And then all of a sudden there's a book like don't do that Yeah, you will never be happy. The women are all aggressive Crohn's and it's turning them off. There are, of course, there are women who will like, you know, approach strange cute men,

but I just feel like that's also like very rare even now. Well, they're doing the thing that we see a lot where there's a tiny smidge of social progress and then they're able to cast the existing conventional wisdom of the status quo as like forbidden knowledge. Right, right. They talk about the rules that it basically was like a word of mouth sort of secret that was transferred

like whispered between women. And like you couldn't even utter the words. Like wait for a man to come up to you in the park. But like no, this is, this is not a new bold truth for women. The listeners can't see this, but I also love the enormous shoulder pads. They're rocking. So you can sort of see the selling point of this strategy throughout this clip. In the book, the early parts of the book, they make three major selling arguments for why you should do the rules.

The first is it's about self-esteem. Yeah, yeah. They say, are we telling women to play games? Some people like to focus on the most superficial aspects of the rules, the ones most likely to promote controversy. But the book is really about self-esteem and setting boundaries. Yes, in some ways you're playing a game. The game is called liking yourself.

The game is not accepting just any treatment from a man. The game is being true to your heart. This is also sort of the pitch of the game and shit like that where it's like, behind this all is just self-confidence. Exactly. And basic biological realities. So the second selling point of the book is that feminism is great, but it just doesn't work for dating. I'm going to send you an excerpt

from this section. Anti-feminist? No. As far as we are concerned, there is no conflict between the rules and feminism. Rules can be feminists. We are feminists. We believe in and are grateful for the advances women have made in the last century. All women have different definitions of feminism. Rules, girls can be feminists. We are feminists. We believe in and are grateful for the advances women have made in the last century. All women have different definitions of feminism, but to us it is about getting equal pay for equal work. It's about women being authors, astronauts, doctors, lawyers, CEOs, or whatever they want to be. Getting promoted, being treated the same and paid as much as men. But with all due respect, feminism has not changed men or the nature of romantic relationships. Like it or not, men are emotionally and romantically different from women. Men are biologically the aggressor.

Biologically. They thrive on challenge, whether it's the stock market, basketball or football, while women crave security and bonding. This has been true since civilization began. There's nothing we can do about it. I like having their examples. They're like the stock market, basketball, and then also football. They couldn't think of a third thing that men do. Money, basketball, football. It's biology, both sports.

So, okay, this is actually like a relatively articulate explanation of what they're doing, which is sort of like, this is about a practicality. What's weird is that they have this sort of conception of men biologically is like essentially great apes. Like they just want the thrill of the hunt. But then they also are basing this in a biological understanding of women as kind of like so emotional

that you can't trust yourself. The whole thing is like not letting him know how much you like him. And that's also based on this biological understanding. Women is like, you are too emotional. So what you need to do is set a series of policies for yourself that don't let you show him how in love with him you are after the first date.

Right? You're thinking about him all the time and you wanna call him, but you can't. You don't let yourself do it. Yeah. Yeah. The third selling point of the book, you mentioned this in the love languages where these sell-help books, they can't just be like, hey, this is one approach to this problem. They immediately go to like, the rules are the only way to get a man.

Right. Every single person who doesn't use the rules is basically in a sham marriage. So this is a couple paragraphs from that section. What can you expect to get when you do the rules? The answer is total adoration from the man of your dreams. Total adoration. Because he spent so much time trying to get you, you have become so precious to him that he doesn't take you for granted. On the contrary, he thinks of you constantly. He's your best friend. He's hurt if you don't share your problems with him. He even likes to get involved in mundane things, such as picking out a new bed spread. He always wants to do things together. When you do the rules,

you don't have to worry about him chasing other women, even your very attractive neighbor or his bosomy secretary. Busomy with the shoulder pads. It's 1995 at the end of the day. I said, but he listens when you talked to him. Okay, sure. When you walk around the house with very little on, he whistles as though you were a babe on the beach.

He notices everything about you except anything bad. If you're 10 pounds overweight, he doesn't think you're overweight, he thinks you're cute. But if your friend is the same size, he thinks she's fat. Why would you throw that last part in there? He's sexist, but against other women. He treats your friends like shit. Well, that's what you want in a man. Someone who sees a woman who looks exactly like you and then complains about her body.

To you, yes. So, like, this is another theme of the book where they just tuck in straight forward red flag behavior. It's like, this means that he loves you. Right. What is your experience with like the dating market, Peter, were you ever like an online guy? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I met my wife on Bumble. I was an apps guy, yeah. Oh, my wife on Bumble. Oh, did you? I was an apps guy, yeah. Oh, you went on the one where women control the process.

It's the opposite of the anti-rules app where women have to talk first. What about you? Is this feels like completely different in gateding? One of the critiques of this book, which I think is kind of unfair, is like how sort of heteronormative it is. Like this is very explicitly a guide for straight women to get a husband.

Right. And part of me feels like that's actually kind of defensible because none of this fucking advice would like work in my world. You're going to be like, oh, don't talk about like sex or, you know, anything deep before you go meet up for gay men. It's like you need to do like a 30-minute negotiation on exactly the sex that you're about to have before like getting a coffee. So, as you feel with these books, the structure is all over the place. There's 35 rules, but they're not arranged in any like reasonable structure and they're super repetitive. So I am kind of taking

apart the rules and putting it back together to organize this in terms of like the stages of dating. So the first stage of relationship formation is basically like getting ready to date and like attracting men. Rule number one is be a creature unlike any other where they tell you how to become the kind of person who men will approach. Okay. They talk about how basically you should like join a gym, you should start dressing differently, sort of kind of standard advice for just like to become more conventionally attractive.

That creature that is unlike any other, a lady who goes to the gym and dresses a little nice. Yeah, a thin hot woman. Yes. So I'm going to give you a couple of paragraphs of very specific advice. I'm sure this was basically the text on your Bumble profile, which is like, this is the woman, this is the woman that I want, this is how you should be. Don't leave the house without wearing makeup.

Put lipstick on even when you go jogging. Do everything you possibly can to put your best face forward. If you have a bad nose, get a nose job. A bad nose. Color gray hair. Grow your hair long. Men prefer long hair, something to play with and caress. You don't have to say true after every one of these paragraphs, Peter,

I already know you agree. I know your people. Men like women who are neat and clean. They also make better mothers of their children, the kind who don't lose their kids at the beach. That's true. I do, at the end of the day, one woman who would not lose our kids at the beach. Yeah, who will not result in the deaths of your children? Now a word about clothes. If you walk around in any old clothes on a theory that what counts is only what's inside,

not your outside, think again, men like women who wear fashionable, sexy clothes in bright colors. Why not please them? Why not have the largest shoulders you can possibly have? You have to stop editing the clothes as you go through them. You should have shoulder shoulder pads so large you cannot get on a bus. Don't aspire to the unisex look by feminine looking clothes to wear on the weekends as well as during the work week. Remember that you're dressing for men,

not other women, so always strive to look feminine. Wear a short skirt, but not too short if you have the legs for it. If you don't, get a leg replacement ladies. Get a leg job. Well, I wouldn't describe this as feminist. That's just me. The casualness of like, you have a bad nose, get a nose job. Fix your face. Make your face better. Jesus.

We then get to rule number two, which is don't talk to a man first and don't ask him to dance. And they're very explicit about like they mean this literally never. Right. Talk to a man first. Do not go up to men. They say even if you're at a nightclub, don't do the thing where you like stand near a man, hoping that he talks to you. Basically, you should act completely distant and aloof and unbothered at all times. And only men who like aggressively come up to you. Those are the men who you should entertain.

Only pickup artists should be approaching you. Exactly. This is written before the game. So I will give them a little bit of credit. If you tried this in 2007, this ensures that like a man will approach you in a nightclub like juggling and then making eye contact. Only respond if he has runes. Look at his runes first. What's in his fanny pack when he shines a black light on you, you should be spotless.

There's I think one of the main tensions that they have in this book and they never really reconcile is they're straddling the line between pretend to be aloof and be aloof. Yeah, yeah. At one point, they sort of intimate that like, if you go out to a nightclub and a man doesn't hit on you, that's actually totally fine.

Have an enjoyable time with your friends. And like, that's a reasonable advice, right? You should not live your life as if you're waiting for somebody to scoop you out of it. But then they also give this very specific advice of how you should walk around clubs, head up, shoulders back. Even if a man talks to you, you should be like, oh, I'd better mingle after two or three minutes.

Right, it's like the advice is simultaneously don't care and care an enormous amount. I'm going to send you another little excerpt. This is from the part of the book where they talk about how you should basically never initiate anything. You should never invite him to anything. You should never be the one who kind of goes out on a limb for the guy. Our dentist friend Pam initiated a friendship with Robert when they met in dental school several years ago by asking him out to lunch. She spoke to him first, although they later became lovers and even lived together, he

never seemed really in love with her and her insecurity about the relationship never went away. Why would it? She spoke to him first. He recently broke up with her over something trivial. The truth is, he never loved her. Had Pam followed the rules, she would have never spoken to Robert or initiated anything in the first place. Had she followed the rules, she might have met someone else who truly wanted her. She would not have wasted time. You can see how they're straddling this line between like, yeah, don't spend time with people who don't treat you well.

But also it's like she invited him to lunch and that set the tenor for the first place. And she would have said, well, don't spend time with people who don't treat you well. But also it's like she invited him to lunch and that set the tenor for the entire rest of the years-long relationship. There also sort of framing it as if if she were following the rules, she would have found another guy who cared about her. But the actual message seems to be if she was following the rules, she could have manipulated Robert into loving her somehow. I know this is also her fault too.

Right. So this is the sort of thesis statement of this section of the book where they're talking about how to attract men, how to get men attracted to you. And we're going to dig into this a little bit. So they say, it's easy to rationalize women's aggressive behavior in this day and age. Unlike years ago, when women met men at dances and coming out parties and simply waited for one to pick them out of the crowd and start a conversation, today, many women are countenance, doctors, lawyers, dentists, and in management positions. They work with men, four men, and men work for them.

But even if you're making the same amount of money as a man you're interested in, he must bring up lunch. The premise of the rules is that we never make anything happen, that we trust in the natural order of things, namely, that man pursues women. If he likes you, he'll always approach you. It's hard to accept that, we know. It's also hard waiting for the right one. The one who talks to you first calls and basically does most of the work in the beginning of the relationship because he must have you. The natural order of things. The natural order of things.

This is like a really common trope where like some social, like the social norm in 1995 is that it's increasingly more accepted for women to approach men, right? But like, they still frame it as if there is a natural order, right? The natural order was the one that emerged from the social norms of the 1950s or whatever, for some reason. That one's natural. The modern one is somehow a bastardization of the perfect order that we have previously achieved. Peter, what I hear you saying is, Mike, do you want to tediously explain to me the history of dating norms because you read another book for the spot cast?

What's from hearing you saying? Yeah. And the answer is yes. Peter's answer is yes. So I want to zoom in on this kind of fascinating phrase that they use. It's easy to rationalize women's aggressive behavior in this day and age.

So for this episode, I read an extremely interesting book called From Front Porch to Backseat, Courtship in 20th Century America by Beth Bailey. Love that title. The place we're going to start is with an anecdote from the book that was allegedly uproarious. This is a story that went around in the 1920s. She says, one day the story goes, a young man asked a city girl if he might call on her. We know nothing else about the man or the girl, only that when he arrived, she had her hat on. This is like a hilarious, like, knee-slaping story. What does this getting at is the slow shift from the previous norms around dating, which were

all based on this, this idea of gentleman callers, that's like where we get that term. All of the dating basically happened in the private sphere. So if a girl liked you, she would invite you over to her house, and then you'd like hang out with her, basically in her living room.

And as opposed to later dating norms, it was mostly controlled by women. So it was often the mothers that were doing this. It was the girls themselves who were deciding which boys they were gonna invite over. She quotes an advice column from 1909 where a boy writes in and he's like, I really like this girl.

Can I ask her out? And the sort of Anne Landers type answers, like no, no, no, no, come on, come on. You gotta wait for her to do it. If you want her to invite you over, you can like sneak to one of her friends and be like, hey, can you ask Lucy to ask me over? But you could never just like declare interest in a girl. You got to get runes and then make her want to invite you over. Knock and leave runes. So what then starts happening, starting in the 1880s with industrialization, women start

entering the workforce. They're exposed to many more men kind of independently of their parents. People are also moving into cities where they have much less living space and they just kind of like can't have people over. We also get the invention and the mass adoption of the automobile. There was massive like decades on moral panic about young people having access to cars, because I meant that they would have private space just with each other, right? They would have a way of getting to places away from the watchful eyes of their parents,

and also a place to have sex, which is, like, how a lot of people lost their virginity in, like, the 1800s. Another really big one is the invention of kind of mass media, right? We get the penny press, we get large circulation magazines, many which are like magazines for women. We also get radio and TV and Hollywood, which start establishing the script for like normal dating, right? Like dinner in a movie. And you know, this takes place over like 60 years and it's a slow and kind of stuttering process and you don't want to say that anything is like this kind of binary shift.

But over time, what this does is it shifts dating from a private activity that takes place in people's homes to a public activity that is happening in restaurants. It also becomes much more controlled by men. She says in the book, the conventions that grew to govern dating codified women's inequality and ratified men's power. Men asked women out. Women were condemned as aggressive if they expressed interest in a man too directly. Men paid for everything,

but often with the implication that women owed sexual favors in return. The dating system required men to always assume control and women act as men's dependence. So apparently if a man couldn't afford to take a woman out, she would discreetly give him money before the date like slip him a little bit of cash, so he could take her out and like pay on the date and like maintain this theater of, you know, oh, I'll get the check.

Wow. Okay. So to return to the hat anecdote, the reason why it is allegedly funny is that the man goes over to her house, expecting they're gonna like stay in in the parlour and talk, and she has a hat on, indicating she is expecting to go out. Like these two things were existing at the same time. Fellows, don't you hate it when you show up to her front porch and she's wearing a hat? But then what's so interesting is obviously all of these norms are completely fucking fake. Right. There's nothing like biological about dinner in a movie. You could easily go on a walk for your first date. This is something you hear in like conservative political discussions too,

right? Where they're talking about returning to like a natural order by doing X, Y, and Z. And it's like there is no fucking natural order. Yeah, it's all fake. All of these norms are constantly evolving in the shift. Exactly. And the previous order was also fake. Actually, I disagree. The one true God-given order is where you have to hang out

with her parents in a parlor. Texting my boys, like, I'm crushing it. They're giving me more tea. What's also really interesting about the creation of these totally fake norms is that people immediately start chalking them up to biology. Yeah. In the book she says,

contrast these strictures with advice on dating etiquette from the 40s and 50s. An advice book for men and women warns that girls who try to use Serp the right of boys to choose their own dates will ruin a good dating career. Fair or not, it's the way of life. From the stone age, when men chased and captured their women, comes the yens of a boy to do the pursuing. You will control your impatience, therefore, and respect the time-honored custom

of boys to take the first step. So this is all about honoring an illiterally ancient time when men captured and presumably raped women, that's the norm we're trying to adhere to implicitly here. When life expectancy was like 27, she points out in the book that even in the 40s and 50s, people would write columns being like,

this is fake, like in living memory, we didn't have this. This is not how our moms dated. And on some level, it's a little bit obvious that, like, yeah, the shit that they're saying in the rules in 1995 is like, yeah, horrific dating advice to women in the 1940s and 1950s. But I read another really interesting article called The More Things Change,

The Rules and Late 18th Century Conduct Books for Women by Barbara Darby, who says this whole thing of like women these days are too aggressive. People were literally saying this in like the 1770s. Like she quotes letters from Erasmus Darwin. Like we're basically in this constant state of fretting about like women these days, right? They're just too aggressive. And envisioning an era where everyone was just like a little more prim and proper and upright. Return with a V. Yes. So the next section of the book is about how to act on the first date.

How should you behave to ensure that you get to the second date with this gentleman? Okay. I am going to send you some of their tips and tricks. It's too late for you, but it's not too late for the ladies out there. Now that you look the part, you must act the part. Men like women, don't act like a man, even if you are ahead of your own company. Let him open the door. Be feminine. Don't tell sarcastic jokes. Don't be allowed knee-slapping, hysterically funny girl. This is okay when you're alone with your girlfriends, but when you're with a man you like,

be quiet and mysterious, act a lady like, cross your legs and smile. Don't talk so much. Wear black sheer stockings and hike up your skirt to entice the opposite sex. You might feel offended by these suggestions and argue that this will suppress your intelligence or vivacious personality.

You may feel that you won't be able to be yourself, but men will love it. Men love it when you're not funny. Yeah, you might think that I'm suppressing your personality, but what if I told you a man would like it? Yeah, but instrumentally, it will be effective. There's a weird thing here where it's like, how are you setting yourself apart as like a human being? Right? If every woman is just like black stockings, not talking much, acting mysterious, what's your individual appeal? This is such a fascinating theme in the book, too,

where they start and they return to this over and over again, this idea of like being a creature unlike any other. But then you're turning yourself into this very generic, client, ha ha ha, great joke, Steve. Date, they just doesn't really have any of your own personality. Steve, you are absolutely hilarious. Unbelievable, Steve.

Sorry, that was sarcastic back then. We both did Elizabeth Holmes voices for that. Don't tell sarcastic joke is just such bad advice to meet personally because it's such a great flag for me. Like if someone is just a little bit sarcastic like that. Like if she just like sat there waiting for me to talk, I would absolutely loathe the whole day. Yeah, well you were also looking for someone who you like.

Right. None of his advice is about trying to find somebody you like. Right, or just like presenting as someone who a guy is interested in, but not a fully formed human being, more as like this like ethereal creature that they want to get closer to because they don't understand it, but it seems sexy.

Yeah, they want you to be a woman who fails the Bechtel test. I wanted to ask you about this aspect of it too. Another piece of advice they give, which as a gay person is super fucking baffling, but maybe there's like some sort of wisdom in this. So they say, don't be too serious, controlling, or wifey. Don't mention the M word, not even to mention that your brother recently got married.

And then they say in various other chapters, they say, don't mention words like marriage, wedding, kids, or the future. Those are subjects for him to bring up. He must take the lead. They also say, on dates or in phone conversations, don't use the words nurturing relationships, bonding, or talking about getting your needs met. You don't want to sound like a walking relationship book. In the early stages of dating, staying light is essential.

Do you have this like magic word thing? I think it would be so weird. Like if I was at a friend's wedding last weekend, and I was on a date and he's like, what'd you do last weekend? I was like, I was with friends. I was sitting in a smoky room wearing a small black dress and not speaking with anyone. Like what? No, this is bizarre. Like would you even notice if somebody said that why I went to my friend's wedding? No. Oh, she knows what weddings are.

Do not say nurturing. It will only make them think of being nurtured. There's a very good essay by Taffy Brodyser-Akner in 2019 talking about how she used the rules. Like when she was younger, a lot of women, I think like fell for this stuff. I think this was something that was like often passed down from like mothers to daughters it seems in the 90s, like this book actually casts like a very long shadow. And her insight after like pretending

to be this person and obviously at not working and then eventually she was herself and met a guy, she says, the problem with the rules isn't that it shouldn't need to exist, though, yes. The problem is that if you are someone who needs them, you are probably incapable of following them. A lot of this advice is basically just like, be a different person. Right. First of all, people can't really do this

on any like long-term basis. And secondly, what is the point of that? Even if the person loves you, they love someone who isn't you. I almost feel like with books like this, like you mentioned how specific these rules are. And it feels like the operation of that is just to make it such that no person could actually follow them such that any failure can just be chalked up to the failure to adhere to the rules. And also a lot of this, a lot of this stuff is very qualitative, right? Like, be funny, but not too funny.

Yeah. Like, well, how do we even follow a rule? Right. Oh, I was too funny. I made that sarcastic remark. So the next section of the book is about sort of dates two through five, like this kind of early dating stage where you're still not totally sure if you like each other, but like, you know, you're seeing more of each other. Right.

We're still two years from having sex. Yeah. So this, this is really the part of the book where it really tips from like whatever a little bit of flexibility into full on just inconsiderate and manipulative behavior. So rule five is don't call him and rarely return his calls. Rule 6 is always end the phone call first. I recommend getting a literal timer, because it's the time before smartphones. So you set an actual kitchen timer for 10 minutes.

I guess when it dings, I don't know how he's not gonna hear the ding, but when it dings, you're supposed to say something vague of like, oh, gotta go and just get off the phone really quickly. Again, you should always leave him wanting more. Every phone call ends with like, my pie is ready, gotta go. I wonder how much of this is like,

from a time when if you were dating, you would have like one person you were interested in. And that was it, right? Because you could only meet people at like events and shit like that. Now, if you're on Bumble, you're messaging with five people at once. If some of them, if one of them is showing markedly less interest, they just fall off the map, right? I do think that an unfair criticism of this book would be to hold it to the standards

of now when like the paradigm of dating has actually shifted a lot. Like a huge amount of the book is about like answering machine etiquette. And like it would be fun to dunk on that. But also, like whatever, of course it's written with that in mind. Like that's the way that people were dating at the time. But they've updated the book. So there's like the rules for online dating. And there's like not your mother's rules,

which is really silly, because it's actually your grandmother's rules. But in the modern iterations of this, they say you should always wait four hours before texting back. Obviously, you should never message a guy under any circumstances, don't leave a star or a poke

or whatever they have on these websites. Bumble, the app for dumbasses. Yeah. Ladies get on hinge. They're actually very anti-bumble, like very explicitly. I saw a thing they did on CNN. I love that. They say you should wait 24 hours to respond to any email that you get on a dating website

as well. So it's the same kind of thing even though we don't go to college anymore. Okay. Rule eight is don't accept this Saturday night date after Wednesday. They explicitly say that if you don't have plans on Friday or Saturday, you shouldn't answer the phone. And if you have roommates or whatever, then they should be like, oh, she's not here, but like not give any more reason. So you're explicitly lying. You're also like emisorating yourself. Like, yeah. lying. You're also like emisorating yourself. Like, yeah.

You're not even having fun on Fridays and Saturdays anymore. Rule 12 is always end of the date first. Gotta go. Yeah. Imagine, imagine dating someone who's just like constantly hanging up on you and just running out of dates. And you're like, wow, she is a beautiful and mysterious woman. They also, some of this stuff is true sociopathy. They have like a list of tips. One of them is when he asks you out, silently count to five before saying yes, you'll make him nervous. And that's good.

And then this one is so fucking cold. It's when walking down the street, drop his hand first ever so slightly. Oh my God. It just mean. There were times when I was reading the game where you're reading the stories of these men, and they have like gamified every component of their relationship with women to the point where they pretty clearly no longer enjoy it for what it actually is. And that's what this feels like too. It's like every second of your experience with the person that you're trying to form a relationship with is gamified and turned into something that's sort of inherently unpleasant. And it sort of ends up

asking the question, like, what are you looking to gain out of this? Is this actually making you happy? Is this just a, the same thing with the game? Is this just a display of dominance over the other person and that's the enjoyment you get at it? Because clearly you're not getting any genuine feelings of affection out of it. It's also not clear to me remotely how effective it would be. So we're gonna read another one of their little examples.

Okay. Act independent so that he doesn't feel that you're expecting him to take care of you. That's as true on the first date as the 50th. Jill remembers that when she went bed shopping for herself with Bruce, her boyfriend of six months, she deliberately bought a single bed of red and different queens.

An adult, an adult in a single bed. It killed her to have to do this as she was hoping he was the one and knew if they were going to get engaged and married she would have no use for the bed. But the fold out couch she'd been sleeping on was broken. Rather than consulting Bruce on the bed purchase asking him what kind of bed he liked and what size he liked as if to suggest this might be the bed they would be sharing one day. She bought the single bed as if she had no intention of getting married soon. It was important not to let Bruce know that she was buying a bed with him in mind.

So you're in the sixth month of a relationship. This is self-imiteration. I bought a bed covered in needles and nails to let him know that he was not wealthy. Also, by the sixth month, isn't he sleeping over sometimes? Wouldn't you just want to have a bed that you can both fucking fit in? There's something so, like, you are ruining your life for this fucking shit.

Like, just sleeping in a fucking race car bed, like a child, because the man can't possibly fit in it. One of the weirdest threads of research for this episode, because you know, we look at these books, and you always want to do a little bit research, to be like, okay, is the central premise of this book true? Yeah. And I was like, I guess I sort of have to Google,

like does playing hard to get work, even though like, that's ultimately an unanswerable question. Yeah, it means so many things, right? Yeah, but it turns out there's an entire body of research on this. And this is a question that people have investigated since the 1970s. What dating strategies actually work?

And so a fairly basic principle of human relationships is reciprocity. If there's a new coworker at your job, and you find out that the new guy, Bob, and HR likes me, you're more likely to like him back. Sure. This is like a fairly well-established principle. It's not clear if it applies to dating,

because just the stakes of dating are much higher, right? You're looking for a soulmate, not just like someone to kind of have casual conversations with. So there's been various attempts to figure out whether this like reciprocal uncertainty kind of principle applies in dating. Most of the research honestly is like total garbage.

A lot of it is just like surveys. They're like, guys, do you like it when a woman is passive or when she's aggressive? And so most people, men and women say that they like being pursued. I think because it's kind of risky to pursue someone else emotionally because if you're like, hey, I like you and they're like, I don't really like you back, it hurts. I like it when a girl who has never made a joke

is always leaving early and hanging up on me. So there's also various attempts to measure this with like laboratory methods. They do this thing where they show women a bunch of like Facebook, like fake Facebook profiles of dudes and they're like, this is Jeff and he really likes you. And like this is Steve and he doesn't like you.

Like which one do you wanna go on a date with? And like that yields some fairly interesting results but it's kind of like so fake that you don't really have to go on dates with these guys. And people know they're in a study and it's mostly college software. Has anyone ever done a controlled study in involving the timing of text responses

or something like that? Well, there is a meta analysis that looked at 18 studies, like every study that has been done on this. And it's very much in line with like everything that we always say on this show, that basically it works on some people and doesn't work on others. Yeah, yeah.

Some people want to reduce uncertainty. People who have like kind of more anxious personalities, they really don't like this play hard to get stuff. And most of them will just give up. Because they're like, well, there's people that I know like me. I'm not gonna waste my time on someone who I can't tell. That's just irritating to me.

And then there's other people who like really do have this like thrill of the hunt thing. And they like, they really like the idea of like winning somebody over. There's also all the research indicates that that's not gendered at all. That like basically like once you know that somebody is an option, you immediately start looking at like,

well, what are my other options? Right. Like my wife tries to talk to me every day. And it's like, come on. Where's the excitement? You should be ignoring me for weeks at a time. There's a good quote from one of the authors of this meta-analysis. She says, my work shows that playing hard to get may only be attractive to target partners if optimal levels of perceived uncertainty and difficulty are achieved. In other words, individuals who are too easy to get or too hard to get are perceived as less attractive than individuals who are moderately difficult to attract and moderately uncertain about their interest toward the target partner.

All of these dating books that have all these strategic things of like how long to wait after texting, whatever, all of them are making the same mistake as Nudge where they're favoring like structural elements over fundamentals. Right. Ultimately, this mostly comes down to like whether you're attracted to somebody and like whether you enjoy spending time with them. If someone is hot and you're clicking on the dates, whether they wait 15 minutes or four hours to send a text back, does that really matter? Right? And if you're not attracted to them and you don't really like hanging out with them, can they really convince you to like them by being withholding? Yeah. As she says in her quote, there's sort of like being too eager.

Like, you know, I love you after the first date. Obviously, that's like sort of extreme. It's weird. Yeah. And also playing too hard to get. People are eventually just gonna lose fucking interest, right? If you're not showing any reciprocation. But there's actually a very wide window within those of just like, yeah, it seems like they like me,

but like they're not coming on too strong. They're not coming on too weak. It seems like what you're saying is that there's this research showing that there is like a broad spectrum of acceptable dating behavior, right? But it feels like basically like always ending dates and never making jokes and hanging up on the guy. Like it feels like that's probably outside

of that acceptable spectrum. One thing I kept thinking as I was reading this was like, I try to conduct my interpersonal relationships, like some set of ethics and morals. And if I was seeing somebody who never reciprocated my invitations, never texted me back, was constantly ending dates, ending phone calls. I'd be like, this is a person

who doesn't like me. And like, they're trying to spare my feelings. They're like, there's some reason they don't want to tell me that. As like basic consideration to this other human being, I really need to stop making invitations. Right. By the logic that they're putting forward, men should be attracted to like just all the various women in their lives that pay them no mind at all. Exactly. This is what it's entrenching, is this idea that you should like wear a woman down

because the signals of you liking someone in this fucking book are also the signals of not liking someone. Right, right, right. And this is something that I grew up hearing as dating advice that like girls can't show interest. And the conclusion you draw from that is like you need to sort of press the issue constantly, which ends up just resulting in anything

from like women's like physical and emotional space being invaded to like sexual assault, right? Like all of these terrible things are downstream of this. So much of this advice seems designed to attract a guy that adheres to like every toxic gender norm imaginable. Right. Right. He's picking you up in public. He's asking you to dance. He keeps pursuing you when you give him no indication that you're attracted to him. Right. This is like baits to the fucking worst men and the worst tendencies of men. This is my wife, she's actually never spoken to me. Yeah, she openly hates me at all times. So this is like literally part of like the fucking Dennis system

and always sunny. You're aloofness implies that you are of immense value. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, she is often the corner not talking to anyone. She must be so cool. Right. You guys sort of see that working in like the micro. Once you are engaged in a relationship with another person, it immediately becomes sociopathic.

This is the next stage of relationships in the book that we're going to talk about. We have not gotten to the bad parts of the book yet, Peter. The next section of the book is about sort of once you're in a long-term relationship, right? You're on the runway to marriage. We get to rule 24. Don't open up too fast. Yeah, yeah. Here's this.

Men must always remember you as mysterious on the first three dates. Their initial impression tends to go a long way. If and when things get serious, you can casually tell him about your difficult childhood and some of your fears. Even then, tell him in an easy, short, simple way. Don't be dramatic about your past. Don't go into long details. Don't be burdensome. Don't burden him with your memories and thoughts. Let's say you are a recovering alcoholic. He takes you out for a drink on your first date

and to dinner on the second. He notices you only ordered clubs soda both times. He's about to order a bottle of wine and wants to know if you'll join him. Don't say, no, I never drink. I hit a terrible bottom with drugs in alcohol two years ago and now I'm sober in AA. Just say, no thanks and smile. After a couple of months when he's madly in love with you and you feel that he would not judge you for your drinking problem, you can tell him something like, I used to drink a lot in college. It really made me sick. Now, I'm in AA and I don't drink anymore. I feel better. Then smile and go on to other more pleasant

conversation. You can't believe it's real, right? You're like, did Mike? Did Mike add that last part? She's like, anyway, did you see friends last night? He's like, wait, exactly. Also, this guy has never been like, do you not drink? Yeah. Come on. These aren't real human dynamics. The idea that you wouldn't want to tell somebody like a deep, important, serious part of yourself on the first couple dates makes total sense to me, fair enough. But what's fascinating to me is like, they say even when a couple months has gone by, even then tell him in like a breezy way.

Right. Never show emotional vulnerability. That's a woman who doesn't get married. So in this section where they're talking about like getting into like a real relationship, they say, now you can show more of yourself. You can talk about your feelings as long as you don't get too heavy or play therapist or mother. Exhibit warmth, charm, and heart. If his dog died or his football team lost, express sympathy. We're back to football. The things that make boys sad.

Look into his eyes, be attentive, and a good listener so that he knows you're a caring human being, a person who would make a supportive wife. Don't give him the third degree about past relationships, it's none of your business. Don't overwhelm him with your career triumphs. Try to let him shine. Don't plague him with your neuroses. Remember, you won't have to keep such things to yourself forever, just for the first few months, until he says he's in love with you. And then it ends with like the bleakest fucking sentence I've ever heard.

They say, eventually you will become more of yourself. Oh no. Oh my god. Months. You're waiting months. And then he's like, I love you. And like, she like slowly turns to him like in a horror movie and like a creepy smile overtakes her face. And she's like, oh no, oh no. They do have one of the weirdest fucking sections is they have, one of the rules

is about never moving with him first. That's just like not even conceptually offensive to me. That's just like logistically offensive. Like you should know like his dishes habits before you decide to spend the rest of your life with somebody. But the whole basis for it is basically like, well, you might move in with him and then he won't like you anymore.

They say like, oh, he might not like the way you like slurp your coffee or how you look in the mornings. Yeah, that's like the whole point of moving in with someone. Yeah, you're gonna do it when you get married. What is, like, it's like, you know, you said reading Thomas Friedman, you're like, does he understand metaphors? This whole book, I was like, do these people understand relationships?

What is the point of doing this? It's also starting to feel like they believe that you will cross a threshold where he is like functionally trapped. And so like then you can start letting all this stuff out and it will no longer matter because he can't exit. But if your actual fear is like that you're a real personality and real history and real life will be viscerally unappealing to this man, then you're not going to escape that by holding it in.

This entire section of the book of like once you're in a relationship is mostly about manipulating him into proposing to you. Oh my God. So this is the section where they talk about how to get him to finally pop the question. In general, the way to get a man to ask you to marry him in a reasonable amount of time is not to live with him before you're engaged or married and to continue to see him only three times a week, even though by this time you want to be inseparable. If that doesn't work, you might have to shake things up a little bit.

Go away for a weekend with a girlfriend, cancel a Saturday night date, get very busy at work, mention that you were renewing your apartment lease and be mysterious about your activities. Remember, men don't necessarily propose when you're cutled up on the couch watching a rented video, but do so when they're afraid of losing you. Literally just straightforward manipulate his emotions. This is a life-long partnership. Like, yeah, you are also stuck with this guy who you have manipulated into marriage theoretically for the rest of your life.

They specifically say you shouldn't tell him that you're pulling away because you're frustrated that he's not proposing to you. Well, of course not. Just be like, I just work as busy. Right, this isn't like, oh, I'm not telling him, I have IBS on my first date. This is like, that's right.

This is just like psychotic behavior. I will say there is one good piece of advice in this. Be mysterious about your activities. It's like, Oh, where are you going places with my friends? They do actually say numerous times like you should never give him any details. He's like, Oh, can you hang out this Saturday and you're like, no, you want your behavior to be indistinguishable from someone who has a second family. Like every time when we're reading books like this, all I can think is like, you are not happy. No one who's doing this is happy.

This is exactly where we've, where we've ended up, Peter. This is the destination. I'm sending you the longest excerpt so far. This is from another weird thing about this book is they don't seem to understand what a rule is. So rule 33 is do the rules and you'll live happily ever after. Okay. So they're talking about like what are the benefits? Like sometimes it's hard, right? To not call this man back or like to be withholding constantly. What can you do to keep the discipline going? Right? How do you

motivate yourself? So they then list all of the benefits of doing the rules. Everything you're going to get if you continue on this plan. So here is the list. The biggest payoff first. He wants to marry you. When you are seated at a booth in a restaurant, he slides over and sits next to you. Sitting opposite you is just too far away when he's truly in love. Not so bad, so far. He sends you roses after you have sex. Every single time. When your rose budget is $25,000 a year.

He writes love notes or poetry for you and tapes them on the refrigerator door. He finds your idiosyncrasies harmless rather than annoying. He gives you little presents, jewelry, and flowers on every possible occasion. He gets involved in every aspect of your life. You don't bore him. If you call him at work, he'll always want to talk to you even if he's busy. He calls you from work a lot. He doesn't like to work late because he wants to see more of you. When you have a colder, become ill, he still wants to be with you. He gets angry when you don't pay attention to him. He doesn't ignore you. He's always walking into whatever room you're in.

You are never a football widow. He wants to do everything with you. Oh, God. This is bleak. He always wants the phone number of where you are so he can get in touch with you, even though you're not telling him where you're going. Even though he doesn't know, he was on busy this weekend.

He doesn't like it when you go to Bachelor at parties. He's great, great science. Oh, God. There are like 10 bullet points in here and there's at least like 14 red flags. I mean, some of this stuff is like perfectly fine. Some of it is like a baseline expectation. Like when you have a colder, become ill,

he still wants to be with you. It's like, yeah, you're married. We're both adults. No one's like this. He gets angry when you don't pay attention to, all right, this is the worst paragraph, like the worst bullet. He gets angry when you don't pay attention to him.

He doesn't ignore you. He's always walking into whatever room you're in. This is my nightmare partner. Like I'm someone who needs like a loan time. Yeah. And the idea of a partner who is just constantly barging into the room I'm in is like genuinely my version of hell. Still fine, Peter.

You still fine? You okay in there, Peter? Are you, what's happening in your cave oh God man this is Unhinged the thing that I kept thinking in this section I mean this is the perfect encapsulation but like throughout the book is that like the whole paradigm here is just a child's understanding of what love is yeah You have this man who's like worshipping the ground you walk on. He's writing you poetry. He's constantly giving you gifts. But also if he gets jealous when you're away from him,

he's checking in on you all the time. He's emotionally volatile. Right. There's also this weird thing where in the book, they keep saying stuff of like, you know, we all know when you go on the first date, you're naming your children together in your head, but don't show it. There's like this weird normalization of like infatuation. Again, the authors are 36 and 38 when this book is published. And like it reads like, it's like a nine year old who's been raised on like Disney movies.

The game is like this in a different way, but it's just like the complete dehumanization of the other person. Totally. Like what's a good man? A good man is someone who is obsessed with you. There's also that this part, I mean the whole book made me so sad,

but like especially this part made me sad, they sort of drop in that like the rules can be useful in other parts of your life too. So they say another reason to do the rules is so that men, women, bosses, and parents treat us well. When we don't do the rules, we inevitably get hurt. When we do the rules, we find out who really loves us.

Oh no. Why did you have to make me sad Michael? This is, it makes me so sad. Oh God, that is a huge bummer. It's this total inversion of the kind of, this is for self-esteem and confidence message that they start the book with. This isn't the prescription of someone who's confident.

This is the prescription of someone who's really scared and who's so afraid of forming adult relationships with someone that everything is about holding yourself at a distance from other people and never risking anyone getting to know you and like, oh, I just wanna keep it light. I tell you I'm recovering alcoholic, but like not in like a way that makes you feel uncomfortable.

Right, they're pursuing like love in this completely detached abstract where it is missing the part of it that's fulfilling. Like the part of it that is good and reducing it to someone else is paying constant attention to me. Yeah, which is not love, that's infatuation. It's almost less than a infatuation, right? Right.

It's like I'm someone's pet. Right, or vice versa. I mean, yeah, there's just so little in this about how to have a healthy and fulfilling dynamic with another human being. The only saving grace of this part, because I'm like, how could a 36 year old and a 38 year old write like this? How could you think this?

And I'm like, well, maybe they're just doing this cynically. And they're telling women what they think women want to hear, but that's also maybe worse. It's really not better. Maybe we'll talk about this later, but was there any coverage of this that was sort of like concerned men upset about the premise? There's this is not fucking true, but a lot of men say that the game was a response to

the rules. It's like, well, if women are going to play games, then we're going to play games back. Objectively not true. Yeah. Maybe tricked women into sex for like a lot longer than like 1995. Literally forever. So it's not true, but it is a narrative into sex for like a lot longer than like 1995. Literally forever. So it's not true, but it is a narrative that I think was very convenient for men. Right.

It's like they're all conniving. We can't trust anything they say. We can't trust the way that they look because they're wearing makeup, etc. To be fair, these women are wearing makeup while jogging. So true sociopaths. Yeah. Do you want to see the bad parts, Peter? Of course I want to see the bad parts.

That's why I'm here. All right. Here's as bad as it gets. This is toward the end. So this is right after they say what you will get if you follow the rules. This is where they talk about what you won't get. Still, another incentive for doing the rules is what you won't get. No messy divorce.

He'll take care of you when you're old. He really, really loves you. A rules marriage is forever. No outside counseling. He has no interest in couples therapy. That thing that guys always want to go to. When you do the rules, he doesn't have big issues with you. He doesn't wish you were this, that, or different. His love for you is unconditional. No physical abuse. When you do the rules, he treats you like a fragile, delicate flower. He cups your face, rubs your back when you've had a hard day and strokes your hair as if it were silk. You don't have

to worry about being battered. This is not me like taking this out of context to dunk. They mention this numerous times. What the fuck? They say later they say abuse doesn't happen in a rules relationship. Because when you play hard to get and he works like hell to get you, he thinks you're the most beautiful, wonderful woman in the world, even if you're not.

He treats you like a precious jewel. This is fucked up. It's super fucked up, dude. This is one of those things where I feel like we shouldn't have to debunk it per se, but I won't do it for the sake of it. Like abusive people are not abusive because they don't love you enough.

We're so weird shit like that. And you can't craft a certain type of love that will resist abuse. The other part of this is that like the last excerpt we read was like he will get angry when you don't pay attention to him. I'm sorry, but like these things don't comport. In the rule where they talk about how you're not supposed to have sex with them on the first day, they say like, oh, you know, he might, you know, try to invite you to his house or something and you'll say no. And they're like, well, he might get angry that you're not giving him sex.

They say, but don't worry, anger indicates interest. And you might be surprised for he will probably call you again. Jesus. They say this numerous times that like if he's mad about all these arbitrary fucking rules, like, why didn't you call me? I've been calling you all week. Just means he likes you. Also, the prior bullet is like, they get to like, oh, he won't physically abuse you bullet

and you forget that the prior one was also just absurd. Like, oh, you won't need counseling because his love for you will be unconditional. But, no, no, you have created the conditions of his love. The whole book is about manufacturing the conditions where he loves you. It's not unconditional. Oh, there's no such thing as unconditional love. It's fine. It's just it's a silly concept. Yeah. When people say unconditional love, what they mean is like he loves you, even though you have diarrhea, it's not like you can be

whatever type of human being you want to be. But yeah, the whole book is premised on creating a fake persona that he will fall in love with. So you can't then say, oh, he loves you for you. This is also the part of the book where you realize that this is not a dating guide. They want you to do this forever. Rule 21, don't tell him what to do. Rule 22, let him take the lead. Rule 23, don't expect a man to change or try to change him. Rule 44, even if you're engaged or married, you still need the rules.

Starting right now, don't call him, don't be him, and don't stay on the phone for more than 10 minutes when he calls you. Don't initiate sex even if you want it badly. Let him be the man, the aggressor in the bedroom. A lifetime of misery. A lifetime. A lifetime.

I also don't understand how these align. Like, there was a thing that's like, you won't be a football widow. And then it's like, actually, you're gonna do whatever he wants to do to create less friction in his life. It's not funny, but it's like kind of funny to have this whole thing of like learn to compromise.

And they're like, he likes scary movies and you like romantic movies. Maybe you'll learn to enjoy the scary movies after all. So, you got that compromise and you're just giving him his way. You are trying it all times to emulate a hot mannequin. And he's talking to you and you're not saying anything back. And then you will eventually get married and he's just carrying you around the football

games. And this is another thing that just made me so fucking sad, right? We've talked about these other like best-selling self-help books from the 1990s and they're just fucking garbage, right? It's like they pretend to be like a communication guide for couples and then men or for Mars is just like, this is how women should ask men to do the housework, like tricking him into actually like being an active partner in the relationship.

And this book, which is written by women and cast as this kind of like breezy, fun dating guide, is word for word, the same thing. Right, don't try to change him, don't nag him. Don't make it difficult. They have a whole thing of like, if he comes home and he's tired and you've cooked a nice dinner for him and he like doesn't care, then like, don't worry about it.

The reason he's at work so long so he can take care of you. And it also feels like maybe built into this is this belief that like, okay, yes, there are these sort of like unfair gender norms and like things that are asked of women that are not asked of men, but we will overcome that by adhering to it so rigidly,

by like by doing it so perfectly that everyone will like us. Yeah. There's something like deeply sad about that. I will do everything that everyone has ever asked of women all the time. I read a lot of reactions to this because, like, thank fucking God, this book was extremely controversial when it came out. And a lot of, like, very good articles have been published about, like, just how poisonous this book is. And one of the things that a lot of the like actual feminist responses to this book point out is that like there's really no such thing as like a dating advice book, right? Because you can't give people meaningful advice unless you know their situation. So essentially all of these dating advice books, what they really are is the expression of a

world view about how men and women should relate to each other in the world. That's what they're doing, right? They're presented as on the surface, oh, you should do this. Don't call back too fast. What they're really doing is like, this is how we think men women should be. Yeah. And so we talked in the men are from Mars, women are from Venus episode about how in the early 90s, there was this heightened visibility of sexual harassment due to Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and a lot of women were elected to Congress. There was kind of this extra visibility of feminist

issues in the early 1990s. In the rest of the decade, there were all of these gender-essentialist basically backlash books. And the best way to understand this book is a way for women to sell this anti-feminist backlash back to women. Yeah. Right? They're saying we're feminists. Right? Oh, we don't have any real problem with feminism, but it doesn't work.

Right. Or just like feminism designed as like, yeah, you can have a job, but men will rule over you in every other component of your life. Yeah. is like, yeah, you can have a job, but men will rule over you in every other component of your life. Yeah. And of course, as a man, I would love to blame women and be like, and be like, you know, men obviously want to embrace feminism,

but it's women who are stopping. Well, you're one of the good ones, Peter. No, but I do wonder how much of like, how much of that dynamic where you have women prominently critiquing feminism is because they are like effective vessels for the critique, right, for the anti-feminist movement, right, to be able to say that the critics themselves are women has value to the broader, to the broader reactionary movement. Also another thing that I realized researching this episode,

and I've updated my views as a result of the research for this episode. I, for the last kind of 10 years, I've been sort of like fretting about the rise of online dating. It seems like a paradigm that is very similar to like shopping in ways that make me uncomfortable. People have this perception of infinite choice that makes them discard other people very quickly. And it seems like there's just a lot of consternation and a lot of hurt. And you know, there's just a lot more rejection associated with dating now. And I've always been like, I don't know if this was like the best thing. But another one of these kind of perpetual crises is like the end of courtship.

Yeah. Like you've been getting these takes since the 1890s when like kids started going to like diners with each other. You had the same thing. Oh, kids don't court each other the way that they used to. And I think that the shift to online dating is really worth noting, right? We're basically speedrunning this paradigm shift that happened in 60 years at the end of the 1800s. We're doing it in like 10 years now. But also, I was looking at the numbers the other day of like how people meet. And like in 1940, 60% of people met through their family

or met in elementary, middle or high school. That was bad. Like that was, that was basically like quasi-arranged marriages and a huge number of people getting married very young, either because it was like shotgun weddings or something. Or just because like that was expected of you and you had a high school study, you would get married at fucking 19

and you end up in one of these awful, loveless marriages because like women couldn't get bank accounts and there was no no fault divorce. Right, right, right. I am less pessimistic about this stuff than I was before I started researching this episode. I will say this, I was one of the guys who did great on the apps, and it's for one reason and one reason only.

In my profile, I said that I had an in-unit washer dryer, and if you live in New York City, that is a killer profile line. I think the only reason you did well is because you weren't a podcaster yet. That's. And if you were like, I'm a podcast bro in Brooklyn like no. I'm in Queens for do not denigrate me.

My wife met me five years ago and she met and started dating a corporate lawyer. And she's about and now she is married to a full time podcaster. That's the kind of thing you can't anticipate. And had she followed the rules a full-time podcaster. Yeah. That's the kind of thing you can't anticipate. And had she followed the rules, it wouldn't have happened. I know, if only she had treated you like shit. It's never too late for you. you