If Books Could Kill - Why Men Love Bitches

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

A 2002 dating guide has found new popularity on Tiktok using an old fashioned method: Have a catchy title and four pages of good advice.Where to find us: Our PatreonOur merch!Peter's newsletterPeter's other podcast, 5-4Mike's other podcast, Maintenance PhaseSources:The Tragedy of HeterosexualityWhy men (still) love bitchesSystematic review on converting online contact into a first dateA Meta-Analytical Review of the Demand/Withdraw PatternGender-Related Predictors of Change in Marital Satisfaction and Marital ConflictThanks to Mindseye for our theme song!Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod

Think of all the possibilities you have, Peter. What do you know about why men love bitches? How much time do you need? The amount of self-censorship I have to do during this episode is fucking Herculian. The thing is, though, she says more offensive shit than you could ever come up with. So it's actually perfect. You could just act shocked and horrified. Yeah, the more problematic the book, the more runway I have.

Yeah, yeah. Why men love bitches. Peter. Michael. What do you know about why men love bitches? All I know is that I can't answer that because I've, never met one. So the full title of this book is Why Men Love Bitches, Colon, from Dormat to Dreamgirl, M. Dash, a woman's guide to holding her own in a relationship by Sherry Argov. It was released in

2002. According to the front cover, it has sold more than one million copies. It's crazy to be writing this right after 9-11. The nation needed to heal, Peter, this was the only way. The initial release of the book is not particularly interesting. It was followed up by a sequel, Why Men Marry Bitches in 2004. Okay. It then went dormant for quite a while. But then in 2020, this book blew up on TikTok and has been like pretty popular ever since. So I checked the Amazon list for like bestselling dating books.

And this book was number five this week. What? Yes. People are still, if you go on TikTok, there's like hundreds of videos of people talking about this book. and like how wise it is and how good it is. What the fuck? So we are going to watch one of the TikToks, Peter. Oh, now we're talking.

So this gives you an overview of sort of the premise of the book and I think why it is appealing to contemporary women. This has 146,000 likes on TikTok. Yes. My God. If you are a woman who is single, hates men, can't deal with these dusty crusty musties, listen up, this is for you.

I need you to go grab this book right here. Why Men Love Bitches. When I was in my, I don't get a lot. a fuck about a man era, didn't want to talk or entertain one, didn't even want to go on dates because of how dusty some of these men were. When I tell you that this genuinely changed my perspective on dating, it changed my perspective on relationships and how I move in relationships. I was always Miss Nice Girl, okay? I was always the girl that would always make excuse, oh, like he couldn't come to something. Oh, it's okay, it was probably because he was tired. Aw, he couldn't show up for me because he had something going on.

It's okay, maybe next time. Do you know how cringy that sounds? I was losing myself trying to make these men happy and that is the last thing. I will be doing today. This book genuinely taught me that what you tolerate, you allow. Let me say that again, so it's drilled in your head. What you tolerate you allow. If you are not okay with your man doing a certain type of behavior or certain thing,

and you've already communicated to him one too many times that what you're doing upsets me. And instead of him not doing it, continues to do it. However, you don't have a strong backbone and don't put your foot down. Don't tolerate it anymore. He will continue to do the same thing until you decide to break the cycle. You can still move with love, you can still move with kindness, you can still move with your feminine energy. But having boundaries in place is the one thing that is going to protect you from low-quality people and low-quality experiences.

What do you think, Peter? How are you defending against the dusty Christy musties in your life? This makes sense to me. This is a girl who is like 24 and she's like when I was 23. I was so stupid. The message of it is basically fine. It's hard to know because if you frame it like, hey, you set some boundaries. people actually respect that, sure. Yeah. But if you're like, you should be kind of mean because it tricks people psychologically into wanting you more,

then you're in like weird nagging pickup artist territory, right? Very conservative worldview. You must be warlike because your enemy is also warlike. This is the epitome of the right-wing worldview, and it's being brought into the dating world. Or is it, Peter, or is it a message of empowerment for today's young women? Let's read the book and find out. Let's go through the content of the book. So the opening paragraphs of the book define what she means by bitches.

Let's get some definitions rolling first of all. Let's do it. So here we go. Why Men Love Bitches is a relationship guide for women who are too nice. The word bitch in the title does not take itself too seriously. I'm using the word in a tongue-in-cheek way, representative of the humorous tone of this book. It's a show-don-tell-tell. It was a show-don't-tell kind of book.

20 years before chat, GPT, she's writing like this. An important distinction should be made between the pejorative way the word is usually used and the way it is used here. Certainly, I'm not recommending that a woman have an abrasive disposition. The bitch I'm talking about is not the bitch on wheels or the mean-spirited character that Joan Collins played on Dynasty. It's a 2002 book. The woman I'm describing is kind yet strong.

She has a strength that is ever so subtle. She doesn't give up her life, and she won't. She won't chase a man. She won't let a man think he has a hundred percent hold on her, and she'll stand up for herself when he steps over the line. She knows what she wants, but won't compromise herself to get it. But she's feminine, like a steel magnolia, flowery on the outside and steel on the inside. Sure. I kind of respect the book for in the opening paragraph being like, the title is clickbait. When I say bitch, I mean a completely different thing that is nobody else's definition of bitch. Like a confident woman who's like kind, but also assertive. One of the weird facts I came across in the research was that apparently the Portuguese translation of this book just translated bitches as competent woman. The wokenest language in the world, Portuguese. A mean woman? No, there's no word for that in Portuguese.

I had a long period. Like, I read the intro to this book and then I, like, moved on like I had some editing to do and some other stuff. And in my mind, this was sort of sitting there as like, do we finally have a book that is like fine? It's just like, hey, ignore the title. This book is going to be about having more confidence. And like, moving through the world. a way where you don't let people treat you like shit. If so, honestly, call your book whatever you

want. Well, here's the thing. I feel like you've done fewer books like this than I have. And the one thing I've learned is that the first chapter will always make you nervous as a podcaster. You're like, oh, is this actually just a totally fine book, right? I know, I know. No one can keep talking about this for 200 pages without eventually becoming insane. Also, Peter, do you know the etymology of the word bitch, like where the word comes from? Like beyond the female dog, I know. In this book, she says, according to some, the word bitch derives from the first letters in the following phrase, babe in total control of herself.

So when a man calls a bitch, he's actually saying, you're babe in total control of yourself. Early 1900s. The rest of the intro just sort of lays out like the basic concept. She also mentions that she interviewed hundreds of men for this book. Uh-huh. So this is going to be a woman conveying. male perspectives on what they like in women. So we're getting the best of both worlds.

Yes. We then get into chapters one and two. Chapter one is act like a prize and you'll turn him into a believer, which bothered me because it's like the nouns don't match up. Right. If it was like act like a goddess and you'll turn him into a believer, like those two things would be parallel. That would have lined up.

It's like a little foreshadowing of like this, this really feels like a book that she just like typed out and like sent off. Like there's a lot of weird stuff like this. She starts by doing a critique of women's magazines, a critique of traditional female media. Okay. Here's this. The average fashion magazine gives women ridiculous relationship advice that makes it easy to understand why women are so eager to overcompensate.

Play hard to get. Then cook him a four-course meal. Bake him Valentine's cookies with exotic sprinkles shipped from Malaysia, just like Martha Stewart. Don't forget the little doilies and the organic strawberries that you drove two hours to get. Then serve it all to him on the second date wearing a black lace, And what is this a recipe for? Disaster. A dream girl, on the other hand, won't kill herself to impress anyone.

This is why the woman he really falls in love with doesn't serve a four-course meal. And you won't see her breaking out the fancy china either. She'll start out cooking him a one-course meal. Pop-court. No fancy doilies. A Tupperware bowl does the trick. She simply asks her guest, hey, do you want the bag or the bowl? Hell yeah.

This makes it seem like there was an epidemic. of women cooking their men for course meals. I wasn't on the dating scene in like the 90s, but I don't think that was true. She then gives a recipe for like what you should serve him on the first date. She says the appetizer is popcorn. She then says for the main course, you should boil two hot dogs in water and then chop them up and put toothpicks in them and hand them to him. And then for dessert, you should give him a twinkie jelly roll, like something super

super low effort. Texting my friends like, hey, I just had the most fucked up date of my life. So like, it's clear that she's joking with this. Like the whole thing is she's sort of exaggerating it. Like a lot of the book has this thing where like officially you can tell like obviously she's joking. But on the other hand, she's joking the way that like Ann Coulter is joking. Right.

It's officially a joke. But also your advice is to not make a huge effort in the early process of dating. If this sold a million copies, you know that like one woman out there cut up hot dogs. Yeah, yeah. There's a weird tension there where it's like, okay, but like what does it actually look like to be chill and not put in too much effort? She also has a lot of tables in the book. Okay. A lot of tables, a lot of quizzes.

Yeah, yeah. A lot of like bullet points and stuff. You'll never guess why. A lot of the tables are two columns like contrasting the nice girl and the bitch. Have you ever injured yourself through violent masturbation? So here's this. I'll be the nice girl and you can be the bitch. That makes sense.

Okay. The nice girl. She'll try to sweep talk. a man into giving her what she wants on a regular basis. If she doesn't get it, she'll cry, get upset, or pout. The bitch, she won't sugarcoat anything or use euphemisms. She is direct about what her preferences are and lets him know what the do's and don'ts are with respect to how he treats her. The nice girl. If he hurts her in some way, she'll cry. Then she'll make him apologize and promise not to do it again. The bitch, she'll back off and let her silence do the talking.

Then she'll communicate when she's ready on her own terms. At this point, she makes it clear it won't happen again because if it does, she won't be around. Mm-hmm. Is that really more direct than crying? The nice girl. She tells herself he didn't mean that. Or she makes excuses if he behaves badly. The bitch.

She notices his disrespect instantly and without hesitation calls him on it. The nice girl. She forces herself to do something she's uncomfortable with in order to please a man. She also puts on a happy face and pretends that she likes it. The bitch. She won't do anything she's not comfortable with and won't hesitate to let him know. She meets him on a level playing field. Another thing she does a lot in the book is put these little equations in the text.

So the nice girl one says, one equals a docile woman equals loss of respect. The other equals a desirable woman equals increased respect. That's math, baby. I don't know if you needed these. This is very generic stuff so far. Also, I refuse to believe that you couldn't find this in a magazine for the ladies. So these are the chapters that cover kind of like the initial stages of. of dating, like when you first met somebody, you're sort of feeling out, like, how often

am I going to see him? Like, are we going to go to his place? Are we going to meet a bar? Like, these kind of little decisions that you have to make in the early stages of dating. The core advice is basically, like, you shouldn't change who you are. You should make sure you keep your friends, keep your hobbies. Don't cancel plans to meet some guy you're on, like, a second or third date with. People are attracted to other people who have hobbies and interests and interesting things to discuss. So you shouldn't compromise any of that. You're never going to get a boyfriend by pretending that he is the center of your work. right? Fundamentally sound advice. She gives some tips on like planning dates when to accept

invitations from the guy, when not to. We're going to read these too. All be if he and you should be you should. Okay. If he takes a few hours to return a phone call. You should take a few hours to pick up. Boom. Monkey C. Monkey do. If he keeps calling to push back the plans from five to six to seven. You should agree to the first delay. If he pushes back again, pull the plug, pull Tell him to take care of his business and suggest hooking up later that week. If he calls after 10 or at a time when you would normally be asleep, you should wait until your next date and politely tell him not to call you past 10. Don't do it.

That shows you can live without talking to him and you aren't that concerned with where he is at night. If he wants to see you for one or two hours or just enough time to have sex. You should tell him you don't work in little time frames, suggest another night when you both have more time. If he doesn't call you when he's out of town, He shouldn't be able to get a hold of you when he gets back. Regardless of how many times a week he calls or wants to see you. Don't pick up 100% of the time.

So, some of these are boundaries and then a couple of them are psychological mind games. This is the funny, like, duality of this book is that some of the stuff is like totally fine. Yeah, if a guy's clearly just calling you for sex and that's not something you're interested in or he's calling you late at night. Like, yeah, just be like, no thanks. Yeah. But then also, no matter what, don't pick up the phone. One of my favorite things to think about in the context of dating advice of any type is, would you accept this from the other gender?

Like, if you just like flipped it, right? Yeah. If it was like, the man you're dating is playing weird games by intentionally not picking up the phone sometimes. I will say, I mean, we talked about this for the rules episode, so I'm not going to get super into it. But I did look up like the effectiveness of various dating strategies and obviously very difficult thing to study. But to the extent there's any data on this, it basically doesn't matter that much. If you really like somebody, whether they text back after three hours or one day or whatever, these sorts of little tips don't really do much.

And if you don't like somebody, there isn't a lot of strategy they can use to make you interested in them. Right. I also think there's a weird thing where people pretend it doesn't matter. Like, obviously, don't come on too strong early in a relationship. You know, don't make yourself too available to somebody. I think people respond to neediness, especially with, like, online dating. Like, is this person way too into this?

Like, they shouldn't be taking this too seriously. You really can turn somebody off. by being too into them too early? I actually think that this is my most problematic dating thought, and this is outdated. I haven't dated in a decade, but like I feel like playing hard to get does work. There is an actual psychological concept where when something is available to you, once you know that it's an option, you immediately start thinking, what are my other options? Right, right.

And so when somebody casts themselves as an option, you're going to look around. On the other hand, I mean, I am somebody who just went through this process. Like I met a guy online last November. and then we had a couple months where we were doing this like, we've been on one date and then how much are we going to see each other? During that process, really, he was fun to hang out with and he was cute and nice to be around. And like, if he texts it back a little slower or a little faster, I know there mattered that much.

Ultimately, I feel like this stuff probably does work at the margins. Yeah. But it can get you maybe like a third date with somebody who's on the fence about you and would have goes to do after two dates. Like, they're probably still going to be on the fence about you after that third date. And if he was willing to look past you being a professional podcaster, then I'm sure that you could have done all sorts of bullshit when it came to the texting timing. My rule with this was I will eventually tell him about all this. And so if there's something like, okay, I waited until the next day to text you back.

Yeah, yeah. You will eventually tell him that and he'll probably think it was cute. But if it's like, oh, yeah, when I told you I couldn't hang out because, like, I had a volleyball game, I don't actually play volleyball. I lied to make you think I was cool. Like, that would look really bad in a relationship. I think generally like low level stuff like this is totally fine, but assume that you're going to tell the person about it eventually. Like my parents didn't really die.

Yeah, exactly. Like you have to be really careful with this shit. When are we going to get to the explanation of why I'm attracted to the gone girl lady? That's what I'm confused about here. So as usual with these books, because they have to fill them up, she also gives quite a bit of sort of obvious advice. So here are some other tips. Don't introduce him as your boy.

friend right away. This suggests to a man that you are setting up for the long haul and you want to preserve the impression, you are still undecided. Let's circle back. No lover's gazes. To you, it's romantic. But to him, he's being eyed up like prey, no different than the way a lion looks at a gazelle. Don't look at him, ladies. By the way, if there's one thing guys like, it's just like a woman looking at him. Yeah, like elevator eyes. Yeah, it feels good. There's a reason that like every movie has that one scene that's almost like unrealistic. Yeah, yeah. And how hornily the lady gazes at the dude. Don't give him framed pictures of you for his home and office. Okay. Careful ladies, careful. Don't you still talking about the first couple days? I know. Imagine like you show you up to like the

third day. You're like, hey, this is a picture. This is just a picture of me, a full body picture of me. Not even a picture of you like together. It's like just a picture of me. Don't drop the L bomb within the first couple of months. You don't love him. You don't love the sex. You like the sport coat. Good enough. Jesus Christ. Some of the writing in this book. Don't use New Age words like we, us, ours, destiny, soulmate, or anything with a togetherness feeling.

Don't say like, we should see a movie next week. No, no, no, that's we. Don't use hippie-dippy bullshit words like we. Don't use catchphrases like it was meant to be or the universe brought you to me. Ladies. Don't tell him about your therapy sessions, antidepressant drugs, or childhood issues. And leave out the one about the bladder control support group. Well, yeah.

I made a mistake recently of telling my boyfriend that I thought about committing a school shooting, but then decided not to at the last minute, and it caused a lot of drama. Don't try to rearrange his furniture to make your visits more tolerable. He'll think you are moving in. Don't try to feng shui his place. Leave it the way you found it, ghetto shui. There's some good 90s slang in this book. She also talks about how he's using his Mac Daddy moves on you.

And how you shouldn't act too sprung. Ladies, never act too sprung. Not her fault, not her fault, but it was fun to look back. Instead, think like a bitch. Leave it nice and miserable at his place. So that when he visits your place, it will feel like he's moving on up like George and Weezy Jefferson. Now a reference from like the 70s? Fos shizzle.

If he introduces you as his girlfriend, don't glee. do a victory dance like you just won the mother load. Give him a saucy look and say, is that so? My God. This has gotten weird very fast. First of all, the whole like, don't introduce, like, am I crazy? I don't think I've ever introduced someone as my girlfriend or been introduced as a boyfriend unless there was like a discussion in advance.

Of course. Is this like a problem? I also love that she starts with don't introduce him as your boyfriend and ends with if he introduces you as his girlfriend. girlfriend. Right. Don't act weird about it. Like, is this normal behavior or not?

Don't drop the album within the first couple of months. I don't know. That's like... Does anyone need to be told this? We've talked about the fact that she thinks we and us are new age words. Togetherness words, yes. Don't do it. Don't use pronouns.

Use his name at all times. Would Jeff like to go to the movies with me? Don't talk about your childhood issues, I think is wrong. I think you want to make yourself seem a little bit fucked up early on. I think that's another one where people pretend that this isn't a real rule. But, like, yeah, there's some stuff you don't want to tell a person you don't know very well, very early in the dating process. Frankly, if your bladder control issues are so serious that you have to go to a support group, you probably do need to tell him, like, relatively fast. The problem with all of these books is that during this period, there's not that much advice that you can really give.

Like, yeah, don't see him more than, you know, once a week or, like, don't call back immediately. Kind of standard advice for this stage of the relationship. But you can tell she's just, like, out of steam immediately. Right. And she just has to throw in, like, don't give him framed photos. Like, yeah. She then fills this out with an example. A girlfriend of my name, Samantha, went on a first date with a man who took her to a local boxing match.

Jesus Christ. Greg would not be having this shit. Greg would be like, ladies. It's just not that in deal. In between rounds, as always, there was a sexy, barely dressed stripper who came. She's not a stripper. In between rounds, a whore came out. Come on.

In between rounds, as always, there was a sexy, barely-dressed stripper who came out holding the round number. Her date looked at the woman and then, in an effort to be a gentleman, turned to look at Samantha. She acted as though she was oblivious as to why he had turned to look at her. When the woman came out again in the following round in a see-through-laced nightie, my friend leaned down under the seat in nonchal... Sorry. When... Insane. When the woman came out again in the following round

In a sea through Laced Nitey My friend leaned down under the seat And nonchalantly asked her date If she could drink some of the water In his water bottle He said sure At no time did she behave as if she was threatened How nonchalantly was she reaching for the water though

Instead she remained very composed As though the other woman didn't even exist By the end of the third round He no longer noticed the woman in the boxing ring The end result was that he was completely enamored with Samantha. And while driving home, he kept saying how incredibly beautiful he thought she was. The proof was in the pudding.

He continued to pursue her, not the stripper who overcompensated. What is she compensating for? She's not pursuing this man. She's just like a random woman. I mean, first of all, this man who took you to a boxing match for the first date. You're like, I've got to impress him. I've got to impress him. You now believe that you are in competition with like the 20-year-old ring girl.

he's getting paid $100 to put on something skimpy and hold up a sign. And also as soon as she comes out, you're like frantically pawing through his backpack. Like, where's my water? But like, do it nonchalantly. Yeah. Like, that also seems like you're bothered. Try very consciously to play it cool. A tactic that always works.

I would say in this situation, lean over and whisper, she's overcompensating. So here's her quite reasonable advice based on this example. It should not go unnoticed that a man is willing to take you somewhere unromantic on the first date. If a man takes you to a boxing match, a strip joint, or a place you might typically hang out with a bunch of guys, he's telling you by the choices he is making that he doesn't plan to have you around that long. If this is where he takes you on a first date, don't go out with him a second time. You know what? Ladies. When she's right, she's right, ladies.

If he takes you to a strip club. On the first date. On the first date. I got to say, there's got to be a gal out there who's chill with that. And like, she's not reading books, dude. That girl is committing crimes right now. We then get to chapter three, The Candy Store. Do you want to guess what this is about, Peter?

Yes. The Candy Store. I do believe, well, I didn't realize 50 cents stole this, but I believe I'm going to guess that the candy store is when we start doing hand stuff. She calls it the candy store theory. Don't give up the candy store at once. Give it one ju-jube at a time. Okay, for a second I thought the candy store was the vagina.

It's sort of the whole suite of sexual experience. She says if he wants a serious relationship with a woman, he'd rather see less skin in public and keep the freak show private for his eyes only. He'd rather see a form-fitting blouse than a plunging neckline. This is before Ludacris said it. This is before anyone knew about lady in the streets freak in the bed, right? So here is an example she has for this chapter. Ladies listen to lock in. We're at the sex part.

Evan is a classic example of how quickly men categorize women. He met Blair at work and asked her if she'd like to have drinks that evening. She was wearing a silk blouse that showed a little, but not too much. Then she ran home to freshen up, thinking she was going to wow him. She put on a cropped t-shirt that showed tons of cleavage and a belly ring. With large lettering across her chest that read, not everything is flat in Kansas. He recalls, I knew it wasn't going anywhere from day one. Ladies.

First of all, Evan, grow up, brother. This girl's cool as hell. Yeah. Also, if you even have that shirt, right? Surely Evan is not game, right? So she says you should wait at least a month. Before you put on your shirt. But she also says you should wait as long as you can.

Didn't Steve Harvey say like 90 days? Yeah, exactly. So this is actually a more rapid timeline. Yeah. She also has this thing where she says, like, once you get to the body count conversation, you're going to tell him you've only slept with three guys because that's what every woman says. And I was like, is that a thing? Yeah.

Every woman says three, no matter what. I've, like, never even heard this as, like, a trope. It is. Women are liars. I feel like this is, like, a different cultural thing. Like, if you're in, like, the dating scene in New York City and you're, like, sleeping with someone after a few weeks, statistically, they've had sex with more than three people. I got curious about this.

Do you want to guess, Peter, the average body count of the average American? There's an actual survey about this. I love that. You're, you can't just do a bullshity book. You're like, how many, let me get some statistics. in here. I'm so fucking speedblind from gay men that I like genuinely have no idea what like a quote quote normal body count is for a straight person. You're like I don't know, 1200. I have like no idea. You're like how many no loads refuse parties has the average person been to? That's right. I know about

that stuff Michael. There is something called the National Survey of Family Growth that does actually ask people like how many sex partners have you had in your lifetime. This is a survey of people aged 25 to 49. So some of these people, you know, they will have more sex partners later in their life. I feel like you need to ask everyone at the age of 50 because at that point it's like, there's no more. The data is from between 2015 and 2019, so relatively contemporaneous. Do you want to guess, Peter, the average woman and the average man? This is tricky. I come from a slutty culture. I was doing this like, what can a banana cost Michael $10?

Yeah. What's a real number? This is the most out of touch we've ever been. I am going to say that it is men, five, women, four. Oh, close. You got women right. So for women, it is 4.3 sexual partners in their lifetime. And for men, it is 6.3. Okay. So not that far off from each other. Also are the boys lying? Yeah, exactly. I mean, also are the women lying? I mean, it's hard to do self-report stuff with this. But an interesting date of one. Well, I'm going to be honest, I kind of nailed that. I feel like I kind of nailed that. My finger on the pulse. She also has a weird thing, which tell me if this was discourse at the time. She has a thing about how, you know, Obviously, you shouldn't put out, you should wait, but in the meantime, you shouldn't be a tease. So she says this. It's important to keep the signals very clear.

Red means no. Green means go. Yellow means you're a tease, which will piss him off. For example, perhaps your top comes off or there's a little bit of grinding action while you're kissing on the couch. A few minutes later, he'll think you're ready to roll. This is not the time to say, no, I'm just not ready. Telling him this is like taking candy away from a child after you've already let him taste it.

She compares him to a child many times or the course his book. You can't titillate him to the point of no return and then say, no, I just don't feel right about it. He'll be thinking, how do you not feel right about it when you're topless? You've been grinding me for an hour and your pants are unbuttoned.

This is where we get the term hot and bothered. After he's no longer hot, he will be pissed off and bothered. I don't think that's where I come from. Origin. He'll have far less desire to engage in the game because you've taken all the fun out of it. He no longer thinks you're playing fair and his feelings will change from lust to resentment. If he feels he's being teased, he may stop pursuing you altogether. Yeah, I'm going to be honest.

This feels like the worst advice. This is insane. Even for one of these books. First of all, this is like, if you go to second base, you've got to fuck. You're letting him look at your boobs. She describes it as the point of no return. Like, no, it literally is not the point of no. return. Also, I thought men loved bitches. Now it's like, don't be, no, I know. Don't tease him.

If you're like, hey, do you mind if we slow down and he's a fucking asshole about it? That is like the reddest of red flags. But your tops off. When your pants are unbuttoned, I don't think so. Because any man who's going to be a fucking asshole about this is going to be so much worse down the line. Like that's the actual advice here. Right, right, right. But she's like, just don't create this situation. That's pretty wild stuff. And again, it doesn't feel to me like this aligns with the overall arc of the book. I know. Why men love bitches.

It should be like, yeah, fuck his whole life up. You know, take off your shirt and then tell him you got to go. So in her second book, Why Men Marry Bitches, which I also read, she gives actual specific tips for having sex. I'm extremely listening. She says, the first time you have sex, don't recycle previously worn hoochie gear. What? Don't dress sexy when you're having sex. Never open a drawer where you keep your exotic novel.

Like a battery-operated turbo toy bigger than a baseball bat and comes with a clutch and a gear shift. It will ruin the warm and fuzzy ambiance. Sure. Let him suggest the sexual positions the first couple times. If you break out sexual acrobatics that have him saying, ouch, and commence to steady riding him like a cowboy, he'll think this one has been to a few rodeos. Yeah, guys hate it when a woman is good at sex. Just lie there and be confused. Let him supply the condom.

And whatever you do, don't do any tricks. where you put the condom in your mouth and then seductively put it on his private parts. Look at me, mom, no hands. He'll think you enrolled and got your ho certificate. I do agree with that. First of all, I've never seen that in my life. I mean either. All men are very insecure about their size.

If he's not gifted, you can't look at it and blurt out. Is that all? Everyone wants to be a bitch until it's time to be a bitch. It's in the fine print of your contract. You are required to say, ooh, oh boy, I just can't handle all that. Easy, easy. You're going to knock my back out of alignment. And then the very next bullet point is don't ask for constant reassurance.

Instead of, am I doing this right? Ask, do you like that? Okay. So flatter his ego, but also don't ask him to flatter your ego. This is like a guide to bad sex, right? Yeah. Like, do not communicate your needs. That'll make you look like a slut.

She also has some specific ones. Martin said, in the middle of giving a BJ never look up with a cross-eyed look and ask dumb questions. Are we close? How much longer is this going to take? What are you thinking? It's like building a fire and then throwing cold water on it. Paul said, don't try to buy time, stall, hold it, or have a meaningful conversation with it. It's not one of the Muppets or an umpah-lumpa.

Don't use words like cute or adorable to describe it or give it a pet name like. little skippy. I think a pet name involving the word literal is probably not a great idea. It's not anything that I've ever heard of a human being doing, but it would be off-putting if someone acted like your penis was an umpalumpa. Whatever that means, by the way. I also love how obvious it is that she is writing these, because it has these like annoying little pop culture references. Right. It's not an umpa-lumpa. It's like, okay, you're writing these fine. Like they're clearly fake. Whatever. Alan said, look happy. Don't look as if you wanted to complain, but couldn't because your mouth was full. At the very least, to look a little happier than a cat choking on a hairball.

Smile ladies. Doing smile ladies, but your dick is in her mouth. It's fucking crazy, dude. That is insane. She's sucking your dick, bro. Like, what do you want? Don't look sad. So this was the point of the book where I was like, okay, who is this person?

Because it's weirdly conservative advice. Yeah. She says that she interviewed hundreds of men. Clearly didn't. But she doesn't say in what capacity. Was she a journalist? Was she an academic? Who are these men?

How is she speaking to hundreds of men? How is she reaching out to them? This is one of the weirdest author situations we've ever had on the show. So the book includes zero biographical information. Not even like, I grew in Philadelphia, or I was born in this place, or my first job out of college was da-da-da. She doesn't use any examples from her own life of the men. There's nothing like I once went on a date with a guy who did this.

literally nothing. I went to her website, which has now been taken offline, but I got the Archive.org link. It doesn't have an about section. It's just like selling the book. In the bio that is included on the, I believe, Simon & Schuster website, it says, Argov's work has appeared in over 100 magazines worldwide, including Vanity Fair, Cosmopolitan, Self, Glamour, and People Magazine. Sherry's work has been featured on national television shows, such as The Today Show, the view and Fox News channels the O'Reilly Factor. Okay, so she's a journalist. Maybe like her work has appeared in all of these places.

So like, okay, she was a journalist first and then she wrote the book, fine. I then went to her LinkedIn page. Wow. You're deep in it. I'm going to send this to you. This is the only information on her LinkedIn page. Los Angeles, California. So that's something.

No posts. No posts. And there's nothing about education, nothing about where she grew up, anything. Her experience section is basically. gibberish. It says, New York Times bestselling author, October 2006 to present. Then there's another New York Times bestselling author, November 2006 to present. A month later, yeah. The next one says, want to get in touch. Email me at Sherry Argoff Contact at Gmail.com, January 2021 to present. And then finally, New York Times bestselling author, January 2020 to present. It's so weird. Why are there

four entries that all say the same thing. Boomer trying to like paste a picture into Facebook level of competence here. And usually when people are freelancers, like they'll have a line that is like freelancer and they'll have some links to their work, you know, or at least have like something that says freelance author published in Esquire, Self, Cosapol, etc. Nothing like that here. There's no kind of normal job listed. It's also a little weird that she published Why Men Love Biches in 2002. Why Men Marry Biches in 2004? and then literally nothing else. Yeah.

Her website advertises something called Why Men Love Bitches uncensored. And it's like things you can't get in the normal book. And it's an audio book with her narrating it. And it says coming out next year. But that was from like 2007. And it's never come out. Wow. She has a podcast on Spotify.

What? Which also says like coming soon. Why men love bitches. It's supposed to be like interviews with men. Uh-huh. But again, there's like three episodes. They're all like two minutes long. And they're like previews.

It's like coming soon. nothing ever came of that. This is kind of bitchy. I like this. Yeah, she says like, keep an air of mystery about you. Yeah, this is making me more interested in her. This is working.

She has, like, all of her, any of these kind of generic bios. She says, like, her work has appeared and over 100 magazines that lists the magazines. I couldn't find any evidence of this either.

So when I went to, like, People Magazine and Esquire, they have articles about her book. Yeah. They're like, this book is like on the charts. But she didn't write for them. She didn't write for them. The Today Show does list,

like she was recently on a, guest on her show, so that appears to be true. I couldn't find anything from the view. I couldn't find anything from the O'Reilly factor. I don't think she's like lying about those things. I would love to see her getting grilled by Bill O'Reilly in 2004. There's just something really fucking weird about it. There's one offhand sentence in this book where I forget what she's talking about, but she says, this conversation came up recently on my radio show. So I guess she was a radio call-in host, but I could not find any information about that. Nothing like an offhand reference in an old news article.

I will say this, sort of a relic of like the early 2000s, but there were a lot of internet radio shows, right? Maybe it's that. And also, it sort of makes the quote unquote interviews with men make more sense because I'm assuming it's like

a call-in radio show. And these are men who've called in to talk about their relationship issues or women calling in or something. Again, completely making this up because all I have is like this one fucking sentence to go on. What does she sound like? Does she sound cool?

She sounds normal. She sounds normal. Because originally I was like, is this person fake? Like, is this like a pseudonym that like a man came up with? But like there are like radio interviews. Like you can find interviews with her. And she appears to be a real person.

Damn. How cool would it have been if it was, if it turned out it was a guy and he was like, he was writing a whole chapter like, you're not call his penis small. I really thought I was odd to something. But it does appear that she's a real person. I assume it's a pseudonym. And that's why there's like no other information about it. Right.

Right. She's a normal person with a normal job and she like did this on the side. However, she has sued her publisher twice. It's the only other pieces of information I can find about her. She sued her publisher for not paying her for the Spanish language translation. She did that in 2010. And then she sued them in 2020 for giving her book to libraries. Yes.

She says that she's entitled to revenue and that it's like them cutting into her profits by like making the book searchable on like online databases that can be used by like college students and stuff. That rocks. I couldn't find anything about like the resolution to those cases. so I don't know if any, you know, money change hands or whatever. But like, that's literally it. In 2020, too. Like, during COVID, you're like, no.

Fuck these kids. Fuck those libraries. That rocks. So we're going to move on now. Like, this is literally all of the information I could find on this woman. On the internet at large, I'm so fascinated by this. She keeps popping up to be like, any minute now, I'll release a podcast and then just doesn't do it.

Like disappears again. In terms of ethics, that's more ethical than putting the podcast out. So the next section of the book, Chapter 4, dumb like a fox. How to convince him he's in control while you run the show. I love that it was like, chapter 3, can we figure out who she is? No. Chapter 4. Well, like, what do we do with this information? You're trying to Michael Hobbs it so bad, but nothing can happen. She's not letting you. I had like an existential fucking breakdown reading this book because I'm like, I want to make this interesting.

I want to like learn something from doing this episode and I failed. Like I was able to find nothing. I pulled on so many threads and just got nowhere. Damn, it's cool that she's a mystery. That's why I'm so turned on this whole episode. This is where the book gets significantly diceier because she starts talking about you're in an ongoing relationship. Okay. Right? I think a lot of the strategy stuff kind of makes sense in the first couple months.

But once you know somebody and you're potentially living with them... There's something to be said for a little bit of psychology early on. Right. Right. But once you're in a relationship with someone, the games probably need to stop if you want it to be healthy, right? This chapter is all about how, like, women have less power in relationships. So you want to make him think he's in control because that's what men need while you are actually running the show behind the scenes. So she says, the three words guaranteed to turn any man on, you are right.

You'll never convince him otherwise. So don't bother trying. Let him be right. You be smart. This is precisely the reason the dumb fox lets a man think he's in control. When you appeal to his feelings of power, you charge up his batteries. Then you're giving him what he needs. and he doesn't even know it.

The way that they're allowed to talk about us is so rude. It's fucking crazy. Dude. How dare you? This doesn't have it often on this show, but I was like, I'm offended on behalf of men. I'm like, I don't think we're like this. This is insane. You know what?

Let's just say it. It's unfair. The way that the world treats us is unfair. Here is her opening example of this. My friend Annette learned this the hard way. She made the mistake of telling her new boyfriend about how she had killed a snake in her backyard. He asked her, how in the world did you kill it? She went on in detail about how she used a very large shovel to do battle. A look of complete and utter horror came over his face as she gave him a

graphic play-by-play of the brutal massacre. Later that night, he couldn't get an erection. I was dying when I got to that sentence. Oh, shit. He couldn't get an erection because she killed the snake. That's crazy. Turns out you actually killed my snake. Anette. The metaphor is like a little too on the nose here. I would have gone in a different direction if I were hurt. It's crazy how little I relate to this. No, dude, totally. If a woman was like, I did this badass thing.

I'm not like, I'm less of a man. My wife handled a problem and now like my dick doesn't work. Like, I'm kind of a fucking loser. Are you married to? My wife, like, killed a spider. Like, I'm like 10% softer or whatever. Right. Like, what are you talking about that?

This is so weird. So this whole. whole kind of section of the book is about how to make a man think that he's in control. So she says, women need to understand that men love the thrill of the chase and are highly competitive. They like racing cars, engaging in athletics and hunting. They like to fix things, to figure things out, chipper still. Learning about boys for the first time. You're like raising your eyebrows looking at a man, right? Like racing cars? So this one is for you, Peter? It's the way to manipulate your man into getting what you want. How much? How much?

of the stuff are you using on me because you told me last week that you were using strategies from this book on me in our business. And it did work. And it did work. And I, I need to know. I was like, I need this from you. Here's, I'm going to trick Peter. Whenever he does something handy around the house, like putting up a shelf, praise him. Michael, we agreed not to talk about it. I was going to do a whole bit where I call Lee and I'm like, okay, what stuff have you done with Peter? Like, what works? But then I don't have her number. The The only thing stopping me from doing that is that I don't have her number, Peter. It would have been so fun.

Do not call my wife. Do not email my wife. It doesn't matter if the shelf hangs at a 45-degree angle and the stuff keeps sliding off the other end. Clap like the happiest seal at the zoo and then have a handyman come over to fix it when he isn't around. He'll never notice. The minute you say it's crooked, it's all over. He'll never do anything handy around the house again. So don't criticize him for his incompetence, ladies.

That's right, ladies. when he fucks up the shelf, don't say anything. This is why I don't do. This is why I never hung it. It's so funny she started with that contrast between like nice girls and bitches. Right.

It's like, a nice girl puts his needs before hers and it's like, a bitch just doesn't say anything and passive aggressively fixes his work. A bitch lets the snake run free in the garden so that her man can perform sexually. All right, here's this one.

When there's a problem, men love to fix it. By nagging, you make it seem as though the problem lies with you. A perfect example is Diana, who started nagging her husband to fix a latch in the laundry room. After the third time, she asked, he became so irritated that no force on earth could get him to fix that latch. One evening, some friends came over. While her husband was within earshot, Diana asked her friend's husband to fix the latch in the laundry room in that sweet damsel and distress tone of voice that men ate up. Then she started looking for a screwdriver. driver. Before he could even turn around, her husband ran up the stairs like Speedy Gonzalez and

fix the latch in two minutes flat. Okay. This is the first spot-on advice I heard. This would fuck me up. I mean, I would be mad at my wife for asking a random guy. It's also insane. It's also insane, to be clear. It is insane, but like psychologically, you have to fix it. You can't let another man do handiwork in your home like that. I guess it slipped through the cracks with Peter. Steve, do you mind just like running up the stairs and getting it? It's like so good. My wife's friends, husbands are all, like, substantially handier than I am. I'm not handy, but I'm not like totally useless around the house. But like one of them is a professional contractor.

You know, like, it's just different levels. I will say with them, I would absolutely let them run wild in my house. I'd be like, yeah, if you could all, I've got other stuff you could fix too. Yeah. But yeah, I think realistically, this is killer advice. To be clear, this will destroy your relationship. And he also won't be able to get an erection, but it will work. You'll fix the latch.

So here she also has a lot of tips For like making him feel handy around the house This is there's a lot of like reward and punishment stuff So these are his little rewards So many of these books end up being like Here's how to trick a man into feeling special She says men have big egos And they need to have them stroked

Here are a few more tips on how to make him feel studly If you're walking your dog at dusk Ask him to come with you because you want him to keep you safe. If you hear a noise at night, like a bird pooping on the roof, act really scared. Tell him to check to see what that noise is about.

Yeah, that's what I love when my wife makes me get up in the middle of the night because she heard the slightest sound in the world. Real bitch behavior, real boss-ass bitch. Be like, oh my God, sweetie, I'm scared. The whole thing is like, you're a cool, competent, assertive lady,

and now it's like, pretend you heard a noise. Ask him to open a jar that you can't open, even if you can, or unzip your dress, even if you can reach it. By the way, guys don't feel masculine when they unzip your dress. You just can't reach the middle of your back that easily. It's not like, yeah, I help her with a dress sometimes. I help out around the house. It's like a 50-50 thing. Or you can ask him to lift a small box for you.

I love the implication that there will never be a, like he can't lift a large box. Yeah, exactly. Don't waste your time. At a scary movie, hang on to him tightly. If there's violence, cover your eyes and let him tell you when it's over. Let him parallel park your car or back it out of a tight spot. If you tell him he's a much better driver than you are, he'll really be eating out of your hand. Oh yeah.

This sounds like a woman who's firmly in control. Yeah, deadly in control. You're running things around the house. Dude, this is just the John Hamm 30 Rock character. Yeah, totally. Yes, yes, yes. I know. And also imagine finding out that someone is doing this to you.

If she's like, oh, yeah, remember when, like, I told you lift that box either day? That was just like to stoke your ego. I set up a spoof website that has our finances in it. The real one. The real one is accessible only to me. She then says, she has a story. She says, Barbara told a funny story of how she engaged her husband in helping out one lazy Sunday afternoon. And then she tells the story of this woman who, like, she can't get her husband to help her in the house.

So she goes to the garage and flips a switch in the breaker and then comes back in the living room and it's like, sweetie, the power's out. I don't know what's going on. And then he goes into the garage and like opens the little thing and is like, oh, my God, there's a flip switch. And then he flips it back on. And like, that's the whole story. Yes. It starts out by saying how she engaged her husband in helping out. There's no story like he then started helping out more like once he did one little task.

Right. He literally just solved the problem that you created. There's nothing else going on. It didn't improve Barbara's life at all. This is gaslighting, right? Yes. You are just gaslighting your husband into thinking he's useful or something. Yeah.

Also, the switch looks different when you flip it as opposed to when it trips. Oh, does it? See, I don't know that because I'm gay and you're a man. That's right. You don't know that because your boyfriend has never gone up to another man at a party and asked him to flip this switch in the breaker box. So this stuff, I mean, it's bad, but it could be worse. It could be worse in the sense that, like, if you did this once or twice to make your significant other feel better, I would be like, oh, that's weird.

But if you're doing it a lot, it's insane. I'm just saying that to transition us to the next section. So she also... It gets worse, is what you're saying. Yes, exactly. She recommends this approach for resolving conflict. So here is something about that. A happily married woman of 35 years old told me a story about her husband.

When they were newlyweds, her husband would leave stomping wet towels everywhere. On the bed, on the floor, over the doors, you name it, there was a towel on it. When asking him to pick up his towels didn't work, she started throwing them out the second floor window onto the towel tree. Before every shower, he would go outside and pick a towel off his tree. Summer turned to winter, and the towels were losing their effervescent smell. And that's when he decided to comply with the UN House. hold the resolutions. If it isn't in the hamper, it does not get washed. This was an insane passive aggressive shit I've ever heard in my life. You throw them out the window?

Also, I love the idea that there was no conflict in the summer months. Then it gets cold and he's like, this also just doesn't make sense. The towels were losing their effervescent smell because they're outside in the winter. It's very weird to turn the, your husband is leaving wet towels on the bed scenario into one where you're clearly in the wrong. Like a complete psycho. Yes. I have a feeling you're about to send something even weird at me, and I am starting to get unnerved. She also, we're not going to read this one, but she also has one where if you're sick of doing laundry and your husband doesn't chip in around the house, you put one of your, like, red sweatshirts in with all of his underwear so that his white underwear gets dyed pink. And she says, like, when no man would want to wear a pink underwear, he did the laundry every time after that, which I just don't think is true.

Any man who, like, refused to do the laundry, if you just, like, ruined his clothes, I would assume that that man would just get mad at you for ruining his clothes. He's not going to be like, fair enough. I'll do the laundry now. No. He thinks the laundry is your job because you're a woman, right? And then you dye his clothes pink. My guess is his reaction is going to be, hey, laundry lady, you fucked it up.

Okay, here's the worst one in the book. A perfect example is Thomas, who was used to getting a reaction from faith after staying out late drinking with the boys. Faith asked him numerous times to call when he was out late. He didn't. This went on for a year. One Friday night, he tiptoed in at 4 a.m., went to the refrigerator, and poured a couple of beers down the sink so it would look like he had come home earlier.

Which, by the way, this is like advice you would see in like a bizarre world version of this for men, right? It's also not necessary to the story. I don't know why it's in there. After staging the crime scene with the empty bottles, he crashed on the cap. When he awoke Saturday morning, Faith was gone. A girlfriend who was a flight attendant called Faith and asked her if she'd like to hop a flight to Hawaii for the weekend.

Thomas didn't know, and for the rest of the weekend, he freaked out, panicked, and called her friends and family to locate Faith. Fast forward a day and a half. Sunday night, Faith comes bouncing in with a tan, the smell of coconut oil, and a gorgeous lay around her neck. Aloha. This is working on me. I love Faith. Suddenly, there was a complete role reversal.

Why didn't you call? I was worried sick. Then came a lecture about being more considerate. Faith listened while munching on Hawaiian Minaloa nuts. Sure. Then she responded, I don't understand why you gave me such a hard time. Didn't I bring you back some nuts? Besides, if you total up the hours you've stayed out late drinking in the past year, it wouldn't even be a fraction of the hours I was gone.

I've heard enough. You two get married. Then she pranced upstairs to unpack. Thomas never forgot to call faith again. He went out half as often, came in at a decent hour and even bought her a fancy cell phone so they could always reach each other. The idea that this is the end of conflict for these people. Yeah. Well, yeah, that'll solve it. That, yeah, definitely not a toxic environment that we're creating in this house. Yeah. Escalate to a point that is almost impossible to comprehend. Yes. And see, if he surrenders, right? That's like the, that's the advice. Right. The solution to toxic behavior is to up the toxicity. Yeah, this is, this is like not spiritually far from just like next time he comes home late, fire a gun near his head. Right, exactly. Or like, be fucking his brother in the bed when he

gets there. Your partner disappearing for 48 hours with no contact. Yeah. You'd be like filing a missing person's report. None of her friends and family know, by the way. So this is obviously completely deranged. What I didn't know when I started this episode is that this form of conflict resolution is like very well documented in the marital conflict literature. There's something called demand withdraw conflict in marital relationships that is extremely common. And according to a meta-analysis that I found, one of the best predictors of marriage failure. No. I know. Faith and Thomas don't make it? This is like widely identified as like one of the great cancers of bad. relationships, not discussing things, and just withdrawing the minute you see a conflict. And this is

precisely what she's recommending in this book. I'm shocked that she didn't check the literature first. The next phase of the book is, there's a weird thing where like it almost starts to become advice on like how to bring the spark back to older relationships. Like somebody you've been dating a long time? If you've followed my advice at this point, you've ruined your relationship. It's time to win them back. So I'm going to send you a podcast interview with Sherry Argov from 2021. Hell yeah. One thing that really clicked with me when I was reading the conflict literature was how much this is a product of insecurity.

You know, we always talk about how these advice books are accidental autobiographies. What Argov is really describing here is her own, like, anxious avoidance strategy and her own, like, insecurity. Do we know if she's married? In the acknowledgments of her first book, she says, I think, like, my boyfriend, my rock. And in her acknowledgments for the second book, she says, fiance. That's like all we know. But again, she doesn't mention him in the book at all. It's not like this reminds me of my boyfriend. Nothing. Yeah, yeah. So here's this. These are like rapid fire questions from a relationship podcast host. Is it unfair or is it fair to want your new partner to delete their Instagram photos,

or let's say Facebook photos with their ex? I think it's fair. I think you should do it without you asking. Right. But if you have to ask, is it a red flag or is it okay? Yes, it would be a red flag to me that someone had enough time on their schedule to be on Instagram all the time. Okay. But what if they weren't on it all the time?

They just happened to have those old photos with their ex. Do you know what I mean? Like, they're just sitting there. But they didn't think to delete them. I would believe that that's probably not an X. Interesting. Psychic. Because they have some sort of sentimental.

attachment to the photos, which is why they're not deleted. Yeah. My feeling is if I even have to ask the question that I already have my answer, you know, when somebody really likes you and you really like them, all of those insecurities go away. I love her. I love her. Do you believe couples therapy is a good thing or a red flag? I don't know too many people where it's worked out.

Usually at a time they get to couples therapy, things have devourable. at the extent that they're no longer able to be repaired. Right. That's why I feel like preventative couples therapy. If you're having communication issues is probably way better than once it's too late. Yeah. I think if a grown man hasn't learned how to communicate by the time he's a brown man, more than likely an hour a week in a therapy session isn't going to help him.

But I'm not an expert in that area, admittedly. So I say whatever works for people, I don't judge. Good for you. Jesus grace, dude. Holy shit. The whole interview, she's so unpleasant. She has a whole thing about how, like, you should never sex to man and how, like, women are giving it away too easily now.

Like, there's a bunch of weird stuff about technology in the interview, too. Yeah. Sherry is almost, I mean, just dripping with disdain. Yeah. For, like, an imaginary man who's disrespecting you or something. Right. It's, ugh. He should delete his ex from years ago on Instagram without you asking?

Shouldn't have to ask. Why? The first part of that exchange where the host is like, should he delete old pictures of the ex? And then she's like, I don't know why he's wasted. Like, why he should even be on Instagram? Spending all their time on Instagram. And then the host is like, well, I never said that. You literally just, like, you made up a personality trait for a fictional man that you hate.

You just like created a person. personality trait you don't like and then assigned it to him right off the bat. And that was the first thing you brought up. Like, holy shit, dude. This is wild. She's like fucked up. My Instagram account is like almost all my exes because you post your like vacation photos and stuff. And like your exes and like you're with that person for years and you like I'm I like all of my exes. I have no like it doesn't mean you're hung up on somebody just because you're like, oh yeah. In 2017, I was in Rome with my ex. Like who fucking cares? Damn, dude. I would not see this as like. Even a slightly yellow flag if somebody has like some of their exes and their Instagram. It's like grown ass adults. I feel like the man of fear gets so much attention, especially from the left. And like this is how they talk about shit, right? We're like doing an unbelievably unhealthy amount of inference in every single scenario where you're like, this must mean something. There must be some massive, you know, sort of relationship defining thing I can infer.

from this really minor occurrence, right? Someone doesn't delete their ex's photos from Instagram. Well, what can I infer from that, surely, that I'm not being respected? It's like, calm down. Yeah, it's just a perfect example of how these little advice book listicles are such a great cover for your own insecurities. Yeah. Like, someone who demands you delete your ex from Instagram is a way bigger red flag than

someone who just has pictures of their ex online. She's fucked up, man. She's like, she was like, what about couples therapy? And then Sherry's like, look, the man is not going to benefit from talking for an hour. It's like, no, it's for the couple, hunt. Right. You have to calm down. You're literally talking about a fictional man and a fictional relationship and you already hate him.

So the last kind of theme of the book, it's, of course, thuddingly repetitive, so we're not going to go through all of the late chapters. But the biggest theme that really sticks out is this idea that female empowerment requires you to not state your needs. Right? It's like she has a whole chapter about nagging, how you're nagging too much. Because you upset the equilibrium of the man. Right. This is something that even like Steve Harvey said too in a weirdly knowing way, right? Where it's like the man is this like sensitive baby. Right. If you want your life to be easy, the simplest way to go about it is by like tiptoeing around him. Yeah. Rather than trying to solve the problem of the baby man. And so here's a perfect example of this, which I see very similar to the

Steve Harvey example. If you want to go scuba diving. She's actually Steve Harvey's wife. We're just getting the other perspective. It's like wicked. My friend Lucy noticed that when she asked her husband for help in various ways, he was less attentive. For example, she often asked him to help bring in the groceries when she came back from

the market. He was always in the middle of something. So he said, give me a minute. A minute later, she said, the food is going to spoil. And she kept repeating herself. The food is going to go bad. If you're going to do it, please do it now. Every time she went to the market, it became a power struggle.

Then she stopped asking for his help, and she noticed a change. When she brought in the groceries and he asked if she wanted a hand, she said, no thanks, sweetie, I've got it. Suddenly, he was out there insisting on bringing in the groceries. Why is this in every book, dude? No thanks, sweetie. I'm asking my friend's husband to put the groceries away. Steve's on his way over.

He's shirtless for some reason. Now, this is, was it, Manor from Mars? Yes. The reason he won't help out around the house is because you're you're asking wrong. I wonder how many women over the years have been like, I'm going to employ the strategy of no longer asking my husband to do stuff. And then like two weeks later, she's just drowning in chores.

And he's like, my life has gotten mysteriously sweet over the last couple of weeks. He's not going to be like, ooh, I should do all the stuff that she was asking me for. He's going to be like, this whips. Like, I don't have to do shit. This is great. Look, I'm a procrastinator. And like, so is my wife. You know, we both have like identical problems, which is why we can't ever get too mad at each other about them.

I sort of relate to like the, yeah, I'll do it in a minute, right? But if you have like this perpetual problem where your husband is just like not participating in the household, you're not going to solve it with little psychology tricks. Because what's amazing to me is she is in some ways understanding this demand, withdraw dynamic as toxic, right? It's really bad when you're asking him stuff and then he's like, I'll do it later and he doesn't do it. However, she's saying that you should stop demanding things. Right. And it sort of aligns in part, at least with her other implied fix from the Hawaii example of like utilize the framework that he's utilizing and escalate to infinity. Last thing we're going to read from her.

This is from why men marry bitches. Because of course, the first book is about allegedly about dating. And the second book is about like committed relationships and marriages. That's not true. They're both fucking mixed because she can't stick to one goddamn theme for a single chapter. But this is the idea. So she has a couple of tips on getting committed. men from men. So here's this. If it's been a year and you want him to propose,

okay. The first conversation should be one where you are very matter of fact. Say something like, we've been going out for a year. I love you and think you are wonderful. And I accept things as they are. But I'd like a little bit more from a relationship than what we have right now. And this doesn't really seem to be progressing. Then be silent. The less you say after that, the more power you will have. The objective is to create a non-threatening opening for him in a very casual way. Your job is to keep a poker face and show no emotion. Why, you want to get the truth. You don't want lip service or to be told what he thinks you want to hear.

You want to get his real answer. He may tell you he's madly in love with you and he's been planning a surprise. Then he might hint about going away for the weekend. Or he might ask if you want to shop for a ring. If he doesn't give you the answer you want to hear and you get a vibe that he's avoiding the subject at all costs, that's your cue to become scarce. Whatever time you normally spend with him, cut that back. 60 to 70%

See him once or twice in a two-week period, then plan a weekend getaway with the girls. That always petrifies them because they don't know what your friends might tell you. Again, unbelievably toxic behavior from men. Yeah. If he asks you whom you are seeing, assure him you aren't seeing anyone else.

Just keep yourself busy and outside his reach, but don't explain why. He will know. Will he? Oh, my God, dude. What the fuck. I would much rather. someone just be like, marry me or dump me.

Yeah. You have a week to decide. Dude. Then do with this. This is wild. She's telling you to be two chicken shit to state what you actually need. And they're like, oh, he'll know what you need. It's crazy that she's just like, in every scenario, locate the most toxic behavior and do that.

I know. And then quietly disappear if he doesn't respond the way you want, but don't tell him. This sort of like, you know, every man is a giant baby is obviously disparaging to men. But on the other hand, it is interesting that so many women or people in general have like tried to solve the lazy husband problem. I know. And have just landed on like, okay, there's no solution. Like, you know, his laziness is unsolvable. So what we're going to do is think of little ways to trick him.

Well, what I couldn't get over was the entire book aims to provide this binary between a dormat and a dream girl, right? Like in the little table that we started with, she says like, the bitch, she won't sugarcoat anything or use euphemisms. She notices his disrespect instantly and calls him on it. And then the entire book is like about being passive aggressive. Being a fucking doormat. I mean, you're basically a doormat in all of these anecdotes. Like, don't ask for what you want. If he doesn't give you what you want, don't express your needs.

Just like quietly take it. This thing of like, I asked him to bring in the fucking groceries in the car. He'd find some dumb excuse. and so I just stopped asking him about it. Right. That's dormant behavior. That's like... No, but she, by putting him in touch with his masculine nature, which doesn't want to be

nagged, caused him to do it. Not that that has ever worked. Because she has to lie to you and say, being a doormat works. And that's why you have to be a dormant, right? Which is totally false. But like, ultimately, that is what she's telling you to do is put his needs before yours. And she's doing it under the guise of, like, female empowerment, right? And I think this is one of the reasons I think this book,

like blew up so much on TikTok. It's like the chapter one gang. We always talk about how people don't keep reading in these books. Dude, yes. Yes. Yes. I was going to say, I mean, I have some thematic stuff about why this is resonating now. But I do think the actual reason is that nobody reads past the first chapter.

I watched so many fucking TikToks about this book. And like I could find no evidence that anybody got to like the towels in the tree or like any of the other stuff further in the book. It's like first couple pages, the back of the book and the title is like what every fucking videos about. Right. And honestly, great. Like, if what they're saying is like, yeah, be yourself, be demanding, expect more for men, don't date somebody you don't like. Honestly, if that's what they're taking away for the book, great. Nobody should be reading this fucking book. I mean, the way that TikToker talked about it was like, be assertive, set boundaries. Yeah. You get to the

actual advice. It's like your husband needs like advanced psychological management. Another thing I find interesting about that TikToker specifically is she is a conservative. So I went to her profile. She mostly does like wellness stuff. Like she lost a bunch of wage. So she does like before and after photos and like what I eat in a day type of stuff. Sure. But she also says like you will know when God brings you the man that is right for you. She's a conservative. Yeah, yeah. And so I think a lot of this stuff comes in the packaging of like, ooh, this wellness influencers like telling me about this amazing book. But a lot of people on TikTok are just straight up conservatives. And this is conservative dating advice. And they too want to

repackage this as like, oh, what women in the modern world need to hear. But no, it's It's just like 1950s dating advice, basically, right? A lot of conservative women have the same complaints about their relationships and men as liberal women. Yeah, yeah. But it's just framed differently. It's generally framed as something that, A, that the men cannot help, be that you just deal with and see that you complain about with your female friends. The other thing that I read for this was the tragedy of heterosexuality by Jane Ward, who has an entire chapter. about why men love bitches, he's just not that into you, and think like a woman, act like a man.

She basically does, like, our entire show. And so I'm going to send you a chapter of this. Would have loved to have read this before doing any other two episodes? I think it came out recently. Oh, so it's ripping us off. She also has a chapter about, like, pickup artists and stuff. It's pretty good. If she has a Freakonomics chapter, let's call our lawyers.

A telling feature of the plucky catch a man and keep him books written by women in the early 21st century is that they advised women to relate to men. in the most predictably sexist ways, and yet framed this advice as a new form of empowerment or as an innovative set of weapons that a smart woman could use to manipulate men. In these texts, written as if centuries of patriarchy never occurred, women's submission to men was presented as a hot new idea. At first glance, books such as Kara King's 2014, The Power of the Pussy, How to Get What You Want from Men, would appear to take a fundamentally different approach

from Laura Slessinger's 2009, The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands. The former centered women's needs and empowerment, and the latter warned women to focus on their husbands for the sake of their marriages. But both books followed in the same well-worn tradition of encouraging straight women to closely study men's psychology, suppress female behaviors that men naturally dislike, such as being too emotional, carefully tend to men's emotional needs, and manipulate men into a committed relationship. By the way, just because you take our podcast thesis and articulate it better than us, doesn't mean you're not still stealing it.

And like, Jane Ward has some interesting stuff about this narrative where it seems like the man is in control, but you're secretly pulling the strings behind the scenes. Yeah, yeah. That's something she says over and over again in the book in the abstract, but then every single one of her examples is not that at all. Right. You're tiptoeing around him, but you sort of reframe it as like, yeah, because you know you're doing that. Right. It's fine. That is also a narrative that is like, I think, very conservative. Like, it shows up in a lot of, like, it's in like country songs and stuff. Like, you're secretly in control here. And like Republican politicians are always being like, oh, my wife is the real brains of the operation. These are like very common tropes, right? On some level, it's a narrative that people tell themselves that just is not true. It's a way of coping with a patriarchal society and a fundamentally just unequal relationship. Right. You know, and this book is basically telling you like, yeah, yeah, no, you can do it. This is like what you should aspire to. Yeah. I noticed when I was reading through it, it's not until Chapter 10 of 11 chapters. Chapter 10 where she mentions, oh, some men just aren't worth dating and you should break up with

them. That needs to be like chapter two, right? It needs to be like, you can't advance in every single relationship. You need to be able to think about what your red flags are. Think about what your threshold boundaries are and then enforce them. And then you can like move on to chapter three where it's like, so he's not picking up his laundry. Because the whole thing is about giving the impression that you can walk away at any time. to get him to like you.

But she doesn't actually talk about actually walking away until chapter 10. And I also found out from a podcast about this that I listened to that chapter. Chapter 10 was added to the book after it was published. It's like the Q&A, like frequently asked questions chapter. And it wasn't in the first edition of the book. So it's only as like an add on like Dumbledore was gay, BTW, that she added like, oh yeah, some men are trash and you should actually walk away from men. Right.

So again, it's just like everything is about being subservient and like tricking a man into dating you, regardless of the quality of the fucking man. Right. The like subpar quality of the guy is like built into the equation. Yeah. Yeah, the guy's a loser. His apartment sucks. Don't upset him by rearranging the furniture. He doesn't know how to fuck and he is a small dick. Don't tell him. Yeah, it's not why men love bitches. It's why advice books love dusty, crusty musties.