This might be the most sexist thing I ever wrote. I'm sure that many people will hate me after reading this. It's packed with all sorts of cliches. But it's been on my mind for quite a while now. I just had to get it out there. It occupied way too much space in my mind.
I (finally) decided to follow my own advice and get maybe one of the most embarrassing posts I ever wrote out there.
After one of my readers read my post on failure, he asked me what I meant with “go on bad dates”. Apparently, where he lived, most people don't use online or mobile dating. For him, dating someone was a decision that was solely based on seeing someone in real life first.
Pretty old school, right? I like it though. Anyways.
What I initially meant with “go on bad dates” is that you should use online and mobile dating apps. Most of these dates will be pretty bad. I barely ever was on a good one. Most of them were actually really bad.
But the point of going on bad dates is to get better at dating. The more dates you have, the better you'll be at having dates. You'll learn how to deal with the opposite sex. And once you meet the man/woman of your dream you'll know how to deal with them.
Another cool thing is that you'll meet all sorts of people you usually wouldn't hang out with. Try to learn something from each and an every one of them. Make them tell you their story. We all have a story to tell.
For example through mobile dating I met an actress, a psychiatrist and a designer that worked for a luxury brand. All people I would never had the chance to meet in my current circles. And I learned many new things.
And here's the thing I had to think about after this last post. I believe that one of the main issues between men and women, especially in the work environment, is that men don't know how to treat women they're not attracted to. We only know how to properly and respectfully treat women if we are attracted to them. And if I say men, I'm talking about myself.
Before I started using mobile dating in early 2014 for a few months, I basically only dealt with women for a longer period of time, that I was sort of attracted to, in one way or the other. So over the past 20+ years I figured out how to properly deal with women I was attracted to.
But dealing with women I was not attracted to? Oh boy. I had absolutely no clue. I'm still not really good at it I know this sounds a bit embarrassing that I don't know how to deal with women I'm not attracted to. And maybe even a bit sexist. I don't know.
But let's all be honest here for a moment. If you're a guy and you have or had a female friend, ask yourself this one question: if the opportunity came up wouldn't you hook up with her? Or wouldn't you have hooked up with her (when you were still single)? Really. Think about it. Be honest to yourself..
If you're a gal, isn't one of the reasons why you hang out with your guy friends that you know that some of them are secretly into you? Doesn't it feel nice to know that someone is into you? Doesn't it feel nice to surround yourself with such a person? Think about it..
If this holds true, this basically means that almost all interactions men have with women (and the other way round) are sort of built on attraction. Sorry to break the secret guys. I know, I'm stereotyping quite a lot here.
Luckily, there was a study done among college students that proved exactly those two things. So I'm not the only crazy person here. Needless to say that I don't remember what the study was called. Maybe it was just a documentary. But I'm sure I saw this somewhere..
So what this sort of suggests is that men (also according to my own experience) only know how to properly treat women they're interested in. On the other hand they don't know how to treat women they're not interested in.
I guess the way we men usually try to deal with this is through ignorance. But I might be wrong with this.
And that causes a hell lot of problems, especially in the work environment where you can't avoid having to deal with people you're not attracted to. You have to deal with them. And if you don't know how, that's almost always a source of potential trouble.
That might be one of the reasons why you can read quite a lot about gender equality and all that stuff in the newspapers. On the one hand women want to be treated equally, which makes sense. But on the other hand they sort of don't. Actually they want to but sort of can't. You can't just talk to a woman in the same way you talk to your male colleagues. Why? I have no clue.
To my own observations, women tend to analyze, interpret things and become way more emotional about things than most men do. You can tell the exact same thing to your male colleague, he will laugh about it and forget about it within seconds (if he even listened to you).
Your female colleague on the other hand can think about if for at least half a day. She tries to read between the lines. And none of this is either good or bad. That's just evolution. Men had to make sure that the family survived. And that's about it. That's why men have no clue about emotional stuff. Just hunt. Kill. Come home. Eat. No questions asked. No big deal.
Women on the other hand had to make sure that they interpreted all signals correctly. That's why women have a strong social intelligence and a strong emotional side. It totally made sense back then. But over the past few decades the entire game changed a bit.
Men and women are now doing the exact same stuff. Which is a good thing. I think.
Unfortunately, from an evolutionary perspective most men and women are still cave men (or cave women respectively). We still deal with things in the exact same way we did 20k+ years ago.
And I somehow feel that one way to eliminate these problems of “equality” is to learn how to properly treat women you're not interested in. That's at least what men can do. On the other hand I have no clue what women can do. I just suck at being a woman.
And that's why I believe that going on bad dates is something we all should do more often. It pretty much forces us men (or women if you experience similar problems), to try to understand how to properly treat women.
Especially the ones we're not interested in. Honestly speaking, it helped me quite a lot. It helped me to understand that equality doesn't necessarily mean equality the way men see it. And to me, this is the core problem. Men and women seem to have two different definitions of equality.
For men, equality means that they treat their female coworkers exactly the way they treat their male coworkers. That's what equality means, right? You treat everybody in the same way.
On the other hand, for women, it means that they want to be treated in a respectful way (whatever that might really look like), which is different to what men treat other men, most of the time. And that's a totally different definition to begin with.
A source of potential misunderstandings. Of trouble.
What I think equality really means and why it' so misleading, is that we have accept each and every individual (or sex) the way they are and value their work and treat them according to their strengths and weaknesses. No matter what.
After all, women shouldn't try to be men and men shouldn't try to be women. Because this would mean that one thing is more valuable than the other. Which is not true. Men have their particular strengths. Women have their particular strengths. Matter of fact.
And only by leveraging these individual strengths (instead of making everything the same) will we ever be able to step up humanity's game to the next level.
And if treating women the way they want to be treated means that I have to treat every woman in the same way that I treat women I'm sort of interested in, then I'm more than willing to do this. Then we should all be more willing to do this.
I don't think the same thing applies to how women should treat men. Because then we might get into big trouble and a lot of misunderstandings. I think..
And I absolutely have no clue about how it works with homesexuals. Maybe the same stuff sort of applies there as well. I don't know..
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