You can't find love with a man without this (don't shoot the messenger)

Beauty, intelligence and a good sense of humour won't help you find love with a man if you're missing this one essential quality that's becoming rarer and rarer by the day.

Photo by Giulia Bertelli on Unsplash

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Read this article on Medium or listen to the Your Dating Bestie Podcast episode here.

Real men

43 years ago in 1982, Joe Jackson wrote an epic song called Real Men that’s even more relevant today than it was back then.

Here are just some of the lyrics:

What’s a man now? What’s a man mean?
Is he rough or is he rugged? Is he cultural and clean?
Now it’s all changed, it’s got to change more
’Cause we think it’s getting better but nobody’s really sure

Time to get scared, time to change plan
Don’t know how to treat a lady, don’t know how to be a man
Time to admit what you call defeat
’Cause there’s women running past you now and you just drag your feet

Man makes a gun, man goes to war
Man can kill and man can drink and man can take a whore
Kill all the blacks, kill all the reds
And if there’s war between the sexes then there’ll be no people left

And so it goes, go round again
But now and then we wonder who the real men are

The battle of the sexes

The line that stands out the most to me is:

‘If there’s war between the sexes then there’ll be no people left.’

That’s what seems to be happening at the moment — and it’s extremely toxic. Because in a war between the sexes, no one wins.

Women have every right to feel hurt by men who have hurt them. But if you want to find love with a man, you can’t tarnish all men with the same brush. And you can’t allow yourself to be dragged down into the cesspool of man-hating, which is extremely popular on social media.

How do these short-sighted women think all this man-hating is going to end? Because personally, I’ve always known it wasn’t going to end well.

Toxic masculinity Vs toxic femininity

Case in point: A comment that was left on one of my articles the other day. This comment, which I deleted, was left by a man. Here’s just part of it:

The biggest win for men today is that they’re finally learning the true nature of women. Once a man stops putting women on a pedestal, stops developing deep emotional attachments and chooses to go his own way, he begins to realize how society has used him like a tool. At that point, he can finally experience true freedom and happiness. I’m genuinely proud of the younger generation of men who are distancing themselves from women and relationships, choosing instead to enjoy their hobbies, friends and the simple peace that comes from knowing they don’t have to care about anyone but themselves.

Ugh, what a pathetic excuse for a man.

Poor little diddums can’t handle women not behaving exactly the way he’d like them to, so he treats women as a monolith — as though all 4 billion of us are exactly the same — and opts out of dealing with women altogether.

Cool. Great solution. What a loser!

But before we get too cocky, let’s reverse the genders and see how it sounds:

The biggest win for women today is that they’re finally learning the true nature of men. Once a woman stops putting men on a pedestal, stops developing deep emotional attachments and chooses to go her own way, she begins to realize how society has used her like a tool. At that point, she can finally experience true freedom and happiness. I’m genuinely proud of the younger generation of women who are distancing themselves from men and relationships, choosing instead to enjoy their hobbies, friends and the simple peace that comes from knowing they don’t have to care about anyone but themselves.

Hmmm…

Doesn’t that sound like something you’ve read on social media countless times? The kind of thing that gets tons of likes and positive comments? Perhaps you’re even one of those women who’d like or comment positively on something like this.

Well, I’ve got news for you…

You can’t find love with a man without this

When I say you can’t find love with a man without this, what do you think ‘this’ is? Nope, it’s not physical attractiveness, intelligence or a good sense of humor. It’s compassion.

If you want to find love with a man, you must have compassion for men.

Why would any man want to be with a woman who lacks compassion for men? A woman who’s cold, distant and angry? A woman who lacks respect, patience and understanding? A woman who doesn’t make him feel as though he can relax, be himself and make mistakes on occasion?

A telltale sign you might be one of these women is the overuse of words such as ‘toxic masculinity’, ‘patriarchy’, ‘man-splaining’ and ‘male gaze’. No matter how reasonable these grievances might be, I’d advise you to save this kind of talk for brunch with the girls. On a date, it’s grating and gives off a man-hating vibe. Individual men can’t fix mankind for you.

Now, before you freak out, let me be crystal clear…

Being compassionate towards men does NOT mean being a doormat or putting up with poor treatment. Being compassionate towards men means being warm, open and empathetic while also having reasonable boundaries and knowing how to enforce those boundaries with finesse.

This kind of compassion should make you feel strong and in control — not weak and stuffed around. If it doesn’t make you feel strong and in control while also attracting rather than repelling men, you’re doing it wrong.

Resources — three podcast episodes for you

If you’re interested in learning how to be more compassionate towards men and disengage from the toxic battle of the sexes, I have three podcast episodes for you.

You can watch or listen to all three podcast episodes here.

Diary of a CEO

The first one is a long episode of the Diary of a CEO podcast with guests, Scott Galloway and Logan Ury. Scott is a finance expert with two sons who also tries to give boys and men some direction in life. And Logan is a dating expert with a degree in behavioral science from Harvard. They discuss the current dating landscape and how men and women can better connect.

No Filter

The second one is an episode of the No Filter podcast with guest, Jameela Jamil. Jameela is an actress and feminist activist with almost 4 million Instagram followers. They discuss how taking a more compassionate approach towards men is the only way forward for both men and women.

The Hook Up

The final one is an episode of The Hook Up — a relatively small Australian podcast. The guest is clinical psychologist, Zac Seidler. They discuss why men are becoming more conservative while women are becoming more progressive and how to bridge the divide when it comes to dating.

How to have more compassion for men and find love

Striking the right balance between giving men a chance and giving men the boot is something I’m constantly navigating with my clients case by case in the Your Dating Bestie community.

We start with optimism. We assume the best of men. And if something they said or did is ambiguous, we keep an open mind until we get to know them just a little bit better. But the moment they show clear signs of being creepy, flaky or maybe even toxic, we move on from them.

The point is we have compassion for men. We don’t go about finding love with a man by giving off a negative man-hating vibe. We expect a certain standard from men while also taking into account that they’re human and fallible. And we treat men as though they’re innocent until proven guilty — not guilty until proven innocent.

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