The Type Re-Writer - Your Ex-Boyfriend Will Hate This (2015)

Your Ex-Boyfriend Will Hate This (2015)

Chapter Five

The Type Re-Writer

Most of you by this point in your life have a certain “type” of man that you’re consistently drawn to in matters of romance. For some it may be quite specific—a certain body type, hair and eye color, height, etc. For others, it may be a matter of career, education, political affiliation, or moral attitudes. Whether we choose to acknowledge it or not, all of us are drawn to certain personality types and turned off by others. The relevant question for our discussion is this: Is my “type” helping or harming my pursuit of true, lasting love? For some of you, the question can be phrased more plainly: Why do I keep going for these hopeless assholes?

In his book, The Eight Personality Types of Men Who Are Successful with Women, David DeAngelo outlines these allegedly desirable types of men. Here is a summary of them, with tongue planted firmly in cheek:

1) The Bad Boy: He’s the “dangerous” dude your mother wouldn’t like. He’s the tough loose cannon who refuses to yield to societal laws and mores. He’s often an abuser of alcohol and drugs; being with him causes the same addictive rush in you. Oh, one more thing about the Bad Boy; he often expresses his anger with his fists pointed in your direction. An unstable narcissist with a penchant for domestic violence? Where do I sign up?

2) The Adventurer: He’s a junkie too, but his narcotic is the quest for greater and greater thrills. He’s a lover of extreme sports like skydiving and bungee jumping. He won’t physically abuse you like the Bad Boy, but he’s 100% more likely to watch you fall to a grisly death because you overestimated your rock-climbing skills. Yet like the Bad Boy, the Adventurer is a wild horse you’ll never break. He’s rarely monogamous and is likely to abandon you as soon as he feels the thrill of the relationship is gone.

3) The Seducer: He’s the one who knows your buttons, how to push them, and exactly how fast or slowly to do so. Seducers understand women implicitly and appear to make your pleasure their life’s mission. But when the lights come up in the morning, you discover that their “mission” was more like a commando raid—quick, explosive, and leaving no trace of themselves behind after their target has been vanquished.

4) The Artist: He’s that mysterious creative spirit who represents a complex challenge for you. He’s the poet who is forever wrestling with The Meaning of Life. He’s the tormented musician trying to exorcise his troubled childhood via guitar solo. No one “understands” him, his demons, and his passions like you do. He tells you that you’re the sole light in his world of darkness. Then one night he has dirty, drunken sex with a groupie in the alley behind the club after the show. Suddenly you don’t understand him anymore, so he takes your microwave, laptop, and jar of coins as payment for his pain.

5) The Successful Guy: He’s the budding tycoon, the corporate titan, the man who “makes things happen” by his sheer force of will. He drives a car with a monthly lease more expensive than the mortgage on your house. He has a home theater larger than your entire apartment. With him you’ll never want for anything, or at least not anything tangible. He does have a few drawbacks, however, and they’re confirmed by research. Studies show that powerful men are far more likely to be selfish and ego-driven.[xi] They’re more likely to lie and cheat. Their power has given them an irrational sense of entitlement. They’re also far less likely to show compassion, making them the worst kind of person you need when going through personal crisis.

6) Daddy: He’s the surrogate patriarch who dictates your every action; he thinks he “knows what’s best for you.” He may be appealing either because of his similarity to your own authoritarian father, or because he provides a substitute for the father you never had. He may be considerably older than you, but he doesn’t have to be, just as long as he provides a strong, guiding hand in every facet of your life. He loves you, but only on the condition that you never attempt to assert your independence.

7) The Regular Guy: He’s the salt of the earth—dependable, ardently loyal, and a model of stability. He works hard, has a strong sense of right and wrong, and makes an ideal parent. The Regular Guy is idealized as “the guy you marry,” but he’s often dismissed as “boring.”

8) Ass-Kissing Guy: He’s the inverse of the Daddy. He’s the pawn who does your bidding. He always puts your needs first and defines himself as your boyfriend or husband. While he satisfies your every request and attends to your every need, he’s usually held in quiet contempt for his spinelessness.

Other than the “regular guy,” what do seven of these eight types have in common? They are, by their very nature, unable to provide compatibility and lasting happiness. Whether the storm comes early or late in the relationship, the clouds are always encroaching and never far from view, if you bother to look. Nearly all of these types, which girls supposedly want (per De’Angelo and his alleged vice grip on female desire), have a sense of disdain for your ability to rationally choose a mate who’ll be good for you.

If you see your “type” among those described, don’t despair. A ton of men out there fit one of those descriptions. They may even make up the majority of the men you’ve met or dated. Seven of the eight types—Bad Boy, Adventurer, Seducer, Artist, Successful Guy, Daddy, and Ass-Kissing Guy—are ruled chiefly by selfish and juvenile desires. Not only do these desires usually have nothing to do with your feelings, they may even be their enemy. Nearly all of these personality types are embalmed in a stage of arrested development.

One type is the least glamorous and, therefore, most easily taken for granted. He’s The Regular Guy. By studying the description above, you’ll find that only his type exists in a state of equilibrium with his mate. He isn’t selfish, but he isn’t spineless, either. He knows who he is and what is important to him, and he’s willing and able to care for and protect it.

It’s important not to get caught up in the semantics of the author’s definition of types. The “regular” man he describes is actually pretty rare. Regular doesn’t mean “average,” though; the average man probably more closely fits one of the other personality types. It’s easy to be another kind of man; it’s easy to seek out and make preferential your own desires at the expense of everyone else.

There is no valor or nobility in looking out for “number one.”

It is in our DNA to pursue our own interests. Survival of the fittest, right? Even the simplest life forms do this. You, on the other hand, aren’t a simple life form; one hopes that your mate won’t be, either. Ideally, you’ll foster mutual caring, love, and respect that will make it as natural to pursue each other’s happiness as it is to pursue your own. The desire to do this is supposedly one characteristic that marks us as the most elevated and sophisticated species on Earth.

In DeAngelo’s (silly and contemptible) book, The Regular Guy is the only one who isn’t motivated by unadulterated egotism. The Regular Guy wants a partnership, whereas all of the other personality types just want an acolyte (except for the Ass-Kisser, who wants to be an acolyte).

Discussing The Regular Guy brings to mind the dating travails of a close friend in Los Angeles named Karen. Karen was a beautiful, successful girl who possessed, quite literally, a genius intellect confirmed repeatedly by childhood tests. Yet, when it came to romantic affairs, she was repeatedly drawn to hopeless egotists with whom no real future was possible. One day she shared her woes about her affair with a guitarist in a prominent alternative-rock band:

“He says he doesn’t love his girlfriend anymore, and he always complains about her. After we make love, he always claims he’s going to leave her so he can be with me. But, ultimately, he can’t bring himself to leave her. I don’t understand.”

Karen’s type was “The Artist.” The men she dated snugly fit the cliché of the unfaithful, self-absorbed guy that DeAngelo describes. With every new one, Karen would inevitably come to me with the same complaints. The Artist used her for sex and, occasionally, for money. He never cared about her like she cared for him, and he was never faithful to her, despite all his empty promises.

Here’s the thing. Complaining about The Artist being unfaithful is like taking issue with a crack addict for not maintaining a savings account. After listening without comment to Karen for many years of spinning similar woes, I suggested that, despite her labeling “regular guys” as dull and unable to satisfy her sexually, it was time to give The Regular Guy a try. Today, Karen is happily married to a smart, funny, and loving “regular guy.” They have been together for six regular years now and have two beautiful, regular kids.

If you study carefully DeAngelo’s eight personality types and think about your own complex inner-self, the descriptions seem hopelessly shallow. How can we possibly choose a mate whose primary characteristics are so simplistic and immature? Yet many of us may find that, if we really analyze our motives, we’ve become conditioned to seek out only a superficial, easily-categorized set of traits in a prospective mate.

Chalk it up to the failures of our parents or our empty, quick-fix, sex-and money-obsessed culture. We’re generally taught that the easy answers are the only answers, so why bother delving any deeper? In the next chapter we will go a little deeper and look at more thorough, research-backed ideas about personality “types.”