Tapping Into Your Private Dick - Your Ex-Boyfriend Will Hate This (2015)

Your Ex-Boyfriend Will Hate This (2015)

Chapter Seven

Tapping Into Your Private Dick

In the last chapter, I presented a loose outline of a more useful model for helping you determine compatibility with a potential mate.

Yes, but how on Earth does that help me weed out the keepers from the douchebags? How do I casually suggest a man take an online personality test without sounding completely insane?

Don’t worry. You don’t need to see test results if you pay attention to the four core questions presented in the previous chapter. The answers to these simple questions can be surprisingly important and revealing. Let’s talk a bit more about each.

Do you prefer the company of a group, or do you prefer to be alone?

This question simplifies the “extrovert/introvert” distinction. Basically, if you prefer the company of others to being alone, you land in the extrovert camp. If not, you’re an introvert. Very few people will fall completely into one camp or the other. My friend Stephanie describes herself as a staunch introvert—socially awkward and even a little panicky in groups of strangers. However, I’ve also seen her shine in those seemingly difficult situations. For many people, it’s a matter of the circumstances. Although I’ve described Stephanie as a “closet extrovert” (a description she flatly denies), the truth is that she’s more often a wallflower than the life of the party.

Determining whether someone is an extrovert or introvert isn’t hard. People reveal themselves by just describing what they like to do on weekends. Can’t wait to get off work and meet your friends for a drink every Friday afternoon? Extrovert. Can’t wait to curl up with a good book—like this one, for instance? Introvert.

Do you trust your “hunches,” or do you distrust what you can’t see, hear, and feel?

Another old cliché about the difference between the sexes is that women are intuitive and men are sensible. A male chauvinist would even describe women as “superstitious” and “irrational,” while describing his sex as a model of clear-thinking practicality. If you meet such a man, I urge you to politely and discreetly escape from his presence as quickly as humanly possible. Engaging or humoring these assholes is like watering a weed; it encourages growth in something better used as compost.

In addition to being a condescending dick (though not the “dick” of the chapter title, which I’ll explain in a minute), the chauvinist is absolutely wrong. Many of the sharpest, most rational people I know are women. In fact, by far the most brilliant analytical mind I’ve ever encountered belongs to a woman. Her name is Audrey, and she was kind enough to be the first to edit this book.

“Hunches” obviously aren’t the exclusive province of women, despite the often-referenced “women’s intuition.” Intuitive types exist in both genders equally, and they aren’t more “superstitious” than anyone else. Intuitive types are those whose thoughts tend toward the abstract. They may be described as “daydreamers” or as having their “head in the clouds.” They crave fresh intellectual stimuli and gravitate toward the unconventional—whether a new, cutting-edge technology or a person that others might describe as “strange.” Intuitive people are more likely to avoid “9 to 5” jobs. They’re more concerned with past events than “sensing” types; they also prefer the theoretical to the concrete, making them ideal writers or teachers. Intuitive people are far more likely to make decisions based on gut feelings than their “sensing” counterparts.[xiv]

Stripped to the basics, intuitive people are best described as “contemplative.” By contrast, “sensing” people are usually described as “active.” Focused on the present moment, sensing types prefer to be at the center of any discussion; they focus their energies on problem-solving, using the tools and materials available to them. Do you need someone to help you balance your budget, set up your computer, or fix a leaky faucet? Call a “sensing” man. But if you want someone to see a wonderful new French art film with you, you’ll probably want to dial a different set of digits.

Sensing people are more likely to be physically active. They’re more attuned to their bodies and tend to be more naturally athletic. Because they know their bodies better, they’re more likely to seek physical pleasure than their intuitive brethren.[xv]

This doesn’t necessarily make them better lovers, mind you.

When faced with a problem, does your mind or your heart most often make the decision?

Still another old cliché says this answer splits squarely across gender lines: males are thinking creatures and women are feeling ones. The truth is that, while women might on average lean toward “feeling” and men toward the “thinking,” most people contain shades of each trait. In the extreme “thinking” people with no trace of “feeling” are coldly analytical. They believe in strict adherence to rules and don’t let emotions influence their decisions in any way. They’re uncommunicative and uncomfortable when pressed to discuss their feelings. Faced with a problem, they seek the most expedient solution with no regard for the people involved. They seek an efficient, ordered world above all else.

At the opposite extreme are “feeling” types who prefer to engage any problem by listening to and gauging the opinions of the people involved before coming to a conclusion. Whereas efficiency is the goal of the “thinking” type, “feeling” people seek harmony. They make decisions based on sympathy and the desire for deep understanding. They value passion and romantic love more than their “thinking” counterparts.[xvi] Whereas the “thinking” man may feel love for you, the “feeling” man is more likely to be “in love” with you. If this description seems to suggest the superiority of “feeling” types, consider that every neurotic, needy, and emotionally draining person you’ve ever dated was this type.

Of course, every man you’ve ever described as “cold,” “heartless,” and “unfeeling” were likely “thinkers” at the extreme end of the spectrum. There isn’t a right or wrong personality type, only a right or wrong type for you. The key in all of this is to find someone who is balanced in a way that complements you. If you’re equal parts “thinking” and “feeling,” find someone similar. If you aren’t terribly balanced in this regard, find someone who complements your imbalance.

Imagine this scenario if it seems counterintuitive to seek someone with contradictory answers to these three questions. You’re stuck on a desert island with another person, with no form of entertainment other than the beach, your tan bodies, and conversation. The beach is going to lose its magic pretty quickly, once you realize there is no other landscape to see. The sex may be great (assuming that nothing is better for sex than hopeless isolation), but even that will lose its explosiveness over time. The only thing left is a lifetime of conversation—conversation that will eventually run dry of new subject matter because of your isolation from books, music, movies, art, sports, and news. At that point, you would hope to be marooned with someone whose point of view is different enough from your own to sustain lively conversations about coconuts and the species of fish best suited for spear fishing.

(By the way, hold on to any man who can enchant you by discussing either of those exceedingly dull subjects. He’s a keeper.)

Metaphorically speaking, which is more important, the journey or the destination?

This question may sound confusing, but it really isn’t. In addition to being valid symbolically, it can also be taken quite literally. Let say you’re living in New York and plan a business trip to San Diego in two weeks. Let’s also say that your schedule allows you to make the trip at your leisure and choose your means of transportation. Would you prefer to travel by car in order to make a series of stops in different cities along the way (“perceiving”), or would you rather go by plane, to ensure a finite departure and arrival time (“judging”)?

The previous chapter noted the essential importance of this question in determining compatibility, because it is obviously frustrating to argue with someone who has entirely different ideas about approaching the argument or what the argument is about. You want to resolve a specific dilemma by “judging”—for example, whether your new pup will be an indoor or outdoor dog—and your partner would rather engage the question from a million different angles, “perceiving” before finally suggesting the puppy choose for itself.

After all, who doesn’t trust a three-month-old Dalmatian to make sound decisions? If only your furniture could voice its dissent…

A popular cliché found in sitcoms and romantic comedies is the straight-laced, rigid, controlling man (“judging”) who meets a spontaneous, devil-may-care woman (“perceiving”) and thus learns—via “true love,” of course—how to let his hair down and embrace life. This woman is such a common character cliché in rom-coms that Nathan Rabin of the Onion A.V. Club has coined a term for her—the “Manic Pixie Dream Girl.” He defines the character as “that bubbly, shallow, cinematic creature who exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.”[xvii]

Rabin’s tongue-in-cheek definition reads like a parody of the “perceiving” personality type in its purest form. “Perceiving” people reject structure. They prefer to “live in the moment,” and are easily adaptable to change. They’re motivated by curiosity and an eagerness to embrace the unknown. Their moods determine both when and how they will react to a particular problem. They pride themselves on their flexibility.

“Judging” personality types are the opposite. They see both their own world and the world at large as ordered. They make decisions quickly and conclusively. They communicate tersely and to the point. They’re diligent planners. What a “perceiving” person might criticize as “inflexibility,” a “judging” person would celebrate as “self-discipline.”

Hollywood loves to stick the square peg “judging” with the free spirit “perceiving,” because it loves the friction of opposites. Where doesn’t this work out quite so well?

In the real world.

One of the baseline necessities for two people who want to spend a lifetime together is shared goals for the future. If you desire the stability of familial home life and diligent advancement in your career, it’s fruitless to marry someone who disdains children and wants to travel the globe. No matter how many other traits you share, the similarities are insignificant unless you’re content to marvel at him via web-cam. Call me old-fashioned if you wish, but I demand that my life partner occupies the same continent.

Some of you may contend that “true love” overcomes all obstacles. I can agree with you in the short term, but not over the course of a lifetime. A “perceiving” partner may, for instance, put aside his own goals to create a family with a “judging” mate. But somewhere down the line, whether twenty-four months or twenty-four years, he or she’ll experience regret over giving up the dreams and potentially feel a deep-seeded resentment for the person whose wishes replaced those dreams.

This doesn’t mean every pair opposite in this regard is doomed to failure. Few people exist at the extreme, with no trace of the opposite trait—i.e., all “judging” with no “perceiving” in their personality or vice-versa. I mean only that this contrast can be overcome in the long run solely by compromise. If the family man is to last with the happy wanderer, one of them must become similar to the other. There has to be real change, not just appeasement. Only then can those future killers—regret and resentment—be avoided.

I named this chapter “Tapping into Your Private Dick,” but not for juvenile reasons. Finding a good mate requires that you become an investigator (the title “dick”) of sorts. No longer will you be a passive observer of your love life, hoping for “luck” to happen upon a good guy. You’re going to find the right person for yourself and tuck “fate” back into the fairy tales.

In the next chapter, we’ll streamline your “investigation” by detailing some broad “types” to avoid.