Talking to Girls

When I was a young thing, as thin as a pin yet bursting with dreams, I had a very hard time meeting handsome young men. After I married, they appeared as if by magic. Absolute crowds, my dear, around the dinner table, filling the guests rooms, asking my advice about minor ailments. 

This may partly be because I had joined, through marriage, the Traditional Latin Mass community which, in Scotland, has a male majority. More recently it is also because I have advanced in the brotherhood of scribes and thus meet many young men with strong views on political subjects. During the course of my working day, I may contact them to ask "Should we care that Counsellor X has been chased into a McDonald's on Y Square by a baying mob, or is this just a normal Tuesday?"

To my diminishing surprise, the young men I speak to most eventually ask for my advice about girls. These are always Catholics, so their ultimate goal is to get married and have children. I am very sympathetic to these aims, and I am particularly sympathetic if the men are in their 30s and having an awkward time of it. 

By the way, the problem is not always that women don't notice them, but sometimes that the women who like them don't like what they like, and the chap can't contemplate a lifetime with a woman who doesn't appreciate classics of 1970s cinema or whatever. 

"Well, that's because you didn't love her, so that's okay," I said on a similar occasion.

"Really?" 

"Yes. If you had been really crazy about her, you wouldn't have cared less that she didn't know who Clint Eastwood was. So don't worry about it. I almost never say this, but have you considered Ave Maria Singles?"  

As a matter of fact, I really dislike dating websites because they remind me of those windows in the red light district of Amsterdam where women sit about being ogled by men. Men and women looking for true love should not be divorced from their contexts, by which I mean their families, friends, neighbourhoods, parishes, professions, teams, and everything else that goes into who they are. And although women are said not to be as visual as men, we are still visual when looking at dating websites, and instead of seeing a man on his own at a party, we see one face among dozens, if not hundreds, of other male faces. By the way, the ones in their 20s are so much better-looking than the ones in their 40s and 50s, it makes me sad. 

Therefore, my next piece of advice to men looking for wives is not to rely on the dating websites but to go where there are a lot of women and not necessarily many men. Benedict Ambrose caught my attention, not only because my English pal Aelianus mentioned him in his list of marriageable friends, but because he became a frequent commentator on my then-popular blog for Single women. 

One place women who like men will always want to find men is the partner-dance dance floor. And women who frequent partner-dance dance floors will almost always dread being wallflowers and will almost always be grateful to be rescued from this fate by a man who is clean, polite, reasonably well-dressed, and can dance reasonably well. If he can dance very well, so much the better. 

In my swing-dance days, I became so frustrated at not being asked to dance, I paid a tutor to teach me how to dance better. (I had noticed that the best women dancers were always asked.) If you are the kind of young man who has money to spend on a private dance tutor, I highly recommend doing the same. Pick your favourite kind of music, match it up with its dance, and take lessons. 

Being great at something both public and prized by women is a definite advantage. I recall being terribly impressed by how well Benedict Ambrose gave a tour of the Historical House. It was lucky for both of us that I had a chance to see him do something that he really excels at (public speaking, lecturing on historical topics) so soon after meeting him. It was also lucky that he lived in the Historical House, if we believe women are as prone to hypergamy as all that. 

One of the most controversial ideas about women, its controversy springing partly from the fact that this has long been used as a weapon against us, is that we would prefer to marry men who are richer, more educated, and higher up on the social scale than we are. If true, this may be down to social conditioning; I can't see why it would be innate. But I can see why, in days of yore, it would be obvious: until very recently women were poorer, less educated, and by definition lower on the social scale than men. The addresses of almost any bachelor must have been flattering to any spinster whose only other options for survival were domestic service or life-long dependency on her male relations. 

Old attitudes die hard, especially when they are enshrined in such female scriptures as Pride and Prejudice, Little Women, and the Anne books. I no longer think Elizabeth Bennett was joking when she said her feelings towards Mr Darcy began to change when she first saw his stupendous estate, for I will never forget the Historical House first rising up beyond the dark woods to greet me one September night. I already liked Benedict Ambrose, of course, but his house! Naturally, it wasn't really his house, but--to adopt the theory--try telling that to my reptile brain, or wherever it is that the hypogamic impulse lives. 

Instead of judging me, gentlemen, ponder what you have of symbolic value (a Chair at the university, a great-grandfather who was Prime Minister, a great-great-grandfather awarded the Victoria Cross, a two-bedroom flat overlooking Edinburgh Castle) that you could present tastefully.

And that brings me to my next point, which is about talking to girls. When talking to a lady, it is a very bad idea to talk about yourself too much. It is a very good idea to ask the lady about herself. After all, you are not talking to the lady for the sake of talking about yourself. You are on a quest. This quest is to find the Future Mrs You but ALSO to make many female friends along the way. These new female friends will know many more eligible women than you do. Your chances of marrying the friend of a friend are rather higher than marrying a woman off the internet.

Mrs McL: Suzie, this is Scooter. He has driven all the way from Lasswade to be with us today. Scooter, this is Suzie. She is one of our many highly prized university students. Excuse me while I make the tea. 

Suzie: Nice to meet you, Scooter. I don't actually know where Lasswade is. 

Scooter: Nobody does, really. It's about ten miles south. Are you from Edinburgh?

Oh, brilliant Scooter! He has turned the conversation to Suzie in his third sentence. 

Suzie: No, I'm from Fife, but I'm now living near the uni. I share a flat with Miriam, Jane and Georgie over there. 

Scooter: I hear Edinburgh rents are very high.

Suzie: They are atrocious. How are they in Lasswade?

Scooter: Well, I don't know. I do know the mortgage rates are ghastly. 

Oh, look: Scooter owns his home. He also, Mrs McL has dropped, has a car. Will this frighten Suzie, intrigue her, or leave her utterly indifferent? I'm not sure. It all depends on Suzie, and if Scooter is smart, he will leave it at that. He should be finding commonalities with Suzie, not obviously striving to impress her. He could ask "How did you meet Mrs McL?" or "How long have you been in Edinburgh?"or any other open-ended question. 

Suzie, like most women, is a genius at small talk, so she will be certain to ask Scooter more questions about himself, which he will answer as humbly (UK) or as impressively (US) as possible. 

Scooter (in UK): And so they gave me a promotion. The fools! I don't know what I'd doing, really. 

Scooter (in US): So now I'm the youngest Vice-President of Operations in company history.  

Well, that is quite enough advice from me. I now want to ask Benedict Ambrose if he would like to go to Lasswade,  as there is a mobility bathroom designer there. And that, by the way, is an opportunity to remind you all that marriage is serious stuff. There's a reason the Anglicans serve up the bad news along with the good in their wedding vows: poverty, sickness and bad times are guaranteed in this valley of tears. 

It is possible you could get along reasonably well in marriage with someone you just rather fancy, but should cancer arrive and disrupt your bower of bliss, you will need something rather stronger--like profound respect for a sterling character--to rely on. So develop one and don't marry until you find another one. That's my ultimate word on the subject. 

To recap:

1. When you are in love, you don't care if she's not interested in your dumb masculine interests. (That said, her not being interested in them is not a good reason not to ask her on a second date.)

2. Don't expect dating websites to give you an advantage over other marriage-minded men.

3. Go where the women are and want men to turn up.  

4. The renewed craze for partner-dancing has brought such places back.

5. Learn to dance or do something else very well that is public and valued by women.

6. Continue increasing your social capital through work and education or, in a pinch, association with stuff that the kind of woman you would like to marry finds impressive. (I imagine that in some communities chaining yourself to endangered trees or flinging yourself between the hunter and the baby seal is the thing to do.)

7. When talking to women, ask them about themselves sooner rather than later. Women want to feel that we are interesting as ourselves, not just as Potential Wife Material.

8. Pay strict attention to cultural expectations when presenting your accomplishments.  

9. Life is hard. Continue developing a good character, and marry a woman of good character.