I don’t know from football
but this Ray Rice thing is just nuts.
Look: A gentleman doesn’t raise his hand to a lady. it just doesn’t happen. I know a lot of guys like that, and in the main, they are single. Decent looking, well groomed, good personal hygiene, well employed. Some of those aren’t even gay. But they are single and it’s because of a relationship rule as old as man himself: Girls like bad boys. Go to any given bar on any given night and the guys who aren’t going home alone are the ones who look like trouble. Oh, a certain amount of money will be a good substitute, but there is a certain type of woman that is attracted to the Jeremy Meeks of the world.
And when you ignore the gentlemen and opt for the bad boy, you get bad boy behavior. Frog and scorpion, folks; nobody who pays attention can miss this.
Yup, for years I was the nice guy who got passed over for guys who treated their girls like crap.
Women, can’t figure ’em out.
Funny thing though, some women reach a point where they find that it’s really not romantic to date a musician who drinks a bottle of Jack a day and lives with four other musicians because he can’t afford his own place. Where a big night out is the local pizza joint. Then the guy who didn’t spent math class behind the dumpster getting high doesn’t seem so bad.
I also noticed women began to take an interest in me after things got serious with my wife. Including one young lady who’d previously turned me down for a date, who let me know in no uncertain terms that my shoes were welcome under her bed anytime.
Always when you arent in circulation anymore, right?
It is amazing how the good looking ones want to have someone rule them.
I have noticed that some of them want to pull me away from the one I am with.
If you want to keep a woman it is a continual dance. Behave well enough she doesn’t worry, but give her enough rough edges she can keep polishing on so she never thinks you are “done”.
That being said, never strike a woman, unless she has a knife in her hand. Course if you are at that point, you are not in civilized country anyway.
The thing about codes of behavior is that they only work to their degree of mutual reciprocity. “Gentlemen never hit ladies” only works if the female then present actually merits the appellation “lady”. “She hit me first” is certainly childish, on both people’s part.
None of which excuses Ray Rice, but does help to explain that neither of the two people trapped in that particular box acted in accordance with the behavioral standards we normally associate with “Ladies and Gentlemen”. If you want to be treated like one, you actually have to be one.
Indeed, Will. The lady/gentleman dynamic isn’t one you see playing out too often.
“The lady/gentleman dynamic isn’t one you see playing out too often. ”
That’s sexis!!
That’s sexis!!
That’s crossing your I’s and dotting your T’s!
Or something … :)
I did a full circle – I was the nice guy, who turned into the jerk, who went back to a nice guy once I found a girl worth being a nice guy for.
However, the bouquets of vaginas I had thrown at me when I was a jerk was mind-boggling. I got more trim than any skinny white guy with glasses deserved to get, and I had more at my beck and call.
So to this day, every time I hear a plaintive “But I want a nice guy!”, I just snort and shake my head. Hell, even my WIFE didn’t want a nice guy at first. And that, I think is the key.
The trouble is when a woman spends her best years with the guys who are all wrong, then by the time she notices that she’s not getting hit on anymore, she has her “come to Jesus” moment of considering settling for less in an honest, decent man. She has all the children she wants to have (by the rotten guys) and comes with the baggage of having lived that life, along with him knowing she’s had a lifetime of romantic excitement he won’t measure up to since after all, he got picked last for the gym class basketball team in this scenario. Some guys sign up for that and marry these women. Me, I don’t see the point. It’s like a ham and cheese with mayo sandwich: freshly made, it’s a delight, but sit it in the sun all day and ask me if I want it, and you’ll get a different answer.
I dealt with my share of shrews and harridans, and broke off contact when I was getting to the point where I doubted I hold hold the back of my hand to myself any longer. Sometimes the best way to win at the game is to not play. Used to be, it was a mark of achievement. Now, it falls under “play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”