The Three Best Break up Excuses for Guys

So it’s over with this girl, huh. Damn! Breaking up is hard, but unfortunately it’s something that if you’re in the dating game, you just have to do now and again.

Luckily for you, this article has your back on some of the essentials that you’re going to need. First of all, you’re going to need a break up excuse. And before you say anything, you DO need a break up excuse! In case you had some charmingly quaint notion about telling the truth – don’t. Just don’t. There is a time for honesty, and a time for lies, and this is definitely the latter of the two. Read more

DEBATE: Go to a Fantasy Football Draft or to a Friends Wedding?

Tony and Jessica have been dating for 2 years and are in a happy long-term relationship.  Jessica’s friend, who Tony is also friends with is getting married in the fall.  Unfortunately the wedding is planned on the Saturday of Tony’s annual, in-person fantasy football draft with his buddies from college.

Tony knows he should go to the wedding; he and Jessica have been together for a while and there will be a lot of people there that know them.  On the other hand, he has been playing in this football league for years, even before he was with Jessica, and would hate to miss out on the annual ritual (not to mention end up with a bad team!).

Should Tony participate in his draft or go to the wedding with Jessica?

Guys: Ever Wondered Why Girls Have So Many Pairs of Shoes?

I am most definitely NOT a shoe girl, so I had to talk to some of my girlfriends to get the answer to this burning question.  Why do girls have so many pairs of shoes when men can get by with three or four?  Let’s take a look at the “basics” of the shoe collection for your stereotypical shoe-crazy girl:

Flip-flops: We can get away with just basic black, but really, they’re so cheap, we might as well get them in every single color to coordinate with our outfits.

Dress sandals: These are necessary for summer weddings and other dress-up occasions in warm climates.  We can’t wear flip-flops, but we want to show off our adorable painted toenails.

Athletic sneakers: These are the sneakers we wear to the gym.  We may or may not have them in multiple colors to coordinate with our gym outfits.

Crappy sneakers: These are the sneakers we use for yard work or volunteering down at the local middle school doing landscaping.  Often they are old pairs of athletic sneakers.

Dressy sneakers: Totally not appropriate for athletic activities, but for those times we want to look sneaker-casual without wearing actual sneakers.

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Classic black heels:  One pair is sufficient, but we can never turn down a good pair of these.  They work well with everything from jeans to evening gowns.

Classic flats: We have to have flats for occasions where we date men who are too short for us to be able to wear our heels.  (Short men everywhere are grateful that we provide this service!)

Mary Janes:  They’re adorable with their little cross strap and buckle.  A must-have for the school-girl look.

Kitten heels: These are those shoes with tiny heels.  Sometimes in style, sometimes not.  Need to keep them around to be ready for when they are in fashion.

Peep-toe heels:  Peep toe heels are great for Spring, when it’s not quite warm enough for open-toe shoes or dress sandals, but you still want to show off one toenail worth of polish.

Pointy-toed shoes:  Again, sometimes in style, sometimes not.  Gotta be prepared!

Square-toed shoes:  Ditto.  Did I mention that 75% of the shoes we own aren’t worn on a regular basis?

Short Boots:  Best in colors like black or brown, short boots are all the awesome of a boot without the full-calf commitment.

Tall Boots:  Tall can mean anywhere from knee to thigh.  Stripper boots, anyone?

Big goofy slippers: For those times we’re hanging around the house and want giant fluffy bunnies on our feet to cheer us up.

Bridesmaid shoes:  Every girl who has been a bridesmaid has at least one pair of ugly dyed shoes that she had to buy for the wedding and will never wear again.  You guys have it lucky – you can RENT your wedding outfits.

Now, if you take into consideration that most of the shoes listed above need to be had in several different colors.  After all, you can’t wear black shoes with a brown outfit or brown shoes with a black outfit.  White shoes are only appropriate at certain times of the year.  It’s a really messy system, if you take all of these factors into account.  It’s no wonder that some women own ten times as many shoes as their man!

Bottom line, guys.  If you find a woman who has less than twice the amount of shoes that you do, marry that girl.  You’ve found yourself one of the few sensible women (like me!) who have avoided the monster of shoe obsession.

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4 Ways to be a BAD Wingman

Being a good wingman is one of the best things you can do for your single male friends. It’s the real-life version of being the Robin to your buddy’s Batman; the modern version of being a squire to their knight; the social version of…well, of being an actual wingman!

Greater love hath no man than this, that he is ready to don a loud shirt, go out on the town with his friend, and help him get a little action with the ladies.

Course they don’t teach you how to do this stuff in grade school (hmmm…maybe they should…), so maybe you don’t exactly know what to do, or what NOT to do. In that case, you’ve come to the right article! So read on for how NOT to do it. Read more

FINALLY EXPLAINED: Why Girls Don’t Like Porn

Boys, boys, boys.  You have had a long relationship with porn.

It started when you acquired copies of Playboy or Penthouse from your father, or your friend’s father.  You snuck them into your treehouse and you drooled all over the pages.

Then came the internet.  Oh, the glorious, glorious internet.  There were naked women everywhere, doing everything you could ever imagine them doing (and some things you wish you could forget having seen them do).

But the bottom line is this: you’ve been at the porn game for a while.

We ladies on the other hand, haven’t really felt the need to delve into porn.  For one, we were raised to think that someday our prince would come.  He’d sweep us off our feet, there’d be this romantic kiss, and then we’d cut to a scene with all of our little royal children scurrying around our mansion happily.  We grow up fantasizing about the storybook romance.  You grow up fantasizing about getting your hands on giant breasts.

So it makes perfect sense that while you grew up with porn, starting with just sneaking glances at softcore mags and slowly ramping up to utter debauchery on the internet, we ladies are still in the baby stages of erotic entertainment.

In other words, we’re not ready for what you consider to be “good porn.”  We pretty much think that your “good porn” is utter filth.

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For starters, there’s absolutely no plot.

There is no good reason for that girl to be naked while wearing 7 inch glittery stripper heels.  There’s no good reason for her to be blindfolded and leaning over a couch.  And there’s certainly no good reason for her to be crying out in rapturous joy while being taken by a man she’s never met before.  It just doesn’t make sense.

Secondly, there’s absolutely no connection between the people on the screen. (Beyond the obvious bumping of uglies, of course.)

They don’t know each other, they barely talk to one another, and when things are done, there’s no happily ever after.  (No sir, a facial is NOT a happily ever after.)

Want your girl to watch porn with you?

Then you have to put yourself in the wayback machine and dial your tastes back to the stuff you enjoyed in middle school.  You know, before you knew the really raunchy stuff existed. If she’s still balking at the idea of porn videos, why not start with reading some erotica to each other?  There are plenty of websites where you can find erotica and if you look for the ones labeled “Romantic” you’ll get the type of stories that have the plot and connection that she craves along with the naughty bits to rev your engines.

If you want your woman to enjoy the same kind of porn you enjoy, you’ll have to hold her hand and take her on the journey that you made all those years ago.  Develop her tastes in the way yours were developed – except this time, you’ll know which websites you should avoid at all costs.  Happy surfing!

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The Secret of Why Guys Like to Watch Porn

Have you ever looked through the 25c bin in an antiques store, and come across some of those sepia-tint dirty postcards from the 1920s?

If you have, maybe it was of a naked lady with a tasteful hairdo, posing tastefully in a nice outdoor setting. Believe it or not, in the 1920s, that was hardcore pornography.

But by today’s standards, that kind of thing is no longer exactly what you would call lurid, is it- not exactly on any kind of a level with, say, MILF Hunter, the Pam & Tommy video, or The Bang Bus.

No, whichever way you look at it, pornography has really changed a lot over the years.

Even as recently as the 1980s, pornography meant your older brother’s secret stash of well-loved Playboy magazines. You’d sneak into his room when he was out, pick your favorite out of the pile and nervously thumb through the pages. Usually the women were too hairy for you to get a good idea of what you were looking at, but by god it was still a turn-on!

Things today are a little different.

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Even porn DVDs are passé now that the internet allows us the ability to see any kind of porn we want, wherever and whenever we want, and very often for free. Fetishes…interracial…gangbangs and beyond, it’s all there. (Trust me, I’ve checked…hey, I had to do my research!) And age, money, sexual preference, time of day – none of these are any barrier to accessing the pornographic world.

And make no mistake; men all around the world are consuming that porn avidly. Maybe not every single one, but you can bet that 95% of those with an internet connection at home and a free hand to touch themselves with are at least semi-regular consumers. Yes, including your little brother. Yes, including your dad. Yes, including your boyfriend.

So the big question: why do we watch it?

The answer is that men watch porn because it’s a turn-on (bet you weren’t expecting THAT!), and frankly, getting horny feels good (again, a shocking revelation). You see, the thing is that seeing or hearing or imagining other people have sex is meant to be a turn-on; it’s nature’s way of ensuring that if other people are getting some in our vicinity we’re not left out of the action! It’s just that the ’seeing or hearing or imagining’ part is so much easier now than it was when we all we had were those dirty postcards, and of course the ‘in our vicinity’ part left the building as soon as we starting painting on cave walls.

Also, pornography scratches that itch inside all men that drives us to try and bed a variety of women, rather than staying faithful to just one. Until they update the definition of cheating to include what goes on in our heads, looking at porn is a kind of guilt-free release valve for our more basic lusts. So as distasteful as it might be to you, keep in mind that the alternative might be a lot worse.

It would be nice if it ended there, but unfortunately it doesn’t. It’s hard to watch a lot of something without it having an influence on the way you think, and it’s true that over time porn does do this. It’s hard to watch orgy after orgy, for example, without feeling like you should be taking part in more orgies, and that’s a feeling that’s likely to cause problems. Basically, while porn in small doses is harmless, a porn addiction is not healthy.

The moral of the story is a simple one, and it’s this: like most pleasures in life, porn is best enjoyed in moderation…with a lady friend…or two

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Little Known Reasons Why He Won’t Marry You

Ahh, the big ‘M’. No book, article, magazine, website, radio play, musical, speech or casual conversation about dating and relationships would be complete without a consideration of Holy Matrimony, would it.

Well then.

The answer to this time-honored question is really a bit of a two-parter. As far as the dating part goes, it breaks down like this: we’ll date you for a long time for all the expected reasons – because we’re attracted to you, because we love you, because we like your company, because you laugh at our jokes, because you’re pretty, because we like your ass and because your hair smells good. Even because, well, we really can’t imagine life without you (whether or not we admit the fact). Sound good so far? Nothing unexpected there hopefully.

On to part two.

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I know what you’re thinking: if the dating is so good, what’s with the lack of intention to get married? And the answer is just that…well…marriage is so final.

Yes we love you, yes we want to stay together, but to voluntarily pledge eternal commitment to one woman is, for a man, to do something that flies in the face of our deep impulses to spread our seed far and wide - impulses that have been shaped by millions of years of evolution. That doesn’t mean that we don’t want to or can’t stay faithful to just one woman, it just means…that we don’t want to have to promise to out loud.

Don’t forget that ultimately, marriage is no more than a social ritual. No doubt it’s an important one, and one that exists in many different cultures, but it’s no more than that. It’s not going to make a bad relationship into a good one, and once the last thank-you card has been written nothing will have changed.

If you’re wondering why men aren’t as keen on marriage now as they were a couple of generations ago, remember that getting married used to mean that you could start having sex.

This meant that people tended to marry very young (and still do in many midwest states)! The fact that most of us are now happy to ‘put out’ before entering into the bounds of holy matrimony is, not to put too fine a point on it, something of a game-changer.

To complete the picture, one must also point out that the statistics irrefutably show that marriage is in decline. People marry comparatively late in life now, and around 50% of all marriages end in divorce. Do we really want to start something that appears to be doomed to failure from the get-go? Could marriage have had its day? Do we even need it anymore?

Finally, if you’re reading this, maybe you’re a woman who’s been in a relationship with a man for some time, and maybe you’re asking yourself, why hasn’t he asked me to marry him? Why isn’t he giving me what I want?

Well, you could ask yourself, are you giving him what he wants? Like, say…a threesome with you and your bestie?   No, thought not.

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Guys: Is Your Lady Awkward in Bed? Here’s How to Fix it!

Ah, the horizontal tango. Knocking boots. Making the beast with two backs. Parking the pink Plymouth in the garage of love. Sexual congress. Sex: it’s a beautiful thing! And there sure are a lot of euphemisms for it.

Unfortunately, if it’s also a new activity for you and your lady friend, it’s entirely possible that there might be some awkwardness involved. Not on your part, of course -you’re a demon in the sack, natch – but on hers. Obviously this is not a good thing.

So what causes this and what can you do about it? Let’s take a look in a little more detail: Read more

The Obvious (but still funny) Reasons Why a Guy Wont Spend the Night with You After Sex

In the imperial court of Japan in the 10^th-century A.D., extra-marital relations were common, and people often had multiple lovers. After a night-time assignation, the man would stroll home through the dewy morn, composing a poem for his lady friend as he walked. Romantic, no? Well 1100 years later, things have changed! Far from staying the night, then leaving only when dawn breaks in order to work on one’s poetry, sometimes now men just want to do the business, get up, wipe themselves on the curtains, and get out of there ASAP!

…Which is a little odd, when you think about it. After all, sex is great (…really, REALLY great), but cuddling/snuggling/spooning someone you’re attracted to, going to sleep with them (in a dopey, pleasant post-sex haze aka “O time”), then waking up next to them – that’s pretty great too, even if you don’t want or intend for things to go beyond the one encounter. Besides, there’s always the chance of a little (or even a lot) more action come the morning. Surely no rational person would pass all of this up for a taxi and a cold, empty bed?

Look, there’s no easy way to say this. The indelicate truth is that if we don’t want to spend the night with you, it’s probably because we’re no longer horny or quite as drunk. Sorry! Told you it was indelicate.

So that’s one reason, and the most common one. Another reason might be that we think you’re going to expect a relationship to follow our night of sweaty passion, and we don’t want that because we’re just not that into you. We think that if we stay the night, you might take that as evidence that we are that into you, and that would be awkward, so it’s better to go sooner rather than later.

Oh, one final reason – because by having sex with you we’re cheating on someone else, and (again, now that we’re no longer horny or quite as drunk) we suddenly feel very guilty about it.

So there are three main reasons: 1) We’re now sober; 2) We think you want a relationship and we’re not that into you, and 3) You’re the Other Woman (you home wrecker!). Question: answered!

While we’re on the subject though, it needs to be said that whichever way you slice it, and whatever the reasons are, leaving immediately after sex is pretty bad form. If you’re a woman and a guy does it to you, you have every right to be annoyed about it. Hell, don’t just get annoyed about it, curse the guy out! Really give him a piece of your mind. Quote this article if you need to. The post-coital cuddle is surely an assumed part of any sexual invitation, and it should be observed. If people signed contracts before sex (hmm…not a bad idea!), one can imagine it being a prominent term…right after the space where you initial to indicate that any oral activity will be reciprocated in full

How A Guy Knows When He’s Got You Hooked

Ever heard of the expression ‘doggy dinner bowl look’?

Like a hungry puppy dog contemplating a bowl of food, the doggy dinner bowl look (or DDBL) is one of unrestrained desire, and for men who recognize it, it’s the ultimate signal that a woman is all yours. Of course, you have to watch for it, and it can be easy to miss!

Failing the DDBL, the next best signal that lets us know you’re ours is when you start to laugh at all our jokes (let’s face it, not all of them are funny). That’s a pretty sure signal too.

As a matter of fact, in the ’seduction community’ (these are the guys who’ve elevated getting girls to an art form), the gold standard for knowing a woman is interested in you is three ‘IOIs’ within a short space of time. IOI stands for ‘indicator of interest‘, and it could be anything from the above mentioned laughter-at-bad-jokes, to the classic playing-with-the-hair, to compliments, touching, leaning in, holding hands while squeezing through a crowd and then not letting go straight away afterwords, and so on.

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Not all men are so knowledgeable about women though, so if you want to let a guy know you like him, sometimes you’ll need to spell out your interest a little more clearly…yes, a written invitation would be lovely, thanks.

Of course, this all relates strictly to when we first meet you. A little further along in the relationship, how do we know you’re getting serious about us? …Well, sex is usually a good start! If that hurdle has already been jumped, then the final signal we look for that it’s not merely a fling for you is either or both of the following:

1) Any sign of jealousy – for example, we talk to another girl on a night out, and you get bent out of shape about it; and 2) Being introduced to your friends or family. Why these two things? Read on to find out.

Jealousy

Why is jealousy a powerful indicator that we’ve got you hooked? Because jealousy is reserved for people we feel something for. In order to be jealous of someone, you have to care about them in the first place. It’s exactly the same for men as it is for women, and as an aside, this is why while it’s fine to recount tales of your sexual (mis)adventures with a guy you’re seeing on a casual basis, it’s not a good idea to do the same thing with a guy you’re serious about.

A man who’s really into you doesn’t want to think about you being with anyone else, whether it’s in the present, the future, or a day before your 16^th birthday upstairs at Susie Mitchell’s party with that boy from the 10^th grade. Men are funny like that. So keep it to yourself.

Meeting your friends or family

When people get a new boyfriend or girlfriend that they like and are serious about, they always (consciously or subconsciously) want the approval of their friends and family. This works a little differently for guys, because if you’re really hot, we might introduce you to our mates strictly on a ‘check-out-the-girl-I’m-doing-it-with, not-bad-eh basis’, but generally people introduce their lovers to friends and family because they’re seeking approval of their choice.

So: when you invite us to dinner at your parent’s place, brunch with your sister, or even on a night out with your friends, and then you get jealous if we spend too much time talking to the other ladies in the group, we know that’s a sure signal you want us to stick around!

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