I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of testing the limits of self-sufficiency. In fact, one of my favorite books is Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer. It’s a true story about Christopher McCandless, a fresh college graduate who gave all his possessions to charity and hitchhiked to Alaska where he withdrew from society and wandered into the wild.

The book explores what possibly could have motivated him to take on such a challenge, and what might have happened in the four months that passed before he was found dead. Don’t worry, I’m not about to drop everything and start walking into the bush; but I do find it very interesting that humans are capable of that sort of behavior.

My Wild

My family has always felt a deep connection to the outdoors. When I was young, my dad used to take my brother and I camping several times a year. On these trips, he taught us the importance of being able to take care of ourselves.

The great thing about camping is that it takes you back to the basics: food, shelter, water, and heat. Most of the projects that consume your time and energy have to do with one of those necessities.

The completion of a big project like gathering and chopping wood, building a great fire, setting up camp, or catching some fish to eat gives me a great satisfaction that is hard to match. It also gives me some comfort to know that I would have a good chance of surviving if I were ever stuck in the wild.

Survival at Home

While wilderness survival is a great skill to have, it’s more important to know how to survive by yourself in your own house! Most of us were never taught to live on our own.

Men are especially vulnerable. A lot of us lived extremely well under the comfortable care of our mothers until we gave the real world a shot.

Imagine the stereotypical bachelor pad: Two guys as roommates, pizza boxes on the coffee table, nothing on the walls, and nothing in the fridge except a case of beer and a tub of butter (ahh, the good-ole days). If you were lucky enough, you took your clothes to your mother on the weekends to get it washed and made up for a week’s worth of mal-nourishment.

Women aren’t completely in the clear. Believe it or not, women have weaknesses to! Usually in a relationship, there is one person who is more equipped than the other to do any given task such as doing the finances, fixing the car, organizing the closet, cutting the lawn, or decorating the house.

You see, one of the great things about relationships is that we make up for each other’s weaknesses. Hopefully, between two people, you cover all the basics for survival (If you can’t, that’s a whole different post!).

Attachment

Often, people never learn to compensate for their weaknesses and therefore tend to look for partners to fill their void. If a man never learns to do his laundry, he constantly looks for women to do it for him. If a woman never learns to provide for herself financially, she hops from man to man in search of that support.

If you have never been single since the day you left the house (or never left the house in the first place), there is a good chance that you haven’t learned certain basics of self-sufficiency. If your partner (or your mother) has always made up for your weaknesses, you have never been forced to learn on your own.

What’s the Big Deal?

The first problem with being dependent on your partner is the chance that something happens to your relationship. If you have never looked at your household finances, you might be in a world of hurt if you ever found yourself alone. If you don’t know how to feed yourself or clean your house, you’ll be living pretty miserably if left alone.

Even more important than being able to survive an emergency is what happens to you psychologically when you become independent. You see, when you are dependent on someone else, you are letting them control you. You resent them when they don’t provide for you. You aren’t able to stand up for yourself because they hold power over you in certain areas. Since you are always taking, you don’t have the energy to give.

Unfortunately, most relationships are like this: two people deeply dependent on each other. Every day is a struggle to get their needs met. Any shortcomings result in resentment, anger, and frustration.

The Beauty of Independence

You’ll never be perfect at everything, but learning at least to be self-sufficient can give you one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself: independence. The highest form of human relationship is between two independent people.

When you no longer need anything from your partner, you can focus on giving. When you are no longer depending on them to come through for you, you can forgive them when they don’t. When you no longer need them to make you complete, you can appreciate them for who they are, flaws and all.

Self-Sufficiency

Self-sufficiency is so much more than being able to survive an emergency. While in this day and age, it is always a good idea to be able to cope with any situation, the real benefit is in your head. Independence breeds confidence, and allows you to be the best you can be!

Why do some guys seem to have all the luck with women? Why do some women go for jerks? Is it possible to make ourselves more attractive?

Sexual Attraction

Sexual attraction is a complex phenomenon that we may never fully understand. It can be so counterintuitive that sometimes success seems out of our control and so illogical that some people just give up.

What makes us attractive? The first thing that comes to mind is physical attractiveness: being in good shape, being well groomed, having attractive features, or dressing well. Some scientists think that attractiveness is related to the symmetry of our facial features. Others have complex theories about the spacing of features.

Science aside, most people agree to some extent on what makes someone physically attractive. While different people have different preferences, physical attractiveness is something that is very intuitive.

My biopsychology professor in college claimed that attractiveness could be explained biologically by a person’s interest in preserving their DNA. He taught that women were attracted to men with resources (so that they could protect them and their offspring) and that men were attracted to women with the characteristics of fertility (who would be more likely to bear multiple children.)

While this theory seems to have worked well in our society, it certainly isn’t the only factor affecting attractiveness. There are plenty of physically attractive, rich men who don’t have any luck with women, and plenty of men without money (or looks) who do just fine.

No matter how good-looking or biologically attractive you are, there must be some sort of chemistry between you and someone else before there is attraction. Every one knows what it is, but chemistry is a very difficult thing to quantify. Some people are better at creating it than others, but why?

The type of attractiveness that transcends physical or biological attractiveness is what I call spiritual attractiveness. Spiritual attractiveness is a kind of gravity that creates the chemistry that draws people together. While physical and biological attractiveness are hard to change, you can actually do something about spiritual attractiveness.

Clues

Over years of observing the opposite sex, I’ve picked up on a few interesting tendencies in dating that hold true on average. Maybe they can help us figure out how spiritual attraction works.

Clue #1: Ignorance is Bliss

When I was in high school, I downplayed the fact that I was in advanced classes because smart kids were “nerds.” I wanted to be more like the “cool” kids. It seems as if intelligence can have an adverse affect on spiritual attractiveness.

This is how I imagine the spiritual attractiveness curve would look like if someone was able to plot it against intelligence on a graph. While there are different types of intelligence, for the sake of this discussion I am referring to people who are “book smart” (meaning they do well in school).

At the very lowest levels of intelligence, attractiveness is also low for obvious reasons. A person needs a basic level of cognitive ability before the opposite sex will consider him. The first peak of attractiveness on my chart is at a relatively low level of intelligence. At this level, a person is smart enough to function in society, but not so smart that he questions himself.

I imagine that spiritual attractiveness starts to diminish as intelligence increases past this first level. The more intelligent a person is, the more he overanalyzes himself to the point of killing his confidence. When confidence is gone and intelligence is relatively high, the attractiveness curve dips to its lowest point at full “nerdiness.”

If you are reading this article, my guess is that you are an intelligent person and at this point, you’re either offended or depressed. If this is the case, don’t click away just yet. In my model, the most attractive people of all are also the most intelligent. This is because I believe that a person has the ability to figure out where he went wrong and increase his spiritual attractiveness.

Clue #2: The Harder You Try, the Less Attractive You Are

This is probably the most frustrating aspect of dating. When I first started trying to meet girls, it seemed like I could never win the heart of the one I went after. There was a direct correlation between how hard I tried and how miserably I failed.

How many times have you heard the same old story of a girl who keeps going back to her jerk of an ex-boyfriend? It’s as if no matter how hard you try, she always goes back to the guy who doesn’t care about her.

At the risk of sounding like my entire philosophy is based on the movie “Swingers,” it illustrates this point perfectly. Mike, played by John Favreau, is obsessed with his ex-girlfriend through most of the movie. He constantly checks his messages to see if she called.

His friends finally coax him to try to loosen up and see what else is out there. To their dismay, he messes up several opportunities because he can’t let her go. At the climax of the movie, he learns to relax enough to have a really great time with another girl. He regains his confidence and wouldn’t you know it, the minute he forgets about his ex, she calls.

Clue #3: Feast or Famine

My friends and I used to joke that in dating, it was “feast or famine,” meaning that opportunities seemed to come all at once or not at all. During long droughts without the possibility of a date, I thought that I would never find anyone. Then, out of nowhere there would be two or three girls interested. Why did this happen?

For some reason, people in relationships seem to be more attractive. When you get into a relationship and stop dating, all of a sudden everyone wants to date you. When I worked as a bartender, some of the cocktail waitresses I worked with wore fake wedding rings hoping to fend off predatory men, but instead, it only increased unwanted approaches.

The Law of Attraction

The Law of Attraction was introduced to the world by “The Secret,” a movie about attracting what you want into your life. I would recommend this movie to anyone who wants to get a better understanding of why life tends to unfold the way it does. The Law states that your thoughts and feelings manifest into your reality. Could this help to explain the mystery of dating?

At first glance, it doesn’t seem to help. If the law is true, then why does trying too hard reduce attractiveness? In this way of thinking, it would seem logical to assume that if a person has strong thoughts and feelings for someone else, then they would attract the other person into their life by trying; but just the opposite seems to happen.

And what about intelligence? Aren’t smart people better at thinking? Shouldn’t they therefore be better at attracting things into their lives via thoughts?

The Law of Subtlety

One piece of wisdom that has helped me immensely in my life is the idea that the difference between success and failure in life is often subtle. If it were more clear, then many more people would choose success.

In light of this, I like to ask myself what piece of information the majority of people are missing. What wisdom is in front of my eyes, but does not seem obvious?

The Subconscious

Often, the answer to this question is given to me by my subconscious. I find that if I have been working on a problem for hours without an answer, the best thing to do is to put the problem down and do something completely different. I change my environment, relax, and forget about it, then… poof… the answer magically appears.

Sometimes the best way to attract an elusive answer is to declare that you seek it, and then completely forget about it by retreating to a state of relaxation, comfort, and security. I think that the Law of Attraction can provide some insight into this kind of problem solving. Let’s take a closer look:

What is the difference in your subconscious mental state between desperately trying to solve the problem and relaxing? As you are wrestling with the problem, subconsciously you are feeling desperate. The harder you reach for the answer, the more you are confirming to yourself that you do not have the answer. Even if you are showing confidence on the outside, your subconscious keeps recreating the reality of being without the answer.

In a relaxed state, the pressure is taken off of your subconscious. By feeling good, you are projecting confidence that the answer will come. The subconscious is free to get creative and deliver your answer.

This line of reasoning might also help to explain some of our dating clues.

Subconscious Dating

Ignorance is bliss… Why does intelligence seem to hinder attractiveness up to a certain level? At first it would seem logical to assume that since smarter people are better thinkers, the Law of Attraction must make them more spiritually attractive, but I think that the truth is a more subtle.

As intelligence increases, the ability to question also increases. People with above average intelligence tend to question themselves more which erodes their confidence at the subconscious level.

The Law of Attraction works when the mind’s thoughts and feelings are focused on one outcome. If you are constantly questioning yourself, you are confusing your subconscious with mixed signals.

Can you see how ignorance might really be bliss? A blissfully ignorant person doesn’t question themselves all the time and has the advantage of remaining focused on their goal.

The most attractive people of all have learned not to question themselves. They have great confidence in their intelligence and spiritual attractiveness.

The Harder you Try… It seems counterintuitive to think that trying hard might actually hurt your chances of getting something that you want, but let’s examine it on the subconscious level. Just like trying to find an answer to a problem, trying really hard in dating reinforces the fact to your subconscious that you don’t have what you want. As your subconscious keeps getting messages that you don’t have what you want, the Law of Attraction brings you more of what your subconscious is thinking and feeling.

The same principle applies to excessive feelings of want. The more you want something, the more desperate you are to get it. Desperation, by Law of Attraction, breeds more desperation and less of what you want.

The paradox, of course, is that it’s easier to get something that you don’t want than something you want badly. This concept is well known by master negotiators. The side that can walk away from the deal because they have options has the power.

This may sound unromantic or inhuman. You’re probably thinking “it’s no fun to not want anything!” In response, I don’t think that the Law of Attraction is telling us not to want anything, but instead to control our feelings of excessive want. Desire is natural and human, but desperation is a sign of unbalance.

Feast or Famine… The subtleties of the Law of Attraction can help to explain this phenomenon. If you are in a “dry spell” because you haven’t had a date in awhile, you are subconsciously confirming feelings of loneliness. As your subconscious feels alone, the Law of Attraction brings you more of it.

As soon as you get a date, your subconscious feels great! Your confidence comes back and the Law of Attraction makes you more attractive.

How to Become More Attractive

The real lesson of all of this is to develop yourself from the inside until you love yourself enough that your confidence and self-assurance shines through from your subconscious so that all the world can see.

The most attractive people of all are extremely secure and at ease with themselves. Once you are so comfortable with yourself that you don’t need anyone else to make you happy, the Law of Attraction will bring you what you have wanted all along.

I am not talking about arrogance, conceit, or egotism because all of these paradigms come from insecurity. Insecure people tend to hide behind facades of pretend confidence.

The fake confidence approach might work in the short run, but since it is built on a lie, it eventually collapses. People with fake confidence tend to attract insecure partners. This, of course, is the recipe for a bad relationship filled with jealousy and mistrust.

Secure people tend to attract partners who are also secure. A relationship between two people who trust not only themselves, but each other, is a thing of beauty! Ironically, the happiest relationships in the world are between two people who are happy with themselves.

Since the two people don’t depend on each other, they can focus on giving instead of getting. Since they don’t need each other to make them happy, they can focus on making each other even happier. Since they trust that they would be okay without the other, they are free to trust the relationship.

Developing true security and self-love takes a lot of work. You have to spend a lot of time getting to know yourself before you can start to build this level of self-trust. The path is difficult, but the rewards are invaluable. Not only will you be more attractive, but your power will expand until the world is at your fingertips.

Order The Secret.

There is a scene in the movie “When Harry Met Sally,” where Harry (played by Billy Crystal) tells Sally (played by Meg Ryan) that Men and Women can never be friends. Sally, of course, is insulted that he would say such an awful thing and rejects the notion. Ironically, they end up being friends for years before sleeping together, which changes everything. If you haven’t seen the movie, I won’t spoil the ending for you.

Does Harry have a point? The writer of the movie, Nora Ephron, poses a question through this dialog that few people consider: Do intimate but purely platonic male-female friendships exist or are we just kidding ourselves?

I would assume that most people, especially women, agree with Sally and take for granted that they do exist. I, on the other hand, see some truth in what Harry is saying. While I am not so naïve as to believe that these types of friendship have never existed, I would be willing to bet that they are much less common that most people think.

Before I offend the entire readership of this blog, lets define “intimate but purely platonic friendships” for the sake of this article. I am not talking about friends who hang out occasionally or share laughs together at work. I am not even talking about people who count on each other in a time of need. I am talking about people who fit these three criteria:

1) They spend a lot of leisure time alone together, not just a few lunches every now and them.

2) They trust each other to the point where they share private information with each other that few other people know.

3) They share an emotional bond but neither is sexually attracted to the other.

This definition describes most “best friends” of the same sex, but how frequently does this definition describe a male-female relationship?

In my experience, I have seen many examples of women who enjoy keeping male friends around because they like being able to access a “man’s perspective” without the complications of sexual attraction. Some women actually prefer to have male friends because they can avoid the cattiness and social competitiveness that exists in some female friendships. Even though these women are perfectly happy with their intimate relationships with men, I wonder how many of their male “friends” would sleep with them given the opportunity.

On the other hand, I have also seen many examples of men who, after failing to get a favorable response from their advances toward a woman, continue their pursuit by befriending her. The befriended woman doesn’t realize that by carrying on the charade, she is slowly ripping his heart out.

I know a woman who used to take a guy friend shopping with her every week to tell her how she looked as she tried on dresses and swimsuits. She thought that he was just a really great friend who was sharing some great insight with her on how she looked to men.

He finally couldn’t take it anymore. One night after having some wine, he broke down. He told her that she had been slowly torturing him, he was secretly in love with her, and this so-called friendship was driving him crazy! She was completely blindsided. She never considered that he was sexually attracted to her. At least he had the courage to say something. Many men never do.

To all the women out there who are shaking your heads like Sally and are listing all the men that you have as friends as proof against this notion; I would just say that you might be surprised as to how many of these men are attracted to you.

You see, when men look for someone to be friends with, we look for someone with whom we can watch TV, play sports, go fishing, or have a barbecue. Men bond over activities. We tend not to talk about our emotions, ask each other for advice, and we certainly don’t go shopping with each other if we can avoid it. You might be thinking that these are the very things that are wrong with us (and you might be right) but this is the way we are.

On the other hand, many men mistakenly befriend the women that they are secretly in love with only to get hurt emotionally. Since sharing emotions with someone is not something that comes naturally for us, when we do share our emotions it takes an enormous amount of energy. Sharing our feelings leaves us feeling vulnerable, so we save this sacred gift for the woman we want deeply. Women often mistake this emotional exchange as an act of friendship, because that is what comes naturally for them.

To all the men out there who have spilled your guts out to some woman in the hopes that she will someday see that you are meant to be together: I’m sorry. Although I empathize with you, I must tell you—she’s never going to come around. While emotions come naturally for women, sharing activity doesn’t, so a woman tends to only share activity with the man she wants. I think you know what I’m talking about when I say, “share activity.” Basically, if you have a purely emotional relationship with a woman that you want, without any activity, you’re probably not the one.

“Swingers,” my favorite movie of all time, has a scene where Trent (played by Vince Vaughn) is trying to give some advice to his friend Mike (played by Jon Favreau). Mike made the mistake of getting emotional right away with a girl that he was interested in. Instead of being clear that he was interested in her, he spills his guts out to her about his ex. Trent warns him of ending up on the “friendship tip,” meaning that once she sees him as a friend, she will never see him as anything more.

This brings up an interesting view of how men get hurt in relationships. Everyone is familiar with a common way that women get hurt: a man sleeps with her and never calls. While women get hurt by sharing something that is sacred to them, their sexual activity, men get hurt by sharing what is sacred to us, our emotional energy. While I am not trying to make excuses for men, or convince anyone to feel sorry for us, I do think that people should be aware of how this works.

Understanding the fundamental differences between men and women can go a long way to promote communication between us. Men and women operate in completely different paradigms. I recommend reading a book by John Gray called “Women are From Venus, Men are From Mars.” It helps to explain the differences in thinking between the sexes. When it comes down to it, we really do seem to come from different planets!

A man who doesn’t know this information will just assume that women think the way he does. He might go around sleeping with them like it’s no big deal, leaving a wake of scarred women. On the other hand, a woman who doesn’t know this information will just assume that all men think the way she does. She might go around befriending men to make up for her boyfriend’s emotional void. She saves her sexual activity for her boyfriend and gets to express her emotions to her guy “friends.” While this seems perfectly acceptable by societal standards, she doesn’t realize what she is doing to these men.

When I was in college one of my favorite classes was on interpersonal communication. The class really opened my eyes to the different ways that people think. As you can imagine a class on human relationships tends to breed close friendships within the class. We formed a tight-knit group of friends and continued the discussions after class.

I made an especially strong connection with an attractive girl in our group. We would take long walks and spend hours on the phone discussing what we were learning and sharing our beliefs with each other. Even though she had a boyfriend, I was absolutely convinced that we were meant to be together. At the time, I felt like she was the only person in the world who completely understood me.

The more we talked, the more I was hooked. This went on for the rest of the semester. It started to get really ugly when she began to bring up her relationship and ask me for advice. We could both agree that he was a jerk and that they shouldn’t be together but she continued to stay with him. As we talked I felt like we were on the same page, but when we hung up I was no better off than before.

When I look back on the situation, I realize that she had no incentive to leave him. All her needs were being met. He was fulfilling her physical needs and I was fulfilling her emotional needs. I was incorrectly projecting my own paradigm on her and thinking that we were on the same page.

When I finally figured out what was going on, it was a huge relief. While I still hung out with her from time to time in the group, I stopped spending the intense, emotional, one-on-one time with her that was killing me. In fact, I wasn’t even angry at her anymore. I was able to see past the situation and realize that she really wasn’t even my type.

These types of stories are very common, in fact, I know many men who have been in the same situation. These experiences foster the impression that nice guys really do finish last. Some men get hardened by these experiences and decide that the only way to get the girl is to be a jerk.

I am not advocating the “jerk” mentality, but I am suggesting that there is a duality that exists between nice guys and jerks. The “nice guy” mentality hurts men, and the “jerk” mentality hurts women. The answer, as in most dualistic situations, is not somewhere in between, but above. Men should be advised to take the emotional part of relationships slowly. Just as women are often advised to hold off until they get physical, men should hold off until they get emotional. I am not saying that men should never open up, because that would sort of be the “jerk” mentality. I am simply suggesting to ease into it.

Taking it slow has several advantages. First of all, it creates a little mystery. Women like the challenge of finding out who a man really is and if he tells her all at once the mystery is over. Second, a man who plays all his cards at once, by law of attraction, comes off as desperate. By trying so hard, he is simply reaffirming the fact that he doesn’t have her. Law of Attraction states that a person gets more of what he thinks about, so as he is dwelling on not having her, he continues to experience that result. Third, he is protecting himself from ending up on the “friendship tip.”

Most of all, men need to learn how to be tough. If a woman isn’t interested in you, move on. If you are interested in a woman, be clear about your intentions. Don’t try to sneak into a relationship by befriending her first. This just leads to confusion and heartache down the road.

To women, I would just suggest being aware of this phenomenon. Most men aren’t looking for a woman to go shopping with. This especially applies to exes. A lot of women have the idealistic view that no matter what happens in their relationship, they will always be “friends” with their partner. They break up, enter a new relationship, but keep in touch with their ex.

Many people will disagree, but can’t think of anything positive that comes out of maintaining an intimate friendship with an ex after you move on to a new relationship. There are a million reasons why this might not be practical, such as kids or shared property, but holding on to an ex tends to only complicate things.

First of all, in most cases men have no reason to remain emotionally close with an ex except to keep the door open. We don’t like to spend emotional energy, and only do so for someone we want to be with. With exes, the emotional energy spent is multiplied exponentially and the man has even less reason to remain close unless he has other intentions. This at best is unfair to her new partner.

Secondly, remaining close with an ex only increases doubt and mistrust in the mind of a new partner. This is especially true for men. We know how other men think, so we can see right through the ex’s attempts to be “friends” with her. This can be extremely painful for us because we know what is going on, but she is oblivious.

Lastly, it diminishes his sense of manhood when his partner spends excessive time with an ex. We feel best about our relationships when our partners make us feel useful and powerful. While we have come a long ways since men went out and killed the food while women stayed home to cook it, we still instinctively have strong feelings about being able to provide for our partners. Spending time with her ex makes us feel like the ex is fulfilling her needs instead of us.

Remember the woman who used to take the guy shopping with her? She revealed that story to me after a long conversation on this topic. At first, she reacted like Sally. She started naming off all the men that she considered friends; but after explaining my theories to her, a light went off in her head. She realized that of these friendships had ended after they made an advance on her. Learning why this was happening was a huge relief. Now she makes sure that her intentions are clear when entering relationships with men, therefore avoiding confusion.

In this article I have used a very dualistic tone, making it sound like every man thinks a certain way and every woman thinks another. Relativistic people will point out that there are not only exceptions to every rule, but often many shades of gray between black and white. Of coarse examples exist of intimate but purely platonic male-female friendships. Again, I am just suggesting that they are less common than people think.

While I understand that a relativistic perspective is an important part of critical thinking; I find that the best way to understand a situation is to start by looking at it dualistically. After I identify the two opposing forces at work, I then use relativistic thinking to help me understand the gray areas in between.

The most obvious exception is the gay and lesbian community. I can only write from a heterosexual perspective, but it would be interesting to know if any of these principles apply to the homosexual world. (Comments, anyone?)

Maybe men and women will never understand each other. Maybe women will continue to think that they can be “just friends” with men and men will continue to think that these friendships will turn into romances. One thing I know for sure is that not understanding each other helps keep us attracted to one another. The excitement in a relationship comes from continually learning about each other and growing together. Someone once said, “If two people agree on everything, then one of you is unnecessary.” It wouldn’t be as fun if we all were the same.

Good reading by other authors:
Guidelines for Platonic Friendships