Upon recommendation from a dear friend, I picked up a copy of Sherry Argov’s “Why Men Marry Bitches”, and enjoyed reading it! It is definitely entertaining and light but most importantly, it does throw some insights into the dating and relationship game for the average female. Some of the brutally honest and not-so-easy-to-swallow obervations compiled from the hundreds of men the author interviewed, made us want to cry and laugh at the same time!

The author uses BITCH in a tongue-in-cheek way, and does not take itself too seriously. SHe describes the book as “a relationship guide for women who are too nice”. She describes BITCH as  “Strong and kind. She has a strength that is so subtle. She doesn’t give up her life, and she won’t chase a man. She won’t let a man think he has a 100% hold over her. And she’ll stand up for herself when he steps over the line. She knows what she wants but won’t compromise herself to get it. But she’s feminine, like a “steel magnolia” – flowery on the outside and steel on the inside. She uses this femininity to her own advantage. It isn’t that she is takes undue of men, because she plays fair. She has one thing the nice girl doesn’t: presence of mind because she isn’t swept away by a romantic fantasy….In addition, she has the ability to remain cool under pressure. When a woman who is too nice gives and gives until she’s depleted, the woman with the presence of mind knows when to pull back.”

Sounds good right? I was thinking to myself that I do not want to be nice, and I want to be a BITCH! And I called my fiance last night. The conversation goes like this:

Me: Dear, do men love bitches?

My fiance: I guess they do.

Me: So do you prefer predictability or unpredictability?

My fiance: Unpredictability of course!

Me: Ok, let me rephrase that. Do you prefer that I am predictable or unpredicatable?

My fiance (immediately): Predictable!

*faint!*

This is MEN. They want the cake and eat it too! (Just like women! =P)

Came across a fun and flirty article on msn on:

Flirting techniques every man should know

Hot date on the horizon? Planning a night on the pull? Or just fancy your chances with the blonde in Bought Ledger? Well, we’ve got a few suggestions on how you can maximise your chances. All you have to do is master these 10 crafty flirting techniques.

Flirt with your follicles
Women might complain about ‘pash rash’ but they still can’t resist a bit of stubble on a man. No, they literally can’t resist. That’s because a susceptibility to stubble has been pre-programmed into the female brain by Mother Nature herself in order to identify fertile males.

“The higher a man’s testosterone level the faster his stubble growth and that acts as a strong visual badge of masculinity,” says body language expert Allan Pease, who reckons the optimum length for attracting women is three days-worth of growth. Bad news for razor manufacturers, perhaps, but great news for you.

Scare the daylights out of her
Let’s face it, caution and safety have never been sexy. Danger and spontaneity, on the other hand, are powerful aphrodisiacs. And there’s a scientific reason why attraction and danger are linked.

Studies have shown that fear is more likely to bond people than laughter because the accompanying release of stress hormones triggers an instinct to grab hold of the nearest person for the sake of safety. Take her to a nice slasher flick for your first date and that nearest person is going to be you.

Smile like you mean it
According to a study by the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry, 88% of women remember a man with an attractive smile. But there’s a big difference between flirtatious and lecherous.

The most effective smiles come from within so think of a genuinely pleasant moment in your life as an ‘inner prompt’ and flash both sets of teeth to show you’re genuine. Some subtle licking or biting of the lips works wonders too since women recognise these as a classic flirting techniques. Subtle is the key word though – you don’t want her to think you get all your flirting tips from Twilight.

Spray to play
Fragrance has long been a useful weapon in a man’s flirting armoury and with good reason. Not only has a study by the famous Kinsey Institute revealed that women who sniff a male fragrance while fantasising about an erotic experience become more sexually aroused, our sense of smell is handled by the same part of the brain associated with basic instincts – including sexual desire.

If you want to make sure fragrance really hits the spot with her go for ones like Thierry Mugler’s A*Men or Chanel’s Allure Homme Edition Blanche which contain vanilla – a recent survey showed it to be one of women’s favourite smells.

Never appear too interested
Locking eyes and smiling is clearly the most obvious sign you’re interested in a woman but never over do it. “With the flirtatious smile, the flirter should briefly show enjoyment, gaze away, then back,” advises Daniel McNeill, author of The Face: A Guided Tour.

Looking away isn’t just an effective tease, it’s also a powerful flirting technique because it sends out a conflicting signals, forcing the object of your affection to look closer at you to get reassurance that you’re actually interested.

Be creative
Notorious womanisers, whether Burton or Byron, weren’t popular with the ladies purely because of their good looks – their creativity played a part too.

When a team from Newcastle University in the UK explored why some men were more of a hit with women than others they discovered a link between creativity and sexual success. Artists and poets came top of the list, with up to three times more partners than non-creative types. So when she asks what you do in your spare time you’re a poet, right? Or play double bass in a jazz quintet. Or paint erotic nudes.

Tease with type
With a survey by the UK’s Flirting Academy showing that eight out of 10 women love flirting at work, knowing how to attract attention through email is useful skill to have.

“Many men treat email totally differently than conversation and become incredibly formal or brusque,” says Marc Katz, one of America’s leading dating coaches. “Instead, write as you’d speak, show your personality and make sure you ask lots of open ended questions so she has to reply. Never ask questions that she can merely reply ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to.” Cutting and pasting her name into the opening line of the email is clearly a very bad idea.

Play the game
Ok, here’s a fact: women are miles better at reading body language than men. In fact, research by psychologists at Harvard University in the US has shown that women are able to read body language correctly 87% of the time compared to just 42% for men.

So why not play to the gallery and consciously send out the right signals? When men are flirting we preen ourselves, stand erect to increase our height, put our thumbs in our belt with fingers pointing at our crotch and stand with our legs open and with our feet pointed at the object of affection. Throw these into your flirting and she’ll soon get the message. In fact she’d have to be blind not to.

Use your ears
“Listening is an underestimated quality when it comes to flirting,” says Marc Katz, one of America’s leading dating coaches. “If you listen and ask questions while flirting it makes a person feel important and shows that you’re genuinely interested in them – and there’s nothing more flattering.”

Admittedly, this may take some practice on your part – especially if all she wants to talk about is the latest Sex and The City film – but is worth a go. Don’t overdo it though, you’re not interviewing her for a job as your cleaner.

Don’t be too tidy
Women might be attracted to a well-groomed man (it shows you’re capable of looking after yourself and by implication other people including her too) but it doesn’t always pay to be too well presented.

In fact, a little untidiness can positively work to your advantage, especially as women can’t resist tidying men up. This is why some flirting coaches suggest wearing a tie and leaving it slightly crooked – the idea being that women simply won’t be able to resist straightening it. And once she has her hands on you half the battle is won. =)

Read an interesting article on Channel News Asia. Why do men and women get married? Have you ever wondered?
Why get married at all? Women don’t need providers and men don’t need in-house procreators. Turns out, we both want to get married. But for very different reasons.

For all the young women who’ve chewed their nails to the skin anticipating a proposal, it may be a relief to know that, yes, men still want to get married. But there’s a critical difference between the sexes. In broad terms, when a woman falls in love, just like the Trinity character in The Matrix, she knows he’s The One. But a man’s readiness can be seen as a life stage. To call on The Matrix again, a time when he’s ready to take the red pill.

“He first needs to feel like he knows what he’s doing in the world and where he’s going,” says John Gray, relationship counselor and author of the Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus books. “Women are more concerned about who they’re going with.”

“Historically men have been more eager to marry when they’re financially secure, and women have wanted to marry when they wanted children,” says Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist and author of Why Him? Why Her? Fisher calls it a “human male need” to provide for his wife, a desire that hearkens back to our hunter-and-gatherer days when the “dual-income family was the rule.” She harvested the fruits and vegetables, and he brought home the meat.

But when the woman was pregnant or nurturing small children, she was vulnerable. It became the man’s job to protect and provide for his family. Today, still, men do not feel ready for marriage until they can fulfill that historic role, albeit with career stability and a certain amount in the bank rather than a bison turning on the spit.

The real change is that now marriage readiness goes both ways. Gray says that he’s observed a shift in marriage because of women’s education and work. Women now receive 60% of college degrees and comprise half the workforce. “When she has a good job, her security needs are met, and she looks for a man to provide emotional support,” says Gray. Women are looking for partners who are romantic, supportive, good communicators and will be helpful on the home front, Gray says.

Researchers and sociology professors Christine B. Whelan at the University of Pittsburgh and Christie F. Boxer at the University of Iowa set out to find out what men and women look for in a spouse and uncovered this very trend. From a list of attractive traits, women ranked a man’s desire for home and children at No. 4. In past decades they had ranked it much lower. In 1977, for example, it was No. 10.

Men’s standards, too, have changed in what they find attractive in a potential wife. Until the 1960s men ranked a woman’s education and intelligence at No. 11 on their lists of attractive qualities. Now men prioritize a woman’s intelligence over her good looks, ranking it at No. 4 as compared to No. 8.

And unlike the urban myth of husband-hunters like Sex and the City’s Charlotte York, more women are delaying or forgoing marriage. According to the current population survey, the median age at first marriage in 2009 was 26 for women and 28 for men, up from 22 and 25 a century ago. Marriage historian Stephanie Coontz, a professor at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., says with more options, women are delaying marriage to pursue education and find the man they really love.

“It’s only in the last 20 years that women have said they’d marry just for love,” says Coontz. “It used to be that people were embarrassed to admit they loved their spouse, but now they’re embarrassed to admit the other reasons for marriage.”

Sociologist Whelan believes that both sexes tie the knot due to a combination of love and social pressure, and that pressure comes a bit later for men. The typical ready-to-wed man, she says, has been out of college for a few years, maybe just got a promotion or raise, and has experienced a summer of attending several of his friends’ weddings.

Once friends start walking down the aisle, “it’s as if a light bulb goes off in their heads,” says Whelan. Suddenly men realize they want to settle down, and they start seeing the women they date through an is-she-wife-material lens.

Read the complete article at http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/living/view/1061042/1/.html

I read an article on Dr Goh Keng Swee, one of the founding fathers of modern Singapore, and something that he said strike a chord in me. It was not about his formidable intellect or his outstanding contributions to Singapore, but his single-minded pursuit of his second wife, Dr Phua Swee Liang. His wife shared that she had rejected him several times and had asked him why is he so persistent . His reply was: “Faint of heart never gets you the fair maiden”. Of course he did win over the fair maiden and they were together till his death recently.

I can’t help but admire a man with such persistence, dedication and single-mindedness. The saying that “How you do anything is how you do everything.” rings true. For a man who sets high standards for himself in work and do everything to the best of his ability, you don’t expect anything less of him in his personal life. I can’t help but feel a little ashamed at my own nonchalance and take it for granted attitude sometimes….

That is also the reason why women secretly admire strong-willed and determined men. Because such men are usually successful in school, work/career and life. If you are faint of heart, you will not win the fair maiden (or your career or work or business). I have heard countless feedback from women about local men being too timid, lacking in initiative and decisiveness in relationships. On the other side, to all women: give the men a chance to make the decisions and stop trying to control everything.

 Hence, I would like to encourage all men to have the heart of a lion, be courageous and be persistent in your efforts once you have decided that this is the goal you want.  Good Luck!