Something Valuable

And while I'm at it, I'll throw this in as well:

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better."

Samuel Beckett

Hey guys!

We’re down to the last stretches of the Spring Girl Game Challenge. Last week we worked on our presentation, and it seems like quite a few of you had a blast! Guavaberry shared some excellent commentary on the Art of Femininity, and Sassy had some great advice on “preventative” beauty care. If you have tips you’d like to add, feel free to contribute in the forum and thread. Keep it coming!

This week, we’re going to focus less about forging new connections and more about strengthening personal ones.

Your challenge this week is Listening.

Do something nice for someone that shows you are actively listening to them and recognizing them. Try and remember a personal detail about someone and show them that you care. This does not have to be elaborate - get someone their coffee and remember they like it black, or send a quick email/Facebook message/e-card. Just reach out to someone.

This is a great opportunity to reach out to your loved ones and friends, but try to include people that you may be casually acquainted with as well. It may seem daunting, but just keep in mind that there isn’t a single person out there who wouldn’t appreciate a friendly gesture. So there’s nothing to lose!

Be well, Gamers, and report back!

Hey guys and girls!

We're more than halfway through with the Girl Game Challenge. Hopefully everyone's gotten much more comfortable with the challenges. We've had some pretty interesting results so far, and we're looking forward to hearing all your Field Reports!

After all this challenging work, it's time for some fun: This week's challenge is Presentation.

Now that we’ve gotten the hardest parts out of the way, it’s time for some window dressing.

You could be the greatest guy or the sweetest girl, but it will be a lot harder for others to recognize your finer qualities if you aren't presenting them with polish. A first impression is worth 1,000 words. What would those words say about the way you present yourself? Fantastic or frumping out? Suave or slothful?

May we suggest you take the following as your motto: Be your best self. There are all kinds of books, blogs and YouTube tutorials out there to help you along the way. We'll be here on the thread to support each other as well.

Experiment with your appearance. Buy some clothes or makeup and play around with what looks great on you. Aim for a natural look that suits your “style”. Have a skin problem? Find a skincare regimen and stick with it for a few weeks. Share your beauty secrets in the thread or forum! This is the fun part of Girl Game - figuring out how to best present yourself to the world!

For guys, our very own Han Solo has some tips to get you started in the right direction:

1. Improve your wardrobe. Get someone that has good sense in fashion (male or female, gay or straight) to go shopping with you and pick out a couple good items that you feel confident in and they say you look great in.

2. Hair. Whether short, medium or long, wild or refined, do it with style. Out with the mangey dog look and in with the hot wolf. If you don't know what looks good on you then, once again, find someone that does and listen to them. And don't just assume that hair dressers know. Find one that knows how to make you look good.

Have more tips to share? Let us know!

Have fun, Gamers!

It has become the capstone experience of personal life — the last brick put in place after everything else is set.

Still, there are other reasons the sexes delay marriage. The National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia identified the top 10 reasons men today delay commitment:

1. They can get sex without marriage more easily than in times past.

2. They can enjoy the benefits of having a wife by cohabiting rather than marrying.

3. They want to avoid divorce and its financial risks.

4. They want to wait until they are older to have children.

5. They fear that marriage will require too many changes and compromises.

6. They are waiting for the perfect soulmate and she hasn’t yet appeared.

7. They face few social pressures to marry.

8. They are reluctant to marry a woman who already has children.

9. They want to own a house before they get a wife.

10. They want to enjoy single life as long as they can.

Neither is about getting somewhere with the opposite sex. Just human beings showing generosity and decency. We have so much to learn from one another!

SayWhaat:

"I was riding the subway home and across from me was a young guy slouching and being surly. He had a scar on the side of his face, had cubic zirconium earrings, everything - he looked a bit scary.

Normally, I would have avoided eye contact at all costs, like I usually do on the subway. But I looked at him and I noticed that his eyes were red. My first thought was, “ugh, of course. He’s stoned on the subway.” Then I noticed that he kept rubbing them. A second later I realized that he was crying.

I suddenly felt so awkward that I had noticed this. What do you do when you notice some random stranger is in pain? I could tell he noticed that I noticed too, because he lowered his head and started wiping away his tears more frequently.

We passed another couple of stops before I finally gathered courage. The guy next to him was sitting spread-eagled and taking up the rest of the whole seat, so I got up, went over, said “excuse me” and sat down right between them. Then I reached into my purse and took out a pack of tissues and handed it to the Ghetto Kid.

I could tell the whole subway car was surprised at what just happened but I ignored it all and just asked the Kid if he was okay. He said, “well, I feel better now!” Turns out his girlfriend had cheated on him and he was trying to cope with it. I told him I was sorry to hear that, and that there were better people out there. We had a brief conversation about relationships. He was graduating community college in a month.

Then the conversation turned to my relationships and he started asking if I was married or single, and how old I was, and I started feeling awkward again. Haha..oops. Should have seen that coming.  When we got off at the same stop, he asked if we could keep talking but I told him that I had to catch another train (which was true). And I told him to take care, and that was that.

I felt good about that interaction. I realized that I felt so much…I dunno, softer, after doing something as simple as reaching out to someone in a moment of vulnerability and making them feel okay. I had a rough week myself (been so overworked) but I realized that there’s a certain strength to be found in reaching out and supporting someone else. Even if it’s someone who looks tough. Even if it’s someone you don’t know." 

Buena Vista:

"SayWhaat, that’s probably the first time in that guy’s entire existence a woman showed him a little compassion, and closing the interaction so elegantly (without saying “ew gross what a perv”) is probably what he’ll remember for the rest of his life, as well.

I’m always emotionally wrecked for a couple days, after the fraud that the family courts call “parental visitation.” So I’d dropped off my son with his mother, and was driving the 250 mile exercise in anxiety and remorse, back to my home. (She moved away, of course, as soon as I agreed to her getting physical custody.) I’m a guy in a suit, driving a Porsche, crying like a little boy half the way down the NJ Turnpike. Pathetic. Probably dangerous too, I’m so distracted. I decide it’s time to break the spell, I clean up and stop for gas. Buying my coffee, a weary overweight young woman at the counter, looks at me and says, “Are you all right? Are you having a bad day?”

I was speechless. I still shake, writing this, remembering the moment. I couldn’t talk then. I walked out to my car and stood there. I went back inside. I said,

“You’re an angel, thank you.”

“I’m pulling back to back 16 hour days. But you looked like you could use a kind word.”

There’s only one reason someone works 16-hour days in a convenience store on the interstate: she needs the dough to take care of someone, someone she can’t be with because she is working 16-hour days. I shook my head.

Now I couldn’t talk again. And just said, “You’re an angel.” I meant it. I’m 55. First time that happened to me in my life. Never forget it. A kind word can reverberate for decades."

It's time for Week 4 of the Girl Game Challenge! 

The last couple of weeks have been a bit challenging. In Week 2, we had you commit regularly to a new activity. In Week 3, the challenge was to practice feminine energy and go out of your way to do something kind for someone else.

We're going to keep pushing ourselves out of our comfort zones, but we're going to turn the dial down a little bit and build upon something we practiced in Week 1: the Indicator of Interest (IOI). During the first week of the challenge, the key was to be able to maintain eye contact and essentially uphold a confident vibe. This week's challenge is similar.

Your challenge for Week 4 is to go out of your comfort zone and strike up a conversation with two strangers. This can happen on the subway, in line at Trader Joe's - anywhere where you will have mandatory human interaction, but will also have to keep it short. The idea is to be able to forge a brief but interesting human connection and improve skills such as banter and charm. Ask the cashier how their day was, and show you are actively listening to them. Have the barrista tell you about their most interesting customer so far. Let the person behind you in line skip ahead and wish them a good day. As the old adage says, Smile and the world smiles with you.

Bonus points: suggest to an interesting guy that you two should hang out sometime!

It's not rocket science-- just a chance to let your charm shine in a fun and friendly way. Plus, it's short and sweet. Won't you join us?

Have a field report? Have a question? Need some support? We'd love to hear from you in the comments!

***By the way, the Challenge is welcome to HUSsies and HUSsars, lurkers, newbies and regulars. Anyone can join!*** Good luck, Girl Gamers!

Across analyses spanning 122 attributes from more than 13,000 individuals, one conclusion stood out: instead of dividing into two groups, men and women overlapped considerably on attributes like the frequency of science-related activities, interest in casual sex, or the allure of a potential mate’s virginity.

Even stereotypical traits, like assertiveness or valuing close friendships, fell along a continuum. In other words, we found little or no evidence of categorical distinctions based on sex.

I am particularly intrigued by their focus on promiscuity and the value individuals place on virginity. This has been found elsewhere - specifically in the study of sociosexuality. From my post on the orientation of the population on the continuum of restricted to unrestricted:

 While men in general are more unrestricted in sociosexual orientation than women, the variance within each sex is much greater than variance between the sexes.

For example, when subjects were asked whether they'd ever had sex with someone the day they met, here's how the percentages break down for an affirmative response:

While there are profound biological sex differences, including hormonal activity and various brain characteristics, it's true that much of mating behavior is not explained by gender. There is indeed great intrasexual variation, and this is a cornerstone of my own understanding of how the SMP works. "All women are like that" is essentially from a pre-literacy stage of understanding sex differences. If we instead focus on sociosexual compatibility, we can easily see that the top 20%, or unrestricted folks, are going to be far better matched with one another than with someone in the bottom 20%, or restricted group. 

A new study on cheating provides additional valuable insights. The research examines how individuals regard a variety of behaviors when undertaken by a long-term partner, and explores what constitutes cheating. Specific actions studied include the sexual, erotic, and romantic, as well as those providing financial support to another member of the opposite sex.

Three key individual differences predicted subjects' responses:

1. Those who perceived limited availability of alternative mates were more likely to identify ambiguous behavior as cheating.

2. Religiosity predicted lower tolerance of ambiguous behavior.

3. Women were more likely than men to consider behaviors aimed at actively deceiving one's partner as cheating.

That last one surprised me - I wonder if men are more willing to be deceived. For the record, here's the definition:

Cheat

1. Act dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain an advantage
2. Deceive or trick

Synonyms:  deceive, swindle, trick, defraud, fool, delude, dupe

I'm not really seeing how "actively deceiving" one's partner is not synonymous with cheating...

In any case, the first factor - the unique perception of the individual - had a much larger effect than gender. More on that in a minute. Here's how the whole sample ranked cheating behaviors in a monogamous, long-term relationship. (Who on earth are the 2.3% who don't think P in V qualifies? Or the 17.4% who are OK with texting erotic messages?):

Note: N = 456, 67%F, 33%M, 2 public midwestern universities

More women than men considered 10 behaviors cheating, mostly in the sexual and erotic categories (though there was the least variation in the responses about sexual activity). A much higher percentage of men felt that giving financial support to someone else constituted cheating. 

However, by far the most important predictor of attitudes about cheating was an Insecure Attachment Style. This also predicted those most and least likely to cheat. Impulsivity in sex and aggression are most prevalent in those who have experienced disturbed family relationships. "When caregivers do not provide a safe and emotionally warm environment, children can become insecurely attached."

Insecure Attachment can go one of two ways: Avoidant or Anxious

Avoidant Attachment Style

Characterized by chronic attempts to inhibit attachment:

1. Minimizes expressions of distress.
2. Dislikes intimacy, prefers psychological distance.
3. Denies anything is wrong.
4. Experiences less jealousy.
5. Grieves less after a breakup.

Not surprisingly, Avoidant types are less likely to identify ambiguous behaviors as cheating. They had lower scores on five of the survey items.

Anxious Attachment Style

Characterized by hypervigilance to threats to the relationship:

1. Perceives lower availability of alternative mates.
2. Overestimates threats to the relationship.
3. Underestimates partner's level of commitment.
4. More likely to perceive partner as insensitive.
5. Experiences more jealousy.
6. Imagines relationship difficulties.

Anxious types are more likely to identify ambiguous behaviors as cheating. They had higher ratings for 18 of the 27 behaviors.

The study found no sex differences in who had an Insecure Attachment Style. However, I think it's fair to say that in general, women will prefer Avoidant men to Anxious ones, and men will prefer Anxious women to Avoidant ones. Anxious men and Avoidant women are likely to struggle in the SMP.

It's clear that what constitutes cheating is contextual - it depends on the individuals in the relationship. I've always found that the best definition of cheating relies solely on deception: If you're doing something you wouldn't want your partner to know about, it's cheating. 

Clearly, if your partner is Anxious, you may hide what other people would consider perfectly appropriate and platonic behavior. If your partner is Avoidant, you may find that you need to act out just to get him to pay attention to you. Obviously, neither of these matches is compatible, and neither of these relationship dynamics is healthy. 

Insecure Attachment Style is correlated to a whole bunch of bad stuff. It's tragic, because many of these individuals are damaged through no fault of their own. But you don't want to pin your hopes on a head case. That's a disaster in waiting. 

Some people are always searching for the loophole, so when you do enter a committed relationship, make sure to talk about your expectations around fidelity.

In my view, there is definitely a Mars Venus thing going on. But when it comes to relationship fitness and compatibility, the most important predictors of success are not specific to gender, but to personality traits (nature) and shared environment (nurture). 

Hey guys, it’s time for Week 3 of the Spring Girl Game Challenge!

If you’re feeling like last week’s challenge was tough, don’t worry - you are far from alone. Week 2’s challenge was all about getting you out of your comfort zone, so it’s fine if you’re still figuring it out. For those of you who did manage to find a new activity, drop us a line about it in the Forum!

This week’s challenge is to practice an abundance mentality: giving without expectation. It sounds vague, but the idea is to do something nice and thoughtful for three people this week (men or women). A word about an abundance mentality: You can be an incredibly generous person without spending a dime. It’s not about the benjamins-- it’s about the attitude!

For example, sharing a smile costs *nothing*. A friendly wink at a traffic light is both low-cost and low-risk! Actively compliment guys around you. It doesn’t have to be flirty, just put out a friendly, feminine energy. Have a generous and abundant attitude - let someone go in front of you at the grocery store, give a kind word to someone you don’t know, let someone else have your seat on the bus.

By recognizing the good that is already around us, life becomes more positive and happier. And happiness is extremely attractive. Remember: Whatever you focus on, you get more of!

Bonus points: combine this challenge with last week’s challenge and volunteer for a cause!

Share your thoughts and ideas in the thread! And good luck!

Just wanted to say I've been a HUS reader for a long time. I'm a senior at Yale and it's honestly the strangest thing to see a weird minor facet of our sexual culture come up in so many places on the internet. But I wanted to express that not too many girls at Yale think the way Chloe does (it's so odd, we used to be in the same sorority together), and reading your blog among others was part of the reason I decided to write a column in response to some of the media coverage of these articles. I hope you enjoy, I think it remains true to a lot of the things you express here. 

To the SWUGs, fight for love

Best,

Alex

There is nothing more gratifying than learning HUS has touched lives, helped people understand themselves better, and given them support to speak the truth. Alex Lin's article at Yale News Daily is well worth a read. I'm so proud of her! Check it out. Here are some of my favorite highlights:

In every article I read espousing the culture of the “senior washed-up girl,” I sense a distressing sadness. Someday, decades from now when the beauty of our youth has faded, I want every Yale woman to be able to say she fought for more than the freedom to hook up indiscriminately and care for nothing as she rode out her final days of college.

...What keeps coming back in all these “SWUG” articles is an abstract dissatisfaction with the amount of attention women receive with regards to hookups and dating. I think everything in the world traces back to a universal desire for love. The current debate is no different. There’s a hilarious notion going around that we’ve lost something desirable since our freshman year in exchange for an undefined concept of “wisdom” which excuses us from being role models for the underclassmen.

...Women today need to stop excusing themselves. The vague culture of “feminism” is becoming a crutch that our generation has been leaning on for too long. Inherent in the conversation is an extremely unattractive and childish sense of entitlement. “I’m a woman, so I deserve it all: casual sex, expensive dates, eventually an adorable family and a high-profile career.”

I don’t want it all because I know the things I most deeply desire explicitly rule out certain experiences in life.

I wish I could more dramatically get across how frustrating it is to see people, not just women, fail to understand that choices become meaningful when you resolve to sacrifice one opportunity in favor of another. At the heart of it, everyone has a subconscious understanding of his or her own internal preferences, and I think the slow realization that pursuing casual sex is a very weak strategy for finding love is what has triggered this intense rationalization for superficial, attention-seeking apathy.

...The contemporary feminist is not the girl who “has it all,” she’s the woman who’s taken stock of her personal preferences and maintained a strong sense of loyalty to her identity as a feminine individual — regardless of what society has told her is “empowering.”

Alex Lin is smart, but so are her SWUG classmates. What sets Alex apart is her maturity, introspection, sense of personal responsibility, and goal orientation. She understands that it's not possible to split one's life into segments with a different "you" living each one. Who you are and what you do at 21 will be very much a part of who you are at 30. 

Female underclassmen at Yale couldn't do any better than model themselves after Lin. Let's hope the majority understand that, and do not aspire to SWUG status, a distressingly sad thing indeed.

You don't need a remarkable idea! All you need is a heartfelt declaration of your love and desire to marry her. If you want to make it special, get down on one knee. If you want to make it really special, go to a place that means a lot to both of you - a favorite spot during your relationship.

There's something wrong with our culture where guys delay proposing because they fear they need to put on a big show. I hope your gf does not require that.

Chloe, Yale Senior

Chloe describes herself as a SWUG: Senior Washed Up Girl. Chloe's classmate and fellow SWUG explains this dubious marker of identity:

 To be a SWUG is to embrace the slow, wine-filled decline of female sexual empowerment as we live out our college glory days.

Chloe describes her foolish idolatry of SWUGs when she got to Yale; perhaps she was misled by how hard they worked at having fun and looking cool:

They’re usually at penny shots promptly at 11 p.m. come Wednesday night, and are then found in Durfee’s around 1 p.m. the next day, buying every liquid they can get their hands on.

I was jealous of them when I was a freshman. They were on a nickname basis with the hottest guys at Yale and danced at the bar of DKE with their shirts off. But looking back on it, I realize the boys were trying to get with the freshmen, not the SWUGs.

Like all things in life, time inevitably played its course. I got pushed out of my cozy corner of Bingham, and new, hotter, younger freshmen replaced me...I don’t receive texts from boys unless you count my dad, and there is certainly no one who would want to date me.

We glimpse Chloe's social life in her last year of college:

She’s the girl who Kevin, the bartender at Toad’s, hugs when she stumbles in Wednesday night. She’ll dance like no one’s looking. She’s a SWUG. She doesn’t care. Tommy at Box 63 and Compadre at Amigos will both give her free shots on occasion; they are not doing this for freshman girls — only for SWUGs.

She’s the girl in the Zeta basement, before the Coach Reno era, who is biting into a can with her teeth to shotgun on a Sunday. Although she could never beat the Zeta boys in a shotgun, she can beat most ADPhi boys.

She’s the girl who knows the code to get into DKE. She knows the code for ADPhi. (If any single senior girl has the key to Zeta, she may want to seek help.) Facebook bores her. She uses Facebook to find out different football players’ birthdays and plugs them into an astrology website to test their compatibility. She is compatible with no one.

She’s the girl who promised she would never hook up with someone younger than her but now finds herself texting sophomore boys who unavoidably turn her down.

Chloe, who spent four years fishing in the Unrestricted & Jaded Pond, is now washed up, like so much detritus. She assures us that she's hot, "whether the boys believe it or not." 

David, Yale Freshman

David too likes to head over to Toad's and see what's doing, but he doesn't get any free shots from the bartender:

I left Toad’s feeling unwanted, unattractive and creepy. I know this isn’t true — I’m a good guy, handsome, respectful and friendly. Yet when girls shove you off at Toad’s, it doesn’t help your self-confidence. After all, if I can’t find a girl in a mosh pit at Toad’s, it makes me wonder: Can I find a girl anywhere?

I’m a freshman, prospective EP&E major, just a nice guy. I know in my heart of hearts that guys and girls are looking for the same thing — someone who will love them, make them happy and respect them. But actions seem to speak louder than words.

David's experience is shared by many freshmen guys when they get to college. 

We desire nothing more than to be in a loving, consensual relationship that makes us and you happy. Nonetheless, women describe this as unconfident and needy. As a result, the outcome of interactions that reflect this hope is less than ideal. Nice guys are left in the dust while the girls we crush on party at Toad’s.

What are we doing wrong? We are not creepy or socially ignorant. To the contrary, we are bright, well-adjusted, liked young men. We fit the criteria of what you are looking for. Enlighten us: Where is our mistake? While many women claim to want a relationship, they go around solely hooking up and seem to avoid emotional investment. Their defense is that they settle for hookups, hoping men will eventually come around to a relationship.

David is crushing on the girls who are swimming in the Unrestricted & Jaded Pond. As a freshman guy looking for a girlfriend, that's not a good place for David to be fishing. There's actually an alternative: another pond, not as conveniently located, he'll have to search it out, but it offers a cleaner, safer, more rewarding experience all around: Restricted & Earnest Pond. 

I believe I speak for the nice-looking, not-evil and socially adjusted straight single males at Yale — we’re waiting for these games to end. 

The games will not end. David can't win the game he's playing, he needs a new strategy. 

In addition to the very important task of "choosing your people" in college, there's the economic reality re age. Early in college it's Advantage Girls, by senior year it's Advantage Guys. The same cycle repeats after graduation. Here's how it plays out, more or less: 

You can see where graduation happens, just before age 22. This means the SWUGs are about to get an SMV bump, as noted by Justin R. Silverman in New York Magazine:

Of course, the SWUGs aren’t actually washed up. Three months from now, they will be the bright-eyed newcomers in New York or Los Angeles, the 22-year-olds dancing on banquettes in nightclubs, who still drink too much and still flirt with boys. They’ll go from envying freshmen girls to being the envy of older women.

The problem is, most of these girls are not chastened (heh) by their experience:

Yale SWUG Michelle Taylor wants to move to Brooklyn after she graduates next month...Not that Taylor plans to completely leave that SWUG ethos behind when she finishes Yale. After all, similar attitudes might serve to enrich her life as a young single woman once she moves to New York City this summer.