This entry is the result of a conversation I had with Han when we went out last Thursday. Obviously it's overly general and probably doesn't to many situations. However, it marks a fundamental shift in the way I perceive the world, so I figure it's worth writing about in my journal. Your milieage may vary.

The directionality of crushes and their correlation with relationships is something that's fascinated me for some time. For example, if a girl like a guy, but the guy doesn't return the affection, there is absolutely zero chance that a relationship will happen. If a girl presses the guy, he'll usually just avoid her. However, the opposite way works ... if a guy likes a girl, regardless of how a girl feels, it's only a matter of time (assuming the guy is aggressive) before the girl starts dating the guy.

Why is this? I have (a half-baked) theory. A quote from the excellent TV series from Sports Night sums it up:

Jeremy Goodwin: "I understand what makes a woman think that any man is better than nothing. I'll just never understand what makes a woman think she's got nothing."

Girls (especially those who have graduated) have a deep-seated fear of being single. They're willing to lower their standards. I can think of tons of explicit examples where girls I know have settled for guys they initially didn't think were worth the time of day ... but eventually, realizing that it was them or nothing, they settled. Girls who claim they want to remain single are flat-out lying at this stage of their lives - they're just using that as an excuse to deter the "lesser guys."

"Lesser guys" I'm going to define as passive guys. These are guys who are intelligent, quite nice and considerate, and are very thoughtful of others. But they almost never date. If my postulate above is true ("any given girl will settle with any given guy"), then how is true? Shouldn't nice guys be getting an equal share of the pie? This is somewhat related to the "Yellow Fever" film that was being passed around as a meme a few weeks ago.

"Lesser" guys, by their nature, overthink their situations. They try to factor in how the girl may feel in a given situation, and end up with so many conflicting sides that they end up doing nothing. This is the type of guy, who when he hears that an acquaintance may like the same girl as him, would spend hours analyzing the situation and ending up with an endgame scenario where the ball would be in the girl's court.

And this is where the "lesser" guys fail. Girls, by their nature, have a tendency to choose the most aggressive of guys (because just like height, aggressiveness is implicitly a trait found in "successful" guys) over the passive guys. You can break this rule down simply: "Girls want guys to fight over them." Of course, a girl will never admit this to your face, but given how many relationships I've seen succeed with drama, this seems to be the most common scenario.

Unfortunately, this new mentality flies in the face of the concept of chivalry. For those ladies who wonder what killed chivalry: You did. Your willingness to settle for less forces guys to play a more aggressive game and in general to act more like jerks (since jerks are the ones "fight" for things). Terrence and I had started drafting out a document called the "Codes of Gentlemanly Conduct" at one point which was a somewhat tongue-in-cheek "best practices" document of how to handle yourself when it comes to situations as a guy in today's age. Undoubtedly acting in this aggressive manner would make a lot of rules in that Code complex.

So basically I used to think that when pursuing a girl, it was much better to be discreet and to not pressure the girl - but in retrospect, that is dumb. Guys need to be aggressive, make the girls feel wanted, and quit trying to overanalyze a situation that is generally based on feelings and not rational thought. Of course, this also means that any guy is capable of getting any girl (true), so that's the upside to it.