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Lonely in Love? You Can Learn a Lot from “500 Days of Summer”

webadmin — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 18:10:49 +0000

While 500 Days of Summer is painful to watch because the main character, Tom, is such a weak man, there are many lessons to be learned here.

Summer sees some potential in Tom which is why she dates him in the first place.

Sure, there is an element of new girl moving to a new city and not knowing too many people, but she does actually give Tom a legit chance.

While she communicates to him, multiple times that she’s not interested in anything serious, her behavior says otherwise.

It’s true that she could just be a total psychopath, but most people with normal emotional wiring will feel increasingly emotionally attached to another person they share a large part of their life with, especially if they’re also having sex and opening up about their past.

These kind of mixed signals often confuse people. Women, especially tend to believe a guy when he says he’s not looking for anything serious.

But when someone says they’re not looking for anything serious, it typically means that they’re not looking for anything serious from YOU as you are right now–or maybe more accurately, how they see you right now. Which means that they can’t see you offering enough for them to want to be serious.

As a dating coach, on numerous occasions, I’ve had guys tell me that they just want to sleep with a lot of women and don’t want to be in a relationship. Typically, I challenge them by asking if they would be open to a serious relationship with whoever is the current celebrity hottie and they immediately say, “Well, that’s different.”

What most people mean when they say that they don’t want a serious relationship is that they aren’t satisfied with what they think are their options or that they think they would need to make certain sacrifices to their lifestyle that they don’t want to make.

They are too limited in their imagination to think that they could have a situation that is both serious and allows them to have what they want and live the way they want so they just say that they don’t want a serious relationship.

In the case of 500 days of Summer, Summer is saying that she isn’t interested in Tom as he is. When Tom asks her why she was willing to get engaged with the next guy, she says that with this guy she’s sure, but with Tom, she wasn’t.

The depth of her feelings for Tom is obvious when she tells Tom something about herself that she’s never told anyone before. Tom takes this to mean that he’s entitled to and deserving of a serious committed relationship.

He’s paying attention to what he wants to hear and he ignores what he doesn’t. Instead of thinking about why she doesn’t want a serious committed relationship and thinking about what he could do, he thinks there must be something wrong with her.

He misses the hints that Summer gives him on the occasions where she gets him to talk about his dream of being an architect and having an impact on the city, and tells him that she believes he can succeed.

Tom doesn’t take any action on this at all.

He wants to stay just as he is AND get the girl.

This is very typical of many people in a relationship and I’ve seen it countless times. They have a partner who makes a few offhand comments, but because the partner treats them basically the same, they assume that everything is fine and are STUNNED when their partner finally lets them know how unhappy and disappointed they are, pulls back, finds someone else or all of the above.

What Summer is really saying is that she sees a lot of potential in him, but unless that potential turns into something more, then she’s not interested in committing.

Why is Tom not pursuing something more? Why is he in a job he has no passion for, for 3 years? Because he’s weak and scared or lazy or all of the above. Why else would he not do more and want to realize his potential.

It’s just like when Nala finds Simba in the jungle and he’s busy hanging out with his buds and being all “hakuna matata.”

Unlike Simba though, when Nala (in the original 1994 version!) tells him what he needs to do, he actually answers the call and steps up his game to realize his potential.

Summer does a very good thing here. In my experience, many women just leave without even giving you a clue about what you should or could be doing to win them over.

And this brings me to another point…Summer drops a few hints that Tom ignores. Many women resort to nagging, because their men don’t pay attention and they decide to nag as their first move rather than disengaging or finding another partner, especially when they’ve already invested so much that the other options require a lot of effort.

I don’t remember ever being nagged by a woman in a long term relationship, but I know that many of my clients have had that because they refuse to be responsive to what their partner cares about.

Summer gave Tom a chance, and he fumbles it. She gave him multiple chances, and then the relationship gradually deteriorated.

When Tom and Summer are at the bar, and Summer gets approached and the guy scoffs at her being with Tom, it really hurts him because Tom knows that Summer is out of his league.

Instead of doing something about it by developing and improving himself, he just demands she offer safety and security which she refuses to do.

This is a good lesson for women to learn too. Because women can also be in the same situation where they are with a man and they blame him for not having a higher level of commitment instead of thinking about what they should or could do to make the man WANT TO commit.

Become a better more desirable partner!

If you do that, even if this relationship doesn’t work out, you’ll have better odds with the next one.

If you’re a young guy and you haven’t accomplished much yet, that’s normal. Girls are going to bank on your potential. But if they see nothing happening, they’re going to lose hope and bail.

It’s normal as a man not to have much to show for your efforts until you hit your late 20s. That’s ok. Along the way, if you keep leveling up you’ll have better options.

Women too, can be far better partners at 28 than they were at 23 if they really think about what attracts and keeps a long term partner.

I’m not saying it’s easy, but what I am saying is that when someone you really want to be with gives you a chance, take it.

Because from their perspective, if you really wanted to be with them, you’d be paying attention and respond to what they want.

The post Lonely in Love? You Can Learn a Lot from “500 Days of Summer” appeared first on Dude's Watch Chick Flicks.

Bad Relationship Dynamic Build-up

webadmin — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 09:11:31 +0000

Even if you pick the right person (or at least a really good person) for a partner, it’s very easy for things to get ugly.

All relationships will develop some recurring dynamics. Some of those dynamics will be bad because they develop resentment or anger in you or your partner.

It’s as important to recognize and nurture the good dynamics as it is to notice and find ways to deal with the bad ones.

It’s very common that these negative dynamics happen at a time and place where they can’t be easily dealt with, like in the middle of a shopping trip, or while driving through tough traffic or while you’re on a phone call or pressed for a work deadline.

Then, the situation passes and you forget all about it until it happens again but this time, you (or your partner) is upset about it this time AND upset about it last time.

The sad part, is that you probably don’t even realize the negative effect your behavior or comment had on your partner or they may not realize the negative effect they’ve had on you until they (or you) are so upset that instead of a rational conversation, you (or they) explode irrationally emotionally.

You (or they) come off as some kind of easily dismissed crazy person even though there are real grievances that should be addressed to make the relationship better.

In Difficult Conversations, the author talks about this problem and how important it is to recognize when something bothers you before you get emotional about it so that you can have a calm discussion about it instead of an emotionally charged one.

In How to Stay in Love, the author has a strategy he calls, “Hit Send Now”:

If your partner does something during the day that bothers you even a little, within a couple of hours—or minutes—write him or her and e0mail or text about it. Don’t censor yourself. Don’t obsessively read and reread the email or text. And then, against all your instincts as a human being who, like most human beings has a people-pleasing streak, just press Send.

The idea is that by ignoring or overthinking this thing it will fester into a long term problem that never gets dealt with and grows into something larger that damages the relationship.

While I’m not in agreement with him that this is the way to do it, I agree with the goal which is to make sure that negative dynamics don’t continue on unchecked.

A lot of the time, the things that hurt or otherwise upset us are silly, petty or embarrassing. But they will cause damage to our relationships if we don’t do something about them. And sometimes all we need to do is tell our partner so they know why we’re acting so weird.

At least that way, there is a possibility to do something about it.

500 Days of Summer is one of the best examples of this. They have a horrible dynamic of Tom trying to get Summer to conform to his idea of what their relationship should look like instead of accepting it for what it is.

By constantly pushing her to verbally commit, she feels the need to assert her independence even more which drives them apart.

This bad relationship dynamic never gets resolved because Tom thinks he deserves commitment and doesn’t understand that Summer isn’t satisfied with him because he’s not making anything of himself.

He already had her attention but he was so focused on what he thought he was entitled to that he totally missed the very clear messages that she sends him.

I’ve often been in Summer’s position where I’m dating a girl who has a lot of things going for her, but doesn’t want to put effort to develop or change herself in the ways that would really make me want to keep her forever. And I’ve seen that with clients too.

Typically, the message in modern media is that women are perfect and we should accept them for who they are and if they’re not perfect, they’re actually just not the right girl for us.

I call bullshit.

Both men and women should be striving to better themselves. As Jim Rohn said:

How many pounds overweight should you be?

Instead of listening to the messages she was sending, he was focused on pushing her to commit in a way that she wasn’t willing to for the person he was. That pressure, pushed her away and led to the end of the relationship.

Summer calls Tom to be better, but he doesn’t respond to the call until it’s too late and Summer is gone.

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What Does it Mean to Be an Alpha Male?

webadmin — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 10:42:43 +0000

People are very, VERY confused about what it means to be an Alpha male. I recently watched a video where the creator tries to show the stupidity of the idea of being an Alpha male.

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In this video he confuses the difference between someone TRYING to be Alpha and someone actually being Alpha.

And the difference really comes down to mindset, NOT behavior.

2 different guys can engage in the exact same behavior and in one instance it can be seen as simping and pandering, but in another instance when done by a different guy, it could be perceived as magnanimous and kind.

What’s the difference?

The difference is in the perspective of the viewer and in the mindset of the doer.

Let’s use a TOTALLY hypothetical example that has nothing to do with my life or anything that I ever did before *sigh* and say a guy wakes up to cook breakfast for a woman that he slept with but didn’t actually have sex with.

If the guy was some handsome celebrity like Brad Pitt or Leonardo DiCaprio, no question, he must be doing that because he’s a nice guy. He doesn’t HAVE to treat women nicely so when he does, it’s a choice he’s making.

On the other hand, if the guy is perceived as low value ie someone she’s not attracted to, then she may see that behavior as pandering or simping.

However, what really matters is he mindset of the guy. And this is where thinking of compliance levels come in.

If the guy cooks for her because he’s so grateful that he got to spend a bit of time with her and would likely feel upset if she never wanted to see him again then he’s engaging in the behavior, cooking, to get something.

However, his mindset could just as easily be that he just wants to do something nice and if she never talked to him again and ghosted him, he wouldn’t care. Getting something for the act of kindness means nothing to him.

So, ladies, you can get this very wrong and mis-perceive a guy. The classic example of this is in Bridget Jones Diary where Bridget mistakes Mark Darcy gentleness and kindness for weakness and Daniel Cleaver’s strutting and bragadoccio as strength and Alphaness.

Fortunately, most women figure out the difference by the time they’re in their mid 20s unlike poor Bridget who is a cautionary tale.

On the other hand, it often takes men until their late 20s or early 30s before they have enough of a track record with themselves for their mindset to shift.

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How Women Change Men

webadmin — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 10:14:42 +0000

I got flak in my last video for suggesting that Rose in Titanic only thought of escaping from her situation rather than putting in effort towards making things work. People objected to the idea that she should because Cal is a monster.

Sure, he’s rich and handsome, and will save her and her mother from a life of poverty but he’s not kind or particularly attentive.

However the idea of women transforming men is a standard core part of female fantasy as we can see in:

Pretty Woman
50 Shades of Grey
Beauty and the Beast

In fact, I would argue that Beauty and the Beast is an underlying story theme that is so appealing to women that Pretty Woman and 50 Shades of Grey both are modern templates for the story of woman transforming, taming and domesticating “toxic” masculinity.

Women may feel that these days, every man should be a soyboy, but traditionally, it was through association with women in some kind of relationship and the familial experience that men softened up.

One of the key examples in modern psychology to back this up is the fact that on average men are more disagreeable than women.

This means that men are oriented, ON AVERAGE, more towards competition than co-operation.

And highly competitive people have more potential, ON AVERAGE, to achieve more and therefore to attain higher social status in whatever endeavor.

The competitive nature is what drives men to build large businesses and amass wealth as well as destroy their bodies to be successful in sports and other areas of life that lead to them being attractive partners for women.

There is a reason the “nice guy” stereotype isn’t particularly sexy to women, after all.

Obviously, this competitive nature doesn’t suit the family environment that women have traditionally sought to create and that’s why Beauty and the Beast type stories have always been popular to women, will continue to be popular and a core part of relationship progression even in modern times.

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Barbie Movie Explainer: Now You Don’t Have to Watch It

webadmin — Wed, 16 Aug 2023 09:47:19 +0000

Plot in brief

Barbie lives in Barbie land which is the perfect female paradise

Suddenly, she has thoughts of death at a party and the next day she’s no longer perfect

She finds out that it’s because the girl that’s playing with her isn’t happy and isn’t getting joy from Barbie anymore and that’s created a tear in the fabric between Barbie Land and the real world.

To fix it, she has to travel into the real world, find the girl that’s playing with her and make her happy.

Detailed Plot

Opening

Homage to 2001 space odyssey buy Stanley Kubrick where the Barbie doll plays the role of the monolith as awakening and liberating women from playing the role of mom’s, housewives and homemakers by representing the vast possiblities open to women.

Interestingly, this suggests that being a mom was slavery and a terrible thing to endure which is reinforced by the way pregnant barbie is treated in the movie.

Barbie Land

Women do all the work and are really happy doing it and all get along, while men just sit around competing to get Barbie’s attention

The men appear useless, burdensome, dumb and superfluous

Barbie has no romantic interest in Ken, preferring to party with and spend time with her girls

At the party, Barbie contemplates death and after that is no longer able to be perfect–life becomes hard.

She can’t wear heels, her shower isn’t the perfect temperature, her toast is burnt, etc.

Her extraordinary life becomes ordinary and filled with the imperfections that comprise a real life.

She can no longer float through life.

(It’s an expulsion from the Garden of Eden moment)

Barbie asks around and finally goes to see weird Barbie who experienced a similar fate and she’s told that there is a rift between Barbie land and the real world and she has to go into the real world (symbolized by birkenstocks), find the girl who’s playing with her and bring her joy again.

Leaving Barbie land

Barbie decides to leave Barbie land and Ken (since he’s nothing without her) stows away in her car and basically makes her take him even though she doesn’t want to and essentially treats him like a child.

Welcome to the Real World

When Barbie and Ken get to the real world, they are shocked by how disorderly, mean, dangerous and sexual it is.

Barbie and Ken split up with Barbie going to find the girl that plays with her and Ken going to explore the real world.

Barbie finds the girl, Sasha, and is hurt when she finds out that the girl despises Barbie as a representation of everything that is wrong with the modern world and giving women false hope for the future.

Ken “discovers” that the world is run by men and is so excited by the idea of patriarchy that he tries his best to understand the key elements of it to return to Barbie land to transform it into the men’s paradise he believes the patriarchy creates.

Sad Barbie goes to sit on a bus stop bench and sees an old woman sitting next to her serenely. She tells the old woman that she is beautiful, and the old woman says, “I know it.”

This is part of Barbie’s awakening as she experiences the joys and the pains of real life.

Despite this, she decides to go to Matell’s head office in hopes that they can return her back to her old, perfect life.

Mattel Office

When she gets there, she finds out that Mattell isn’t run by women who want to empower women, but is instead run by men who are using Barbie to make money by tricking girls into believing they can achieve more than is actually possible.

They sell a dream that is only a dream and not a real possible future.

They promise they will return everything back to normal if she will just get in the box (this is the 2nd, but more real red/blue pill moment).

Just as she’s getting in the box, she has second thoughts and decides to escape.

The Getaway

As she runs away, she outsmarts these powerful, smart men, and finds her way to a secret room for a sit down with the creator of Barbie–now and old woman who reassures Barbie that the original intention behind it was to empower women, implying that men have corrupted Barbie into something else.

Once she makes her escape through a secret stairwell that Ruth Handler shows her, she’s helped by Sasha’s mother, a powerless secretary at Mattell who has decided to save Barbie.

Sasha’s mother, Gloria, now has her turn to show that she can outdrive and outwit men.

In the car, there is some weird exchange

Sasha: “Everybody hates women. Women hate women, and men hate women. It’s the one thing we can all agree on.”

Barbie: “Is that true?”

Gloria: “It’s complicated.”
Barbie realizes that the girl she was looking for isn’t Sasha, but Gloria, who is sad and disappointed with how her life has turned out–a perfectly normal middle class life.

Barbie decides to take them to Barbie land.

The executives follow them.

Kendom

They get to Barbie Land and they find that it’s no longer the girls fantasyland it was before, but now it’s the vision of men’s paradise that patriarchy provides.

The president and cabinet members have all stepped down to serve men–provide beer, massage their feet and act as cheerleaders.

The houses have all been taken over by the men who previously had no homes at all and the men engage in various forms of dominance displays.

The men plan to take over the government officially by voting in a new constitution.

Barbie tries to appeal to the women to remind them of their power and greatness but they’re not interested.

She feels like she’s a failure and wants to give up.

Gloria and Sasha are disappointed in Barbie for not living up to her role as a beacon of hope and as a role model for women and disgusted, leave Barbie land.

On the way back to the real world they are stopped by some Kens. Allen, who stowed away with them, holds off the Ken’s while Sasha says they should go save Barbie land which she despised before.

Gloria, who feels like a total failure for causing the collapse of Barbie land is shocked her daughter wants to save it. Sasha explains that she thinks her mom is great and that she wants to save it because she knows it’s important to her mom so they turn back.

Weird Barbie House

Gloria and Sasha go to find Barbie here at the suggestion of Allen.

When they arrive, they meet many discontinued Barbie dolls and Barbie who is still distraught and enumerates all the ways she’s not good.

Gloria reassures her that she’s wonderful in many ways and that the only reason she feels inadequate is because women have to live up to impossible and contradictory standards.

Expressing this, “awakens” the Barbies to the helplessness they’ve reduced themselves to and they decide that they will deprogram all of the Barbies by explaining the same thing.

To do this, they distract the Ken’s by feigning admiration for and interest in them and the need for their help, support and assistance.

The Fight

The un-brainwashed barbies then show interest in each other’s Ken’s to stoke jealousy and competition among them so they forget about the vote

Once the men realize, they all go to the houses where the Barbies have taken control back from them.

Ken and Barbie

Ken breaks down crying in private and Barbie reassures him and apologizes for taking him for granted.

And that he shouldn’t care what she thinks of him and should just accept himself for who he is.

Ending

The old woman from the getaway appears and introduces herself as Ruth Handler, the creator of Barbie. She explains that Barbie is exactly what she was supposed to be–an impossible, unreal woman.

And that Barbie is an idea full of meaning and that ideas are what allow humans to transcend death.

Barbie says that instead of being an idea, she wants to create ideas.

Barbie asks her if she can become a human woman and Ruth tells her that before she does that, she should know what it means.

We get a collage that is a celebration of womanhood.

Barbie cries with joy.

The final scene is of Barbie taking her first action as a real human woman living in the real world. She checks in at the gynecologist.

Implications and Themes

Men live to but are are incapable of being important to women no matter how hard they try

Women can quite easily satisfy men just by giving them attention.

Women in power create a utopian world where everyone gets along in a conflict free environment

Men shouldn’t want or compete for attention from women but should recognize their intrinsic self worth

Ordinary, middle class life is depressing unless you make a special effor to not feel it’s depressing

Male competition and displays of dominance and status are silly and stupid

Men shouldn’t be motivated by wanting to be more than friends with women

Men’s striving makes them feel worthless without those successes

Men do but shouldn’t define themselves by women

Women carry Channel to impress men

Competition can be abolished

Life is hard–largely because of men

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