Many of us have no clue what a man wants in a relationship.  If we're cynical, we may think he just wants sex, someone to keep him from feeling alone, or the status of having a girlfriend.  If we're romantic, we may think that he wants love, a life companion, and a mother for his children.

And if we look into our own hearts, into the many complex reasons we want a man in our lives, we often find a little bit of all of the above.  The proportions may be different, but none of us can deny that the benefits of a relationship include companionship, intimacy, a change in status from "single" to "couple," love, partnership, and a shared future.

But what most of us don't know is how important relationships actually are for men.  According to the National Marriage Project (supported by Rutgers University), marriage transforms men's lives in positive, healthy ways.  Married men are more productive, earn more money, get sick less, think more about the future, are happier, and even have better sex lives.  According to sociologist Steven Nock, marriage is also a rite of passage from boy to man.

The National Marriage Project 2004 study on "The Marrying Kind: Which Men Marry and Why" reveals that the type of man most likely to look forward to a future of marital bliss is religious, has grown up in a family with both parents, and feels it's time to settle down.  Surprisingly, most men (more than two out of three) do not believe that the purpose of marriage is having children.

Most of these men are married for the first time by the time they're thirty.  Which brings us to the second group that the study examined: the non-marrying kind (22% of those surveyed).  These are men who believe that marriage is not for them: they are significantly more likely to distrust women, fear losing their personal freedom, focus on the high divorce rate and bad marriages, and not want children.  The study suggests that the notion of the thirty-something bachelor who's finally getting ready to settle down after sowing his wild oats is, in fact, a myth.  Many thirty-something single men are undecided or even opposed to the idea of getting married anytime soon.

Therefore, if you're seeking a partner with long-term potential, here are 3 things you should look out for:

1. He speaks positively of marriage or other people's marriages.   If, on the other hand, he often predicts that a trouble marriage will end in divorce or points out the disadvantages and troubles in other people's marriages, then he may not hold a positive enough belief in marriage to want to make that commitment himself.
2. He trusts women in general.  Men who've had positive, healthy relationships with other women (such as his mother, sisters, female friends, co-workers) have often developed the skills needed to build and maintain a relationship with a partner.  These men have a greater understanding of women, or at least have come to peace with gender differences, and are less likely to see women as the enemy.
3. He's passed the stage in life where "fun and freedom" were his main focus.  Even though most men will admit that their freedom is important to them, a man who's settling into the stage in his life where he can think about marriage will find that other goals appeal to him.  He may think more about finding a soulmate.  He may be more interested in building something lasting, such as a career, a house, or public service.  If, on the other hand, he often jokes about the "ball and chain" of marriage and urges friends to treasure their freedom above a woman, he may not be the marrying kind.

To learn more about how you can attract the right kind of man for lasting love, click here and discover "How to Be Irresistible to Men," the ultimate guide for attracting your soulmate.  Stop wasting your time with men who aren't worth it.  Discover how to tell when a relationship is right for you.  You'll be amazed at the quality of men you'll attract.  Get it now at:

http://www.000Relationships.com/tomen/ 

A lot of women have asked me recently what I thought of Christian Carter’s book, Catch Him and Keep Him.  Should they buy it?  What was it like?  Is he cute?

Let me answer the most important question first: yes, Christian Carter is cute!  He’s fair-haired and good-looking in that sunkissed California kind of way.  For any of you who’ve seen his DVD series on "Natural and Lasting Attraction," you’ll know what I mean.

He’s a genuinely great guy who also happens to be a great catch.  He’s the kind of guy that you imagine would have been nice to the girls who liked him in school, even if he didn’t like them back.  This guy has his life sorted, amazing women around him, and an enormous heart that’s truly concerned about why women out there aren’t getting the relationships they want.

On to the next question: what is the book like?

It’s an inside look into how men think, from the perspective of a good-looking guy who’s been there, done that.

I find the maleness of the book overwhelming.  This isn’t written by a fatherly counselor or a gay best guy friend: Christian Carter is very much in touch with his masculinity, and he pulls no punches.  He tells you what guys are like: the bare bald facts that most of us don’t want to hear.

In our hearts, I think many of us wish that men could be more like women.  We wish that men could enjoy talking about their feelings more, could give up their addictions to toys and start getting hooked on family, even enjoy shopping with us more than a few times a year.

According to Christian, that sort of thinking has to stop.  Men live in a different reality, and it is our job as women to understand where men are coming from without judgement. 

In order to assist you with sorting the wheat from the chaff, Christian gives you a valuable taxonomy of the kinds of guys out there who’ll steal your heart.  Learn how to recognize a Player and the motives that drive them to play with hearts.  Find yourself challenged to consider why you’re attracted to strong, dominant unavailable men and bad boys … exactly the sort of men who will not make good relationship material.

One of Christian’s central themes is the importance of understanding your emotional responses and acting on them appropriately.  He challenges women to look at how flimsy their intuitive sense of a "connection" with a man really is: e.g., while the woman is sure he’s "the One" and planning their wedding invitations after the first date, he’s just thinking what a great gal she is and how great the sex will be.  Christian injects a note of reality:

"You’d be crazy to take the close relationship and love you want to find and gamble it away by betting on a guy whose greatest qualification is that he makes you feel attracted to him." (p.33) 

Christian challenges you to be realistic about your expectations and assess your "emotional fitness."  Do you take responsibility for your life, or do you play the victim?  Are you a "cool girl" or a "hysterical woman"?  His list of Cool Girl Do’s and Don’ts struck home.  He’s right on the money about the kind of girl guys think is a great catch.

He spends a great deal of time detailing the difference between the kind of girl guys see as casual hookups and the kind of girl that men will view as long-term relationship material.  Girls, if you let yourself get walked all over by guys and sleep with them in hopes that your sexual intimacy will lead to emotional intimacy, you need to read this.

Finally, the question is: should you buy Christian Carter’s book?

I would give it my thumbs-up for one reason in particular: the fantastic "Interviews with Dating & Relationships Experts" CDs included free as a bonus with the Catch Him and Keep Him e-book.

Why?  Well, I’ve read a lot of dating books.  I prefer the hard science of Helen Fisher or the psychological insight of Harville Hendrix, both Ph.D.s in their respective fields.  Yet for an e-book, Christian Carter’s publication stands out: Catch Him and Keep Him is professional, well-written, and great value for money (it’s 183 pages).

What Christian Carter’s package does offer that other hardcopy books don’t is an amazing set of audio CDs in which Christian interviews dating and relationship experts and asks them the most common questions women have.  The audio experience adds a dimension to the information that you can’t get from a book.  And you get a month’s subscription to the CD series FREE when you buy Catch Him and Keep Him.

So if you’re keen to learn more, visit the Catch Him and Keep Him website here.

My colleague Andrew sent me this joke, and it was illustrated the differences between the sexes so aptly that I had to laugh and share it with you!  Enjoy.

___________________________
HOW TO SHOWER LIKE A WOMAN

Take off clothes and place them sectioned in the laundry basket according to lights and darks.

Walk to bathroom wearing long dressing gown.

If you see husband along the way, cover up any exposed areas.

Look at your womanly physique in the mirror – make mental note to do more sit-ups/leg-lifts etc.

Get in the shower.

Use face cloth, arm cloth, leg cloth, long loofah, wide loofah and pumice stone.

Wash your hair once with cucumber and sage shampoo with 43 added vitamins.

Wash your hair again to make sure it is clean.

Condition your hair with conditioner enhanced with grapefruit and mint.

Wash your face with crushed apricot facial scrub for 10 minutes until red.

Wash entire rest of body with ginger nut and jaffa cake body wash.

Rinse conditioner off hair.

Shave armpits and legs.

Turn off shower.

Squeegee off all wet surfaces in shower.

Spray mould spots with tile cleaner.

Get out of shower.

Dry with towel the size of a small country.

Wrap hair in a super absorbent towel.

Return to bedroom wearing long dressing gown and the hand towel on head.

If you see your husband along the way, cover up any exposed areas.

_________________________
HOW TO SHOWER LIKE A MAN

Take off clothes while sitting on the edge of the bed and leave in a  pile on the floor.

Walk naked to the bathroom.

If you see your wife along the way, shake willy at her making the  "woo-woo" sound.

Look at your manly physique in the mirror.

Admire the size of your willy and scratch your bum.

Get in the shower.

Wash your face.

Wash your armpits.

Blow your nose in your hands and let the water rinse it off.

Fart and laugh at how loud it sounds in the shower.

Spend majority of time washing privates and surrounding area.

Wash your bum, leaving those coarse bum hairs stuck on the soap.

Wash your hair.

Make a Shampoo Mohawk.

Wee.

Rinse off and get out of shower.

Partially dry off.

Fail to notice water on floor because curtain was hanging out of bath the whole time.

Admire willy size in mirror again.

Leave shower curtain open, wet mat on floor, light and fan on.

If you pass wife, pull off towel, shake willy at her and make the "woo-woo" sound again.

Throw wet towel on bed.

 

I KNOW YOU'RE LAUGHING NOW BECAUSE MOST OF IT IS TRUE!!!

I want to thank Lauren for sending in this question:

"I have read all of your articles everytime you sent to me. Thanks for keep on reminding us don't think that all guys are look after sex. But I have had many experience that to prove that they are really all look after sex, they don't even know what true love is all about. Can you help me to overcome this?"

As a woman, this is one of the biggest challenges you will face in relationships: negotiating a man's desire for sex with your desire for the "something more" of true love.

Yes, all men want is sex.  Let's get that fact out into the open.  Men are wired to have a super-high sex drive in comparison to women.  According to Barbara and Allen Pease's book, Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps, the human sex center has a specific location in the brain (the hypothalamus) and can be weighed and measured.  Lo and behold, the part of the brain responsible for sex drive is larger in men than in women.  Added to the fact that men have 10 to 20 times more testosterone (a hormone responsible for stimulating the sex drive) than women, it's easy to see why over half of all men think about sex every day or several times a day (Source: Sex in America).

One commonly-given reason for the high male sex drive emerges from the cloudy history of human evolution, in which the aim of our ancestors was to procreate and ensure the survival of the species.  Men were driven by a biological imperative to spread their seed far and wide.  Women, on the other hand, knowing that they would need a supportive partner during the years it takes to raise a human infant to adulthood, tended to hold off casual sex in order to search for commitment.

So that's the science, but what does it mean for us?  Knowing the "why" and "how" of the human sex drive doesn't help us much when it comes to interpreting our experiences today.  Yes, men may have a higher sex drive, but they live in a modern world where culture privileges monogamy.

Here's one hopeful fact: the male sex drive peaks at age 19, while the female sex drive doesn't peak until age 36 to 38.  Could it be that if we just wait long enough, we'll meet a man more interested in love than sex?  Or will we be the ones at that point wanting sex more than love (e.g. Desperate Housewife syndrome)?  Here's what Barbara and Allen Pease have to say about such "December-May" pairings:

"A man's sexual performance level at age 19 is more compatible with a woman in her late 30s to early 40s … [while] the sex drive of a man in his 40s is compatible with a woman in her early 20s….  There is usually around a 20-year age difference between these older/younger combinations." (p.194)

Yikes, but I don't want to date a man 20 years older (or younger).  So what am I supposed to do?

Here's the answer.

1. Don't expect a young man to be as interested in monogamy as you are.  In his late teens and early twenties, it will take a special man to be less interested in sowing his oats than in having sex with the same woman for the rest of his life.
2. Respect your man's sex drive.  If your man told you that PMS was all in your head and that you shouldn't have wild mood swings/cravings/cramps, you would tell him he didn't know what he was talking about, wouldn't you?  Well, just as hormones can cause you to go a bit batty, so his hormones can control him at times.  Understand that his sex drive is part of his biology and not an indicator of immorality or licentiousness.  Women are not the "purer" sex because we have a smaller hypothalamus and lower levels of testosterone.
3. Realize that his sex drive does not define him.  This, I think, is the most crucial fact of all: your man is more than his sex drive.  I love what Alexandra Penney has to say about this is her book How to Keep Your Man Monogamous:

"A woman must recognize that her mate is part boy, part adolescent, part man.  The boy in him wants to know that she really cares for him and his well-being.  The adolescent wants to know that he's the object of her whole sexuality; the mature man wants to know that she's proud of him, approves of him." (p.90)

Understand and respect your man's sex drive, but if he is truly a man (and not a boy), he'll have a focus and a purpose in life.  He'll want to advance in his career and contribute to his community.  He'll appreciate the stability of a partner who supports, respects, and challenges him in his journey through life.  He may even find that he desires the respect and status that marriage can give him.

As you begin to attract higher-quality men, you'll find that these men are about much more than sex.  In fact, highly successful men in business learn how to channel their sex drive into their pursuits and passions.  (Napoleon Hill's seminal book on achieving success Think and Grow Rich, encourages men to do just this.)

As long as you keep these concepts in mind – that younger men are the least likely to be interested in monogamy, that your man's sex drive is part of who he is but does not define him, and that a man who hasn't learned to "transmute" his sex drive into other forms of achievement may remain at a lower level of growth – then you'll be able to make honest, informed decisions about whether a man is a suitable candidate for a long-term, monogamous partnership.

I immediately get suspicious when someone tells me that their partner is perfect.  Knowing what I do about the relationship life cycle, I assume that the couple is still in their honeymoon stage.  They're infatuated with their idealized vision of one another.  They believe that none of the conflicts that happen to other people will happen to them.  Unlike others, they will never fall out of love, never argue, never break up…

It is a beautiful innocence, when a relationship starts.  It can feel like all of the dark burden of the past has been erased.  You're starting over with someone who isn't anything like your ex.  You've learned your lesson, so you aren't going to make the same mistakes.  This time, everything is going to go right.

Except, of course … it doesn't.

And it won't.  That's simply how relationships work.

Understanding this concept can save so much grief in relationships.  That's why I discuss it at length in the 2006 Edition of "How to Be Irresistible to Men."

But the one idea that you can take away right now is that discovering imperfection in your partner is actually a wonderful thing.

It means he's real.

It means you see the person beneath the boyfriend … the person he is rather than the person you want him to be.

So when a relationship isn't quite perfect, it can mean one of two things:

1. It can mean that you're moving onto the next level in your relationship, when you're starting to see one another more realistically and are able to evaluate more clearly whether or not the relationship has staying power.
2. It can mean that intuition is telling you that something needs to change.  That something could be as simple as getting something out into the open (communication) or as extensive as rethinking your lifestyle.

When you get dissatisfied with a relationship, the immediate instinct is to blame him or to blame yourself.  Maybe you've been busy and stressed; maybe he's said some insensitive things.

But when you blame one another for a less than satisfying relationship, you don't add any positive energy back into the situation.  Nothing will get better because you've figured out whose fault it is.

The other instinct is to guess what he's thinking, wanting, or needing.  I always strongly counsel against trying to read your partner's mind.  Ask him.  Directly.

Then ask yourself, "What needs do I have that aren't getting fulfilled?"  Chances are that you feel something is lacking that you need to feel happy.  You know your own needs better than anyone.

That's the fantastic thing about feeling that a relationship isn't quite perfect.  It's a wake-up call.  It's telling you to be honest with yourself.  It spurs honest communication between the two of you.

If you can take positive action, you'll grow through the experience into a richer and more satisfying relationship (or take the steps to end an unhealthy situation).  If you get caught up in blame or feeling depressed, you'll find that your relationships always seem to take a nose dive at the first sign of imperfection.

You have the power to change a less than perfect relationship into something that fulfills you or to leave it.  Never forget it.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy fantasy baseball.  In fact, I’d be lying if I said didn’t LOVE fantasy baseball.

But the truth is, I’m hooked.  I’m on my ESPN Fantasy League team page every day, analyzing performances, devouring stats, reading score sheets.  I can’t get enough of the experts’ columns, the latest reports about who’s hot and who’s not, and browsing the free agent list to see who my competitors may not have been wise enough to pick up. 

I love the whole competitive feel of it.  It’s great to know when you’re winning, especially with the subtle, little victories such as a trade that goes your way, or a free agent pick-up that turns out to be one of your best players.  You may be in the bottom of the standings one day, but after a couple of shrewd moves, right up there at the front of the pack.  It’s exhilirating.

All in all, it’s an addiction that I truly love—and that my fiancee truly HATES.

But what’s interesting about this story is what it can show us about winning.  Just like fantasy baseball victories are sometimes too subtle to immediately recognize, so it goes with victories in relationships.

As I said before, my girlfriend hates that I spend so much time on my fantasy baseball habit.  She would NAG me about doing other things, like spending more time talking with her.  Yeah, NAGGING, a sometimes daily nightmare that all of us guys have had to deal with.  It’s not fun, and often drives a man away from the prescribed task more than it gets him to do it.

Unless….

Unless your girlfriend actually learned how to achieve what she wanted WITHOUT nagging. 

At first, when I would sneak off during a movie or during a "How was your day?" session to check how my beloved fantasy team was performing, she would complain.  And nag.  And complain and nag.  Her biggest thing would be that I don’t spend enough time talking to her.  And the total effect would be to just make me more MORE inclined to check my team, to show that *I* was the man in control.  Why couldn’t she just respect the hobby I so adore?  I never asked her to like it.  Just to deal with it.

Then a funny thing happened.  She DID learn to deal with it.  And in the process, I got hoodwinked by her subtle way of winning.

As most women know, the moment she begins to nag, men just tune out.  We’re gone.  We’re off in another place.  I call my place James World.  Maybe you have a name for your partner's alternate reality.

But there’s the flip side.  Sometimes, instead of nagging, a girl starts to IGNORE you.  And then we don’t know what’s happening!

This happened with Jen.  I was so used to her routine of criticizing me for spending so much time on my fantasy league, that when it stopped, I thought something was wrong.  There HAD to be something wrong.  I mean, this wasn’t part of the routine!  All of a sudden, when I went off to check the latest results, she wouldn’t say a thing.  She’d go off somewhere.  Then I’d be done checking, and she’d still be doing something else.  I’d ask her what was up, and she’d say she was busy.  "Huh", I would think to myself.  "That’s unusual."  So a few minutes later I went to check on her again.  And she would brush me off again: "I gotta call someone", or "Give me 10 minutes." 

Okay, now it was REALLY getting weird.  Instead of automatically defending my habits, I was gaining some form of acceptance.  Not routine.  And as we men know, when things aren’t routine, SOMETHING’S not right.

So in the process of Jen being busy herself, I somehow began to change my habits.  I wasn’t so eager to check my team, because it all of a sudden wasn’t prohibited.  And that made it less fun.  Now all of a sudden I found myself spending more time talking with her.  And less time checking my fantasy league.

Then I realized it….

That was her plan all along.  She didn’t stop nagging so much to let me do what I wanted.  She stopped nagging so that I would do what SHE wanted! 

I’d been had!  I thought I was pretty good at the intricacies of fantasy baseball.  But I’ve got a lot to learn about the intricacies of relationships.

Damn, women are good!

I got my hair cut last night at my favorite hair salon, the one where all the stylists are quirky over-30s with piercings and a vast knowledge of the latest celeb and local gossip.  As the stylist blowdried my hair with practiced flips of the brush, she told me about a woman who had come in earlier to accompany her teenage daughter for a haircut.  The stylist had asked the daughter, "What sort of style would you like?"  The daughter wouldn't even look up.  Her shoulders were hunched.  She mumbled, "Dunno."  The stylist was surprised; usually, teenagers have a very clear idea of what they want.  There was an awkward silence, which the mother quickly filled.  "She'll have her hair like this and like this."

The stylist shook her head as she was telling the story.  "The mother was a control freak," she said.  "She kept telling me how to cut the girl's hair as I was cutting it.  'I'm a professional,' I told her.  'I've been doing this for 20 years.  I wouldn't presume to tell you how to do your job, so please trust me.'

"She's not the only one like that.  Another woman came in with her husband.  They were both getting haircuts.  She told the stylist exactly how she wanted his hair cut.  She wanted it like Hugh Grant.  Then her husband went off with one stylist, and I started doing her hair.  Once her husband was out of earshot, he told the stylist, 'I really don't want it like that.'   So they compromised with a softer cut.  When the wife saw it, she was furious.  She raised a huge fit. 'I didn't ask for it to be like that!'  'No,' the stylist said, 'but he did.'"

I shook my head.  "So sad.  But it's so common, partners needing to be in control."

The stylist continued.  "I was just thinking, 'So what if he wants a different haircut?  You married him for better or worse, right?  How is his haircut going to harm you, especially if it makes him feel good?'  Women like that end up trying to control everything.  Someday he's going to have enough of it.  Five, ten, fifteen years down the road he's going to say, 'Hold on a minute. What's happened to my life? You're trying to turn me into you.  I'm out of here.'"

I added, "It's that need to change a man.  The fixer-upper attitude."

"Exactly.  And when she can't turn him into the man she wants, she acts like he has let her down.  He gets sick of her nagging and goes off to find someone who appreciates him for who he is."

It was a fantastic conversation for the price of a haircut.  In a hair salon, stylists see a cross-section of the world come and go every day.  They listen to the woes and tribulations of their clients.  Much like bartenders, they get an inside peek at people's lives that few professions have access to.  They see patterns that we can't see, because we're so immersed in the particular details of our own lives.

The stylist had hit on a very important concept.  Women who are used to being in control of their lives often feel as if they're helping their partners by "guiding" or "directing" them.  It can be quite scary to let go and allow their partners to make choices without offering any input or advice.

Beneath a person's need for control is the fear that everything will turn into a mess unless he or she is directly involved.  It is a simple equation.

Fear = Need to control = Lack of trust

And, as we all know, lack of trust in one's partner is poison for a relationship.

Men, in particular, find their wives' direct or indirect attempts to shape them stifling.  To marry, most men have to overcome a natural distaste for giving up independence and being accountable to someone.  When a wife begins to mother him and tell him what he needs to do for his own good, he begins to feel that she's questioning him.  He was good enough for her when they were courting; why isn't he good enough for her now?

One lesson that we can all learn is to let go of our need to control every aspect of our lives.  Let go and allow life to happen.  Don't give in to your fear of not knowing what's going to happen.  Enjoy the unpredictable nature of life and laugh when things don't turn out as you expect.  Learn to accept and love your partner as he is, even when his preferences and opinions are nothing like your own.

Best of all, when you let your partner be himself, make his own decisions without "helpful" suggestions from you, and choose options that you would never have considered, you get the wonderful benefit of a relationship that is surprising, spontaneous, and much more interesting than one controlled down to the dot on every 'i.'  You discover that you're not in a relationship with yourself; you're in a relationship with another human being whose internal world is vastly different from your own, and equally valid.  Because you no longer fear that he'll make the wrong decision, you will be able to relax and trust him in a way that you may have never been able to before.

Love and let go.

I stopped to get a coffee this morning at a different coffee shop than usual.  The cafe was narrow and humming with businesspeople standing and reading newspapers while waiting for their coffees to go.  Steam poured from the bar where a slender man with thinning hair scooped froth and poured milk with the delicate hands of a musician.

A few of the guys from the office at the end of the hall were waiting for their coffees as well.  They are all aspiring musicians, and to fund their creativity they've created online kits to teach people to play the guitar, piano, and other instruments. Their office has bare brick walls, framed prints of the Beatles, black leather sofas, towers of coffee cups, a jumble of instruments in the corner, and a sound studio behind a discrete door.  It's the feeling of geniuses at work.

I chatted with the guys as they waited for their coffees, then three of them left, leaving the last guy behind to wait for an extra order.  He brushed his hair out of his face and asked, "So, any exciting weekend plans?"

"Not much.  Having a barbecue this Friday with at a friend's house.  Then we're going out on the town."

"A female friend?"

"Nope, a guy friend."

"Right…"  He laughed.  "Not just a friend, then."

I didn't understand.  "Why do you think he wouldn't just be a friend?"

"Because you don't hang out at a guy's house and go partying with him unless there's something going on there."

It was the old Harry Met Sally conundrum.

Women find it easy to think of a man as "just a friend."  We can hang out with a guy, share our thoughts and feelings, enjoy activities together, and take pleasure in his company without ever thinking of him in a sexual way.  Similarly, we can even find joy in a merely platonic friendship with a man that we're sexually interested, if that's the best we can get.

Men, on the other hand, find that sexual desire often gets in the way of a platonic friendship with a female.  If they are sexually interested in a woman, it can be painful for them to continue a merely platonic friendship with her.  Some men even cut off friendships with women to whom they're attracted, because they don't want to torture themselves with sexual frustration.

One popular folk theory that explains this phenomenon is Ladder Theory.   Developed by Dallas Lynn, Ladder Theory is a crude, unscientific concept that purports to explain how male-female sexual attraction actually works.

According to Ladder Theory, when a woman meets a man, she subconsciously puts him on one of two "ladders."  On the first ladder, she ranks men that she would potentially be interested in as a sexual partner.  On the second ladder, she puts men that she considers friends.

The theory states that men can never jump from the "friends" ladder to the "real" ladder.  In other words, if a man is a woman's friend, she won't think of him sexually.  If he tries to upgrade his status from friend to lover, she'll spurn his advances with, "But I don't think of you that way!", causing him to fall into the abyss.

This concept makes sense on a certain level.  We all know lovely men who will make a great catch for a woman someday but, for whatever reason, don't turn us on.  You know the kind of guy I'm talking about, the kind that–no matter how hard you try–you can't think romantically about.  The kind that makes you say, "He's a nice guy, but he's my friend."

Most nice guys have had to deal with the fallout from Ladder Theory time and time again, when they become friends with a girl in hopes of eventually developing a relationship with her.  They don't realize that by placing themselves on the "friends" ladder, they've ensured that she will find it difficult to think of him "like that."

Now, I'm not saying that Ladder Theory is true!  I'm simply saying that this is one way that men explain women to themselves.

What is even more revealing is how Ladder Theory explains male attraction.

Ladder Theory states that unlike women, men just have one ladder, and it's not the friends ladder.  In other words, men will consider sleeping with anyone, including women they consider "just friends."

This can be hard for some women to accept.  I'm one of them.  I like to believe that my male friends see me as friends and nothing else.

But others believe Ladder Theory.  As I talked with the young musician at the coffee shop, I realized that even though he probably didn't know what Ladder Theory was, everything he was saying supported it.

He told me, "If you ask any guy what he would do if one of his female friends walked into the room completely naked and said, 'I want you,' I don't doubt that he would have sex with her.  If there's an opportunity for sex, a guy is going to take it."

So is impossible for a man and a woman to just be friends?  According to Ladder Theory, it is easy for a woman to be friends with a man, but a man will always hold out some possibility of sleeping with a female friend.

Whether or not you believe this theory, it is interesting to consider.  For me, I believe that Ladder Theory-style thinking is characteristic of less mature men.  As men mature, they are less driven by their hormones and more driven by a need to find meaning and satisfaction in their relationships.

What do you think? 

Back in November of last year, we solicited topics from our newsletter subscribers for a course on Advanced Techniques in Dating.  One of the surprises in the responses that poured in was that women wanted to know how to let guys down gently.

How do you tell a man you're not interested?

For men, any indication that you don't want to sleep with him is perceived as rejection … a rejection that hurts.  It is impossible to avoid.  We end up hurting men because even though we love their friendship, their company, and their spirit, we don't want to sleep with them.  No matter how much we love them in other ways, the way that matters most to them is physical.

When I was a child, I was quite a tomboy.  I was always playing with the boys.  As I grew older, I found that male companionship was much more complicated.  If you played with a boy, you were accused of "liking" him.  Hormones confused even the best male-female friendships.  By the time I reached my twenties, I found that men were capable of friendship only when they had no interest in sleeping with you.

When a man is truly interested in a woman, hearing "Let's just be friends" burns a wound in his heart.  By saying it, you want to communicate that you enjoy his company and value his friendship.  But in his ears, he hears you saying, "I don't find you sexually attractive."

When you tell a man that you love his company but want to stay friends, you are not complimenting him.  You are rejecting him.  Your words (though said in love) will make him feel self-doubt, because for him, the greatest gift he can give a woman is his sexuality—not his company.  When a woman accepts his company but rejects his sexuality, she is rejecting his essence as a man.

For a man, his sexual nature is principal part of his identity.  In fact, for many men, their sexuality is the most important part of their nature.  Being a good friend to a woman is not as satisfying as making love to her.  In fact, friendship with such a woman can be torturous because of the knowledge that he can be her friend but not sleep with her.

For his sake, let him down without using the word "friend."  Avoid saying ANYTHING like, "But I think of you as a friend" or "I really like you, but just as a friend."

Instead, when a man makes his move, try this tactic to let him down lightly.  "I'm flattered, but we're just not right for one another."  Or you might say simply, "No, but thank you for asking."  Avoid explaining the reasons behind your rejection.  He doesn't really want to know them.

Men are such wonderful creatures.  They risk rejection time and time again to ask women out.  The simple, sweet, honest ones often have the worst track record with women.  When we make it easy for them to pick up their ego after we've turned down their offer of sex, they'll keep their feeling of confidence long enough to ask another woman out.  That can only benefit all of us.

If you are feeling guilty about rejecting a man, then perhaps the following paragraph will speak to you.

"I wish that I was the right woman for all of the lovely men who have asked me out, but I wasn't.  They deserve to know that I am not the woman for them right away, so that they can continue looking for someone who WILL be right for them.  Turning down a man's genuine offer of a relationship can make me feel sad, because I value male company and companionship.  But ultimately, it is the best decision for us both."