Jack Lee - A Guide for the Heroic Nerd

DO NOT tell her what you’ve found. There’s no good that can come from you telling her you have proof she is periodically crazy. You deal with this knowledge by mentally separating the fights you have when she’s not having PMS and the ones you have when she does. I know a couple of guys who have taken the previous advice and programmed their phones to remind them of the danger days. All of them claim that doing this has saved their relationships.

When she’s not having PMS and she’s angry, you take her concerns seriously and try to address them. When she’s having PMS no matter what she says and no matter how crazy it seems, your response should always be, “You’re right. I’m wrong. I’m sorry. I will change.” And then don’t change. There is absolutely no point in you changing your life or stressing out if the conflict you have your girlfriend or wife is hormonally based.

One of the most important differences between men and women is that words are much more important to them than they are to us. If your wife stopped telling you she loves you, you might get concerned (if you even notice). If you stop telling her you love her, she’ll be devastated.

A woman is more likely to stay with a man who physically abuses her and tells her he loves her than she is a man who never lays a hand on her but also never says he loves her.

If a woman tells you a white lie to appease you when you are angry, you’ll get angrier. If you tell her a white lie when she’s irrationally angry, she’ll usually calm down. You don’t have to understand why she responds differently than you. Just say the words, “You’re right. I’m wrong. I’m sorry. I will change” and see what happens.

Men aren’t really all that complex. For most of us it takes just four things from the women we love to keep us content. We need respect, sex, attractive partners, and permission to hang out with the guys periodically. Everything else we get from our significant others such as words of appreciation and cooked meals are nice, but for the most part aren’t essential. If we get the big four, life is great. If we get three out of the four, life can still be good. Less than that, life gets tough.

Women have a different set of priorities. To be happy most of them need words of love and appreciation, physical affection (cuddling), financial security, and periodic gifts of something wonderful.

We don’t care if a woman says she respects us. We need to be shown by her actions she does. If she shows us she respects us, she doesn’t need to say it. It isn’t enough to love and appreciate a woman; you also have to say it. Actions are necessary to us. Both words and actions are necessary for women. Give her just actions without the words and you won’t be fulfilling her needs.

If we don’t get enough sex, we get grumpy. If your girlfriend or wife doesn’t get enough physical affection or words of love and appreciation, she won’t want to have sex. Men commonly mistake prolonged kissing as the best kind of foreplay. There’s nothing wrong with prolonged kissing but true foreplay happens throughout the day. It involves affectionately hugging her and telling her how much you love her without any sexual overtones. Give her the words and the physical affection she needs often and she’ll be much more likely to give you sex often. Most women have to like us to be turned on by us. The fact she loves you doesn’t mean she has to like you. Give her reasons to like you as often as you can.

Yes, it is superficial for a man to care about his wife or girlfriend’s looks. But any man who says he doesn’t care is lying. He may not leave or divorce the woman who gains tons of weight, but he sure as hell cares. It is also superficial for a woman to care about her man’s earning potential. The women who say they don’t care about how much money their husbands or boyfriends make are also lying. If men are given a choice, the majority will chose their wives losing their jobs than over their wives getting fat. The majority of women will prefer their husbands becoming obese over their husbands losing their jobs. In very different ways, men and women are equally superficial.

In the same way most men need to do guy things with other guys to be truly happy, most women need their men to give them something wonderful periodically. Expensive gifts work, but inexpensive gifts that show that you actually put something into them are just as effective. It’s a good rule of thumb to assume if a gift doesn’t in some way forces you to shed some blood, sweat or tears, it won’t be wonderful.

The best time for the periodic gifts of something wonderful is just before you want something for yourself. I call this technique the preemptive grovel. Say your wife thinks you watch too much sports and is prone to giving you a frowny-face when you go to the bar to watch a game with the guys. A couple days before the Super Bowl take her out to her favorite restaurant and then go watch an awful, incredibly painful chick flick with her. Give her a wonderful date and she’ll be more likely to let you watch the Super Bowl in peace.

A couple days after you’ve done something wonderful for your anniversary is a great time to tell her about that weekend golf or hunting trip you want to go on with the guys. Guys sometimes worry that if they do something sweet for a purely selfish reason, their wives will figure this out and get pissed.

Here’s another instance where the difference between male and female brains comes into play—if your wife did something extra nice for you to try to manipulate you, you’d probably get angry or at the very minimum annoyed—it doesn’t work the other way. Your wife will almost certainly know why you’re doing something nice for her and SHE WON’T CARE! I know this sounds impossible but it’s true.

I think it works because women are more practical then men. There’s only one sex that gets fixated on intangible things like honor—and it’s not women. Men tend to get caught up in why people do things. The more dangerous sex is much more likely to focus what actually gets done. If you do something wonderful for the woman you love, she’ll be too busy being pleased to worry about your underhanded motives.

Nagging in the relationship is typically a signal that the girl isn’t happy with you. Happy women ignore your flaws. Unhappy women are hyperaware of every little thing you do or don’t do. Men generally don’t place as high of a priority on a clean home as women do. If your girlfriend starts harping on you constantly about your lack of help with the household chores or how you’re not vacuuming right, it’s a waste of your time trying to fix the stuff she’s complaining about. Even if you eventually get everything she brings up done, you won’t be taking care of the root problem—why is she even noticing this kind of petty shit that never used to bother her before?

Don’t waste time on the symptoms of her being unhappy, focus on the root cause. Which of her most basic needs aren’t you fulfilling? Taking care of her root problem is much more likely to resolve nagging than you trying to take care of every little thing she wants you to do.

If you’re feeling grumpy and frustrated because your woman has had a headache for the past two weeks, be a man and tell her the white lies she needs to hear. Even though you don’t feel the love right now, tell her you love her. Give her a huge affectionate hug out of the blue—not as an attempt to get into bed but to show her what she means to you. Find something she does for you and thank her for it. If you do these things, her headache is much more likely to go away.

It’s easier to never step in a hole than to dig yourself out of one. If you view every Valentine’s day, wedding anniversary, Christmas, and birthday as an opportunity to make your wife so happy she’ll let you get away with something, you’ll be less likely to forget them or buy a thoughtless gift that pisses her off.