A motivational interviewing tutorial to help you get laid
According to all the best advice from Cosmopolitan magazine, there are 12 things EVERY GUY wants on a date that you may never have guessed. Written by a guest editor from Maxim, among warning women to forgo babydoll dresses (”because they make you look fat”) and boyfriend jeans (”because they’re not flattering”), the article included this gem of advice: “Don’t talk about yourself too much, because most guys aren’t that interested.”
I don’t think most women are stupid enough to actually take advice from Cosmopolitan (this is, after all, the magazine that regularly features “holy shit, I never knew that!” tips on how to please your man…such as…moving around during sex), but what always strikes me about these articles is that the suggestions for women always have to do with twisting yourself into all kinds of shapes to impress/please/fuck a man who apparently doesn’t need to do anything to impress/please/fuck you. Meanwhile, magazines targeted toward men offer no such tips on how to make conversation with women, as apparently it is assumed that you don’t need to make conversation with women because why would you care about what they have to say?
This really isn’t a post about how terrible these magazines are–obviously they’re easy targets. But they and their ilk perpetuate the societal expectation that women need to learn how to talk to men, and in general, the expectation works. Girls are generally better at making conversation and navigating new or unfamiliar social circumstances than boys, and this carries into adulthood. It is men, not women, who are great at talking about themselves nonstop on a first date without bothering to reciprocate questions or even simulate interest in a girl’s activities beyond a “hmmm, that’s cool.” Am I being too harsh on the straight male? Maybe so. I have been the victim of a number of encounters where, after I’ve gone home, realized, “Wow, he didn’t ask me one single question about my life.” But I can’t be the only one. “How To Talk To Women” is kind of a recurring theme in bromance comedies and the somewhat more respectable (that is, written by people who actually went to college) lad mags such as GQ.
These lower expectations of men’s ability to be good conversation partners extensively permeate real life. One of my friends, who recently graduated from a dual master’s program in social work and public health, took a course on Motivational Interviewing* during her last semester. During the class’s final session, the professor asked everyone what they had found most helpful about learning techniques designed to help move clients through ambivalence about making certain lifestyle changes (for example, MI is often used very successfully with people who are addicted to substances or alcohol realize that they need to change their behavior). The professor remarked that during the last class he’d taught, a male student gushed that he was now able to talk to women, thanks to his newfound MI skills.
I had to use MI a lot during my internship and job with a community mental health system, where I worked with people who were affected by addiction, mental illness, and often, homelessness or the near threat of it. There was a big emphasis on MI in this agency, and there were always workshops and staff trainings on ways to improve one’s MI technique. I found it all mostly pointless. To me, “motivational interviewing” seemed like an absolute no-brainer: you listen, you show empathy, you discuss the pros and cons of the decision with the client, you listen more. I know “people skills” is a loose term bandied about in pop psychology, but it’s true in this case: if you have any aptitude at all for social work, you are probably already a great motivational interviewer. It could really be called “how to talk nicely to people”. That’s why it’s even more amazing to me that this young man, probably someone I even knew from the School of Social Work, was so excited to use his MI skills on women–it confirms every bad stereotype of men’s inability to communicate effectively perpetuated by fucking Cosmopolitan! Say it ain’t so.
The majority of men, however, are not social workers and have not taken a motivational interviewing seminar, which is a shame, as I feel there are many aspects of social work skills training that can be used to get chicks, man. To help the straight male, I’ve put together a list of several motivational interviewing techniques you can use to help you speak to women. Once you are able to speak to women, you may find that some of them will want to sleep with you. Ta-da!
1. Express empathy.
This is usually the most difficult for people to master, as oftentimes if you do not FEEL empathy you cannot effectively display it. As we know from popular culture, Men’s Studies, Dr. Phil, and sweeping stereotypes and generalizations about gender “norms”, men are generally pretty bad not only at expressing their feelings, but also at having feelings in the first place. So, you have to do some soul-searching on this one. If you can think of women as PEOPLE rather than as HOLES into which you can conveniently put your PENIS, see, you may find that they can be worth listening to. When they are talking, you must listen to them, interjecting here or there with questions to clarify a point. You can also say, “Hmmm, that’s interesting, and then what happened?”, “Wow, that must have been really hard/weird/fun/crazy for you”, “What did you think/feel/say when that happened?” and “Can you say more about that?” All of this listening might be difficult at first, but it often pays off in the long run, especially when combined with the tactics listed below.
2. Develop discrepancy.
Feeling comfortable with where you currently are and where you want to be is tough in any situation. It’s pretty much why therapy was invented in the first place, and why MI is such a no-brainer yet highly effective counseling approach. Since MI is mostly used to get people with a specific problem (drinking too much) to change their behavior (fewer drinks or total sobriety), this second tenet may not appear translatable into your dating life. Yet developing discrepancy in everyday social situations; that is, understanding that there are some things you can change and some things you can’t, and feeling OK about that, is an important maturity milestone and will make you stand out among your straight male peers. In my experience, 20-something males are usually pretty bad at recognizing the areas of their lives where they could make changes for the better, benefiting them and all who know them. They are even worse at enacting these changes. People in our individualistic society are not too self-aware unless they’ve been specifically trained to exercise this muscle or are born with the trait. In fact, one of the major gripes one often hears in the imaginary men-are-from-mars trope is that women always want their men to change something. Rather than a knee-jerk response to this, you may try listening to what your partner/date/girlfriend has to say and trying to identify common ground between what you see as your behaviors and what she sees. Trying to see things about yourself from another’s perspective is tough but ultimately helpful in getting laid and retaining a job, two important life skills.
3. Roll with resistance.
This plays off Tactic No. 2, which is to accept that sometimes things will not go your way and you will have to deal with it quietly. (I wanted to say “like a man” but that phrase has always seemed vaguely homoerotic to me). It should be obvious but if a girl isn’t interested in you, you have to swallow your pride and move on. Guys who can take rejection well will be remembered well; guys who make a scene about it, or who keep texting you or calling you after you’ve made it clear you’re not into them, stir up a mixture of repulsed feelings from ludicrous to scary.
4. Support self-efficacy.
Be your own person in a relationship and allow your lady friend the same flexibility. It’s been my experience that many people become incredibly lame once they are partnered for the long term, unable to do anything without consulting their boyfriend/girlfriend first, dragging their significant other along to everything they do, exclusively circulating within the same group of friends and saying WE about their likes or dislikes (this always makes me want to vomit on my shoes immediately). Full disclosure: I am single, so maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about here–maybe this last step is one more out of courtesy for your single friends. However, I know that the “couples” I like to hang out with are the ones who may not know what their girlfriend is up to at every moment of the day, can go a day or two without talking to their girlfriend, and where both people enjoy activities and friends outside of each other. Because when you break up, which everyone does eventually, things will be way easier if you still have friends and hobbies.
Happy sexing!
*Defined as a client-centered, semi-directive counseling approach of engaging intrinsic motivation to change behavior by developing discrepancy and exploring and resolving ambivalence.
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