How to Remodel a Man Tips & Techniques on Accomplishing Something You Know is Impossible but Want to Try Anyway

1 Men Just Figure It Would Be Easier IfYouChanged Instead Women are willing to purchase a man off the rack, but then they want to take him home and make alterations. They'll witness some adorable trait-such as a man's inability to stand be-fore an open refrigerator and locate the jar of mayonnaise within it-and want to fix it. Men don't want to be "fixed." Men want women to love them just the way they are. Men don't want to adopt such unnatural traits as sensitivity or thoughtfulness. And when I say men want women "to love them," I mean, of course, "to have sex with them." Unfortunately, men don't really understand why women would want to have sex with them. We sure wouldn't want to! It must be, we conclude, because we are so manly. And what are manly traits? How about strength and resolve? To have strength and resolve means to be unyielding and uncompromising. So men will be un-yielding and uncompromising in their belief that they shouldn't have to go grocery shopping, and somehow conclude that this makes them more desirable to women! Yet paradoxically I wouldn't be a Changed Man today if it weren't for the feeling that I needed to adopt a new strategy when it came to attracting members of the female sex. After my divorce, I went through a long period of time when I didn't feel like dating any-one, followed by an even longer period when it seemed no one re-ally felt like dating me. I'd ask a woman out, and it would go very well-we'd get to know each other over dinner, with me relating my likes and dislikes, telling her where I stood on critical issues of the day such as the Instant Replay Rule in football. I'd considerately steer the conversation back on track whenever my date brought up a topic I didn't think she'd find interesting, like her job or her friends-stuff she already knew about and was probably sick of dis-cussing. My dates all seemed fascinated with me-by the end of the evening, most of them were so spellbound by my narrative they quit talking and just nodded appreciatively. Yet when I called these same women for a second date, ochthey all demurred, using excuses like, "I can't on Saturday, I'm joining the Witness Protection Program" or "I've come to realize I am a man trapped in a woman's body." When my ex-wife got remarried, I was happy for her, but it spot-lighted my own dismal situation. Though I had gotten used to living on my own, I missed the sort of connection one gets from a long-term relationship with a female of the opposite sex, not just the physical part, but all of it. I plunged into a depressive, self-loathing state-and immediately got on the phone so that friends and rela-tives could assure me that there was nothing wrong with me at all. You can't get enough of this sort of objective feedback, so one of the people I called was my sister, who didn't seem to understand the moral support that was expected of her. "The way you're headed, you'll be single for the rest of your life," she suggested cheerfully. I should explain that I have two sisters: a doctor sister, who thinks she is smarter than I am, and a teacher sister, who thinks the same thing. Both are younger and both are wrong. In this case, I was talking to my doctor sister, but it could have been the teacher; they're interchangeable, in my view. "But all and all, women find me very attractive," I prompted, let-ting her know what she was supposed to be saying. "Your experience suggests otherwise." "Well, what's wrong with these women, then, that they don't want to go out with me more than once?" "The problem," my sister said in a fake I'm-a-doctor-so-let-me--diagnose-the-illness tone, "is that you have a lot of character flaws and you aren't willing to change." "Flaws?" I sputtered. "'What are you talking about? What flaws?" "You want me to name them all?" she asked incredulously. "I sure hope you never talCameron, W. Bruce is the author of 'How to Remodel a Man Tips & Techniques on Accomplishing Something You Know is Impossible but Want to Try Anyway', published 2004 under ISBN 9780312333171 and ISBN 031233317X.