From: “Why Your Women Are Leaving You For Me: what men need to know from a lifelong lesbian.”
So, why should you read this book?
Well, if you are a guy and you find that you are striking out with women, it might help you to know some things that women won’t tell you. It might help you to know some things that may be painful to hear but may help you to do the one thing that women might find more appealing. It might help you to grow up.
If you had a decent relationship with your father, he may have given you all of his best insights to women. He may have told you things that would help you grow into a caring, honest man, worthy of a relationship with a woman that can sustain through good times and bad.
Or, he might have told you how to bag chicks.
Any of those pearls of wisdom may have been useful bits of information.
If you and your mom were on good terms and you didn’t spend a lot of time on a couch telling some guy with a beard and a notebook why you hated her for $100 buck an hour, she might have tried to give you guidance about a woman’s feelings, needs and wants.
But the chances are none of that happened or you would not be reading this intro. You are reading this intro because you want to know stuff. Stuff you didn’t learn from your dysfunctional family, your weird cousin Al with the big forehead, your awkward brother Joe that played clarinet in the high school marching band or your bratty kid sister who you tried to sneak looks at while she showered. Certainly not from good old, hardworking, too busy and mostly confused, mom and dad.
So buy this thing. It’s cheap. It’s worth it and if nothing else, it will make you laugh a lot. You will learn stuff. Stuff that I have learned because I can get into the inner circle where you dare not tread. Being me, girls talk to me, have sex with me and tell me what they actually want. Also, strangely, guys are not afraid to tell me the truth about how much sex they are NOT getting, what they really want and what they think they are supposed to want.
It’s good to be me.
From: “Chicks Who Kick Ass”
Being Seen Versus Not Seen:
Most of us believe we want to be a success. We want to be thought of and seen as a success. Because of this, there are so many things that people do not attempt out of fear of failure. If you ask someone what is the opposite of success they will say failure but is that really true. Sometimes the opposite of success is self-discovery, letting go of fear, brushing yourself off and trying again.
We talk a lot in this book about failure, how to practice it, how to fail faster. We believe in failing at smaller things so the big failures aren’t such a shock and learning how to deal with the aftermath of failing. We think failing is good. It’s necessary and teaches us so much.
One thing people don’t often talk about is the notion of being seen versus not being seen and how it plays into success and failure.
This is something the actor deals with on a regular basis, not just the famous actors that deal with the paparazzi but all actors who have to bear their souls on stages nightly or on camera with every film they make. Actors have the dichotomy of being one person and portraying another yet they always bring themselves to the table somehow.
This is true of all of us in some ways. We have to present ourselves to the world on a daily basis and often in different ways to different people. In a sense, we are all actors.
When we do something, we put ourselves in the frightening position of visibility. If we do nothing, no one sees us and we don’t fail but of course we don’t succeed either. It’s like an actor that is always rehearsing but never performing. What we think about doing is like rehearsing. We run the lines in our head.
“Mr. Jones! I need a raise.”
“Mother, I will not allow you to speak to me that way!”
We rehearse but rarely get the courage to say the lines. We think about things we might do to change our life, how we dress, how we behave all the things we would do if we were able to “perform”.
Visibility requires real courage. It means letting people see our true selves; no hiding. We have to find the mettle, the moxie to stand tall and accept other people’s reactions, even when those reactions are harsh or negative. If we protect ourselves by hiding, or by becoming rigid, we rob ourselves of the profound gift of real visibility. If, on the other hand, we allow and accept visibility, we can let down our guard and move with grace and power.