A reader wrote a while back about her thoughts on the importance of shared values to pickup and dating. Here she comments that men of a conservative political persuasion would not find love with liberal women, and would have to focus their dating efforts on meeting similarly conservative women (which she caricatured as belonging to three distinct groups):
So that leaves him with other conservatives. Call it values, attraction, whatever, but I only know of three types: God/family hunters; rich-diamond-buying-guy hunters; and caveman hunters.
I’ve dated a number of conservative women and they were just as cool as their liberal sisters. They weren’t golddiggers (and I speak as a man who brings game to the table that ensures the golddigger programming isn’t triggered), they weren’t abstaining “God hunters” (whatever religious impulses they had did not affect their voracious sexual appetites), and they weren’t the type to routinely date dunderheaded cavemen. They enjoyed the same things that most young women enjoy — indie music, art shows, movies, astrology, gossip, fashion, travel, water balloon fights. These universal female interests cross ideological boundaries.
Granted, none of the conservative women I dated were self-professed evangelicals, so I can’t say for sure that the coolness factor (or my sex life) wouldn’t take a nose dive if I limited my dating choices to that segment of the American population.
Re: hiding your politics and values from girls: People can avoid topics and keep views under wraps for a few weeks, maybe months. Major lifestyle differences, like “I don’t want kids,” or “I go to church every Sunday,” or even “I eat at McDonald’s (or refuse to)” are another story.
You’re doing it wrong if you think dating ideologically dissimilar people is about keeping topics “under wraps”. It’s nothing of the sort. Real sexual attraction and love circumvent that type of defensively dull mechanistic dating jive. It’s irrelevant to men with tight game, because “major lifestyle differences” would hardly ever be summoned, purposely or inadvertently, to move a seduction forward. That is because what builds attraction is not a discussion over national health insurance or the blessings of having kids. Sustained sexual attraction is an ancient instinct that reacts to certain mate value cues, and political conformity is not one of them. If anything, a girl can be *more* attracted to a man who is ideologically different from her, as long as he is passionate about his beliefs without being charmless in explaining them. Girls are often shocked into arousal by the presence of a man willing to speak his mind and refrain from obsequiously parroting her opinions.
Nevertheless, my experience with women shows that politics rarely comes up as a discussion topic during the pickup and the ensuing weeks of heady sexual thrill. If it does come up early on, I know that my game has failed and I have veered away from the bread and butter of what makes a seduction successful. This is true whether I bring it up (I rarely do) or she brings it up (less rare, but still not very common, even when dating urban yentas). If you are gaming a girl properly, the last thing on her mind will be your political affinity. She may briefly broach the subject (in which case I usually offhandedly dismiss it with a casual disclosure of my “independent, libertarian leanings”, a practically inarguable and unopposable political stance which freezes most girls into a nonreactive state. Libertarianism: autistic ideology, fantastic courtship lube), but if she’s smiling and getting horny, she won’t likely linger on any political topic of discussion. Remember, if she likes you and respects your alphaness, she’ll be unmotivated to challenge your political beliefs. A good rule of thumb: if a girl you are dating is giving you grief for your politics, walk away. She will prove to be a high maintenance witch on the warpath to de-ball you at every opportunity.
Now at some point down the road those arid and tingle-killing ideological, religious or political issues will rise to the fore. It is inevitable when you spend so much time with a girl that it becomes impossible to sequester zones of discussion in an unshared limbo. But ultimately it won’t matter if the girl loves the man. She’ll instead be more drawn to his standing firmly for his principles. Which leads us to…
Maxim #61: Among love’s many benefits is its capacity for diminishing to insignificance those differences that would have prevented its flourishing in the first place.
Corollary to Maxim #61: Avoid emphasizing any values differences until love, or a mind-blowing orgasm, has taken root.
Only a major crisis like a disagreement over having kids will present an eventual stumbling block that could be too high to hurdle. Usually those kinds of issues don’t make a nuisance of themselves until months — even years — into the relationship. The types of women who shrilly harp on the importance of “values compatibility” to dating are the same types of women who bring 463 bullet point mental checklists in all dealings they have with potential suitors. This attitude and lack of dating spontaneity makes them very unattractive and unfeminine and most men find it a turnoff. Women older than 28, overeducated women, women who have to fill their schedules with “events” and “classes”, and urban Jewish women tend to exhibit the worst of this behavior.
Having said the above, I will tell you a story about a girl I dumped over a political disagreement. She and I had been together for a good amount of time, but there was an undercurrent of mutual dissatisfaction neither one of us could quite put our fingers on. The sex was good and we did all the “right” things that couples are assumed by polite society to do together. But it felt forced, like we were self-consciously cognizant of our dance moves, and the rhythm and flow that should be the hallmark of a naturally progressing relationship had subordinated itself to carefully mimicking a placemat of numbered foot steps on the ground. On paper, we were good together, but paper is a flimsy palimpsest upon which to etch a living poem.
So it was that, wholly unexpected and random, we rapidly death-spiraled like mating eagles into a heated political discussion once and I chose not the path of diplomacy and conciliation, but the jagged cliffside rocks of immoveable obstinacy. I hurled facts and figures at her, the holy water to the emotionally vampiric female soul. She reacted as a startled vampiress would; shrieks and bared fangs, her pallor drained from her face in shock at my bombshell impudence. “Why is he not kowtowing to me?”, I could practically hear her hamster morse coding to the nether reaches of her brain.
She vainly attempted to parry me, but, as with most women, she was no match. In a fit of pique and sullenness, she snarled “I’m appalled that you think this way”. I said, “Get over yourself” and walked away. One week later, she called to leave me a message. I listened to the message, and never saw or spoke to her again.
The moral of this story should be obvious. The one time a political discussion was ostensibly the objective reason for a breakup was in fact proof that a political disagreement had nothing at all to do with the breakup. Among other things said, the message she left confirmed something both of us had been suspecting for a while:
“I just didn’t feel the magic was there.”
Our political incompatibility was merely a front for our underlying love incompatibility. An excuse to open the lid on a boiling pot of spiteful ennui.
Any escape hatch in a storm…
