WWJHD (What Would Joe Higashi Do?)

In the last post I touched upon a few of the many perils of a guy coming on too strong when engaging a woman, so in this entry I feel it prudent to mention one of the most sad and most common downfalls in being too soft-handed in one's approach: Failure to step up to the plate. This leads me to the title of this Blog, What Would Joe Higashi Do? Joe Higashi is a character the acclaimed SNK series Fatal Fury who is known less for his skills in Muy Thai but more for his loudmouthed antics and flagrant womanizing. However, despite his buffoonery, in The Fatal Fury Motion Picture when his friend Terry needs some romantic advice, Mr. Higashi comes up with one insightfully humorous line: "If you like her, say something... Girls aint like us... they don't pick up on stuff the way we do." The humor inherent in the assertion that women are the more perceptive sex, however the insight is brilliant because Joe Higashi is actually RIGHT! For all their guile, insight, and sagacity about each other and the world in general, when it  comes to reading the romantic advancements of men a lot of women fall into two equally sad categories of Publicly & Privately Ignorant.

To clarify- 

Publicly Ignorant: A woman who will feign shock and astonishment at the mention of her friend Steve having romantic interest in her. Claiming that "All we do is go to the movies, go out to eat, eat in, shop, gossip, and watch movies at home, sometimes sharing the blanket and exchanging the occasional massage. . . But that's just what close guy friends do." No. Shame on her and shame on Steve. 

Privately Ignorant:  A woman who lives in the lovely world where men and women are entirely equal and thusly treats every male interaction the same as she would a female one. She will be genuinely shocked to learn that Steve wants to be more than friends, and will be even more amazed to find out that not all guys are being nice just to be nice and that a man doesn't approach you from across the room because your personality was so enchanting and he really needed a new friend. 

While both of these views vary, the end result is equally as tragic and stems from the same dilemma: miscommunication. Time and time again the root of all cock-blockery will be incongruent interpretations of the same scenario; one party may think things are cruising along smoothly where the other party isn't even aware there was anything going on at all. So as a man if you find yourself on the former end of this spectrum, by all means PAUSE. Take a step back. Maybe even get a second opinion, because you may in violation of what is known as "playing yourself". Don't be ashamed, everyone plays themselves at one point or another and it is bound to happen again sooner or later, besides there are worst things than being into someone who doesn't view you in a sexual manner. The good news is now that you know you haven't been stepping up to the plate, you can assess the situation and make a move before the window closes. At times like this is when you ask yourself What Would Joe Higashi Do?

The first principle is to let your intentions be known, and please adhere to the axiom that actions speak louder than words. E-mails, texts, telegrams, and letters pale in comparison to face to face interaction; furthermore, body language and physical contact speak volumes more than any overly blunt or cleverly scripted monologue (yes there are cases where a female is wooed by the clumsy musings of an unconfident fellow, however far and wide women do not find awkward desperation attractive). Next would be to know your strong points; the further you are from a female's perceived social circle, the more effort you'll have to put in bridging the inherent gap between you two as friends yet alone as lovers. If you honestly don't have the moxy and finesse to put in that amount of effort successfully then just bow out or resign yourself to being her awkward indie friend/rich friend/asian friend/black friend/etc.  Lastly and most importantly in the teachings of Sensei Joe Higashi: Assume Nothing. These girls aren't built to hone in on whatever wavelength you may be on so don't take for granted that because you've gone out for sushi or been cuddly at the movies that it means anything. A girl can spend all day laughing and shopping and eating with one guy, but when someone she is really interested calls her that night she will spend the night with him and the two of them will have some real fun. Branching off from this, I would like to point out that I always use terms like "romantically involved" or "sexually attracted" instead of dating specifically because of this fallacy of assumption. "Dating" is not a precise term but more of a vague umbrella, and consider yourself "dating" someone new while still in the beginning stages you are taking a leap of faith that under this umbrella you two are mutually settled on the same perception of things. 

Take for example, this final bit of insight: You have spent some time with a girl, you text and chat and may have even kissed. You're under the impression that you two are "dating" which can be interpreted as follows:

Dating Exclusively

Dating Casually

Going Steady

Seeing Where Things Go

Taking it Slow

Friends With Benefits

This Was a Mistake

This Was Fun But Let's Not Make a Habit of It

We Should Have Stayed Friends

This Feels Awkward

I Love You

I Thought This Would Be Bad But It's Going OK

I Thought This Would Be Bad and It Is

Open Relationship

Fuck Buddies

Friends Helping Each Other Through A Dry Spell

Rebound Relationship

I've Had a Crush On You Since Forever

I Was Only In It For The Chase

I Want To Focus on School/Work But I Am Attracted To You

We Can Fool Around But No Sex

I'm Confused

Now Isn't The Right Time But This Feels Good

Head Over Heels

Now if you're fairly confident that you and your lady would check the same boxes on that list, then no worries at all. However, if you feel like things may indeed by a bit skewed in terms of how you both perceive the situation, then you might want to ask yourself WWJHD?

And as always, I drew some shit

Snakes on A Plane is a bad date movie

The title of this is may seem like an obvious statement, but equally so is "Don't come on too strong or you'll blow it", and still the latter is a mistake much more commonly made by tons of guys. Unfortunately, a lot of times we are even aware that we are coming on too strong as we are doing it and still cannot help ourselves, and that is primarily due to an overwhelming fear men have of the dreaded "friend-zone". Now the "platonic friend/gay buddy/friend zone" is a topic in and of itself that I'm not going to delve into presently, however I would be remiss if I didn't make note that it is the opposite side of the coin to the "overzealous come on" Regrettably, there is no 'better to err on the side of caution' with women, an err is just the same either way, and when faced with being treated like the sexual equivalent of a piece of furniture while listening to a girl they adore wax on about some douchebag who doesn't like them, a fair amount of men will opt to go out in an embarrassingly premature display of unrequited affection.

There's many types of "Too much too soon" but the basics are generally as follows:

1. The Ted Mosby from HIMYM- Overly grande and romantic displays; no matter how sincere you may be, this approach projects melodrama and desperation in equally frightening amounts.

2. The JD from Scrubs- Regardless of your lack of confidence or finesse you blurt out an affectionate soliloquy riddled with introspective depth. Ugh, this just drips with neurotic self doubt and insecurity; there's nothing gained from sympathy searching and no self respecting woman would pridefully shag someone out of pity.

3. The Zach Morris from SBTB- The "I'm not pretending, I'm actually this cocky". Believe it or not it's just as likely to get you laughed at as it is to get you tongued down; as with most cocky approaches it's a game of numbers so to up the odds you'd need a lot of time, effort, and of course morale.

4. The Leonard from BBT- With such rampant fear of ever stepping up to the plate make it painfully obvious how into her you are not with words but with doglike devotion and constant undivided attention, and hopefully through some sort of emotional osmosis she'll start to reciprocate feelings for you. This is by far the most pathetic because it is entirely passive aggressive, and makes up for the fact that there is no direct verbal approach through good old fashioned smothering and over thinking.

I agree with the belief that most first dates/interactions with someone you like are very much like a job interview; namely in that you are selling yourself. Herein lies a lot of the issues with coming on too strong, you're a salesman who has no faith in his own product. It isn't some kind of blind confidence that wins women over, but the simple fact that if she does actually see something in you, it doesn't really matter how you drive the message home because she wants it to go there already. The problem is that most of the time we guys are driving real fast but zig-zagging all over the road in some kind of horrible display of romantic faux confidence.

There's no real recipe for swagger, and I'm not here to preach some kind of motivational "be yourself!" guide. What I will say is that a lot of the time we focus and even obsess over just liking the girl, and that leads to poor decisions and pathetic displays like phoning 3-5 times a day when she hasn't called back or making really fancy reservations to try to impress. Instead we should focus equally as hard on deserving the girl, an equal amount of pride should balance out the approach and determine what you deem as a respectable man to be "going too far out of your way to get something you feel you deserve". I don't mean this in a chauvinistic way; you're not in any way entitled to any woman; to put it into perspective, however, if you don't believe you're good enough for her then you're not going to act like it. Furthermore if you're still pursuing her with that mindset, you're just pestering her while hoping she believes in you enough for both of you.




And as always, I drew some shit-

Bout Dat

I'm relatively sure that at this stage anyone looking at this already knows a bit about me, so I won't get into drawn out intros about myself. I will, however, reveal my wonderful outlook on romance! Now I'm not going to even slightly pretend to know all the ins and outs of those enchantingly enigmatic creatures called women, I've just been fortunate in my endeavors and am eager to pass along any insights to my fellow man-

As we enter the twilight of summer, the brisk season heralds a somber time of layered clothing and school, two of the biggest proponents of cock-blockery. At the same time, the latter does provide the blessing of a virtually limitless selection of opportunities with which to find yourself in the company of an attractive young lady, and therein lies the first challenge: Making a connection. Contrary to popular belief the first step is not the hardest, breaking the ice is relatively easy compared to step number 2. Breaking the ice is straightforward and without interpretation or confusion, you interact and it's done; case closed. Step 2 is making it known you are interested in a successful manner. Being able to talk to girls is rarely where things go awry, hell lots of guys with horrible/nonexistent luck romantically have tons of female friends and may even feel more comfortable talking with women as opposed to men. The key dilemma lies in stepping up to the plate, which for every man can go differently. Now there's no surefire way to guarantee you get it across that you're into a girl without saying blatantly "I'm into you" (and sometimes that works) so a lot is left up to implications and suggestions, which are traditionally not strong points in most men. 

In almost all cases the best approach is a general mix of strategy and improvisation. The key is of course not to end up rambling like an idiot or just stuck on some script you worked out, however, the one thing I've learned is that each woman is her own individually mind numbing snowflake. It's not even that what works for some doesn't work for another, even within the same girl what worked on Tues may not work on Fri, and because of this the best strategy advice i could ever give is "be attentive". Any girl you have a shot with at all will give you some kind of insight as to what makes them tick, use that at your earliest convenience to set the tone. By default most women have men at a constant disadvantage in the dating game of cat and mouse, the sooner you get the ball in your court the better. 

Oh yeah, and I drew some shit-