The Truth About Guys

I was talking to a female friend of mine recently about problems she was having with a guy she was dating.  She was really into this guy, and he kept saying he was too, but she didn’t feel like he was, and ultimately was getting really frustrated that his words and his actions weren’t lining up. After asking a few questions I came to the simple conclusion he wasn’t as into her as he was saying, which brought her to ask the question “Why do guys lie about how they feel?”

The answer is simple: It’s the path of least resistance. Now let me make it clear that not all guys lie, and even ones that have don’t lie all the time.  However girls aren’t exactly receptive to hearing that most guys naturally don’t have the same romantic capacity as they do. So what do we do? We lie about it. Because if we don’t the girl will leave us for someone else who will lie. If a girl is presented with a guy who is honest about how he really feels and a guy who feels the same way but will lie about feeling more, she will choose the liar every time. Not because he’s a liar, but because he says what the girl wants to hear.

But these lies aren’t always so innocent. Sometimes a guy really is lying about how he feels just to keep a girl around. So how can you tell if a guy is lying about his feelings? Just examine how he acts. Does he “forget” to call you back? Cancel or postpone dates? Say he’s going to be somewhere or do something and doesn’t follow through? If these things happen regularly (can’t judge based off of one or two times) they are ALL signs of someone who isn’t interested even if they say they are.

Ultimately, it is my belief that most guys will lie about how strongly they feel in many romantic settings simply because most guys don’t have the same romantic capacity as girls do. But when it comes to figuring out whether or not a guy’s actual feelings match what he says they are, actions speak louder than words.

As the winter months approach us here in the US, in addition to charitable events like #movember, many males feel like it’s “beard season.”  But facial seems to be a love it or hate it kind of thing.

So I ask you ladies, how do you feel about facial hair? Does it make a man more or less attractive?

Received this email the other day:

hi, I have a problem. I was interested in this guy until I recently discovered something. I found out that he was dating some girl, and when I confronted him about it he completely denied even being in a relationship, and what is worse is that none of his friends know about this girl. He keeps trying to “get to know me better” and he’s been at it for about 8 months now, but frankly I do not trust him anymore. My question is why do men lie like that? and also how is it that men are able to just deny and hide being in a relationship from not only other women, but also their friends? isn’t it unfair on the other girl?

The truth is, guys are naturally attracted to many girls at one time… in fact, a lot of our “social value” to other guys is how much interaction we have with other women whether it be the ability to pick a girl up at a bar, how much “inbound interest” a guy receives, how often a guy even just hangs out with girls, etc.  Some guys tend to manage all of that in a respectful way, looking to only “get to know someone better” one at a time. But others get caught up in how much better they look to other guys by how many girls he can juggle and keep interested at one time… or in this case, he seems to value his OWN social value by how many girls he can keep interested, rather than the quality of one girl’s interest.  But remember, a well-balanced guy will always value the relationship of his friends as higher or at least equal to the relationship of any girl he is with. How a guy is viewed by his friends (or even other guys in general) is SUPREMELY important to him.

I don’t think the act of lying about involvement with someone else is consistent among all guys, but rather a trait of this guy specifically (you said he seems to even hide this girl from his friends).  But regardless of who is doing it or why, lying is unfair to everyone involved and to be honest, his tendency to lie probably won’t change much over the years. When people SHOW you who they are, believe them! Actions speak louder than words! Insert additional cliche encouraging phrase here!

Hope this helps. Best of luck!

Guys are not mind readers. We are not psychics. We can’t predict the future, and we usually prefer to add another letter to ESP. So why do girls seem to see their ideal guy as someone who just knows what they want at all times? Just about every love story I’ve ever seen (or read) seems to paint this picture. But while it might seem ideal, it’s not realistic.

How many times have you had (or heard of others having) the conversation about how the guy in a relationship isn’t giving the girl what she wants or needs? How many times does that conversation end in the guy saying “he’ll try harder next time” or “he’ll try to do a better job of paying attention”? More importantly, how many times does he ever REALLY follow through with that promise? 

Often this conversation happens this way because guys don’t care as much about the “details” of a relationship as girls do, and when a girl feels like the guy isn’t giving her what she needs, she notices and tells the guy he’s doing something wrong. The guy, not realizing he wasn’t giving the girl what she needs, is usually caught off guard, accepts blame, and says he’ll do better to smooth things over. But not only does he not truly understand what he did wrong in the first place, he is essentially asked to “be a better mind reader next time.”

Good luck with that, buddy.

But what if the girl did away with her misconceptions of a clairvoyant partner, and did a better job of just spelling out exactly what she wants? Sure this would mean that she’d have to dismiss her romantic notions…  but at the end of the day girls want the guy to give her what she wants, and guys really just want to please the girl they’re with.

If the girl tells the guy exactly what she wants, he is MUCH more likely to provide it for her (and she is much more likely to have her needs met). It’s a win/win. And after being told what is needed of him for a while, I bet he even begins to anticipate those needs in the future.

A good game of “hard to get” is like public foreplay. It’s a great way to flirt and build excitement in an effort to reach a mutual climax (note that I’m not specifying that this specifically means sex). Guys love a good challenge, and we do many things just to impress women.  At the same time, women naturally love to be chased and desired, and regularly test a man’s abilities in order to gauge how much of a man he is. It’s a win/win.

But all too often this game goes awry. Guys and girls have their own ideas and motives for how to play it and what they want out of it, and maybe don’t understand what the other side wants.

So here are 3 basic rules from a guy’s perspective on how we want to play this game:

Rule #1 - Know how far you’re willing to go, and don’t tease about anything more than that.  9 times out of 10, we will sleep with you on a first date or even the same night we meet you at a bar.  But more often than not, girls aren’t as open to that level of “interaction” so soon. Just because you might not want the same end result doesn’t mean you can’t still play, just be honest about WHAT signs you give us along the way so we aren’t lead to believe it’s cool when it’s not.  We don’t have to sleep with you to feel like we won, we just have to achieve what we are led to believe is possible.

Rule #2 - Control is yours at first, but ultimately needs to be ours.  During the ‘courting’ stage, the control is squarely in the girl’s hands. Guys do whatever we can to win the girls approval, earn the opportunity to chase, and then hopefully achieve victory.  But once that “victory” is achieved, guys want to be in control. Fighting us for it or making us feel like we aren’t in control will not work in your favor, and we will likely seek out other scenarios (or other girls!) that make us feel like we’re in control (this could easily evolve into it’s own post so I’ll leave it there).

Rule #3 - It’s not YOUR game, it’s OUR game.  We’re more than just pieces in this game of chess, we’re you’re opponent.. and we want to win too! Guys take failure much harder than girls do (even though we might not show you that) so treating this like guys are just objects meant to shower you with attention might flatter you up front but won’t result in anything worthwhile. In the end, no one wants to feel like they’re expendable.

Agree/disagree or have something to add? Leave comments below or email at thetruthaboutguys@gmail.com.

Welcome to The Truth About Guys. This blog is meant to be a place to share some insight and information, answer questions, share anecdotes, and pass along general helpful information about guys, our tendencies, what we’re really thinking, what we really want, and…. well… what makes us GUYS.

Ever wonder why guys are afraid of commitment? It’s not because we don’t like you… it’s because we love our freedom. Do we really notice what fragrance you’re wearing? You bet, and it has a powerful emotional connection with us even if we don’t realize it. Why do nice guys finish last? Because many nice guys are trying to be the guy women all say they want, but women continue to go for the guys who need to be mothered, changed or fixed in some way. It’s easy to finish last if you’re given no chance to win!

Whatever your questions or problems are, guy or girl, I am here (with a whole bunch of guys to confer with) to help answer or solve them.  Please feel free to email me your queries at thetruthaboutguys@gmail.com, follow me on twitter @thetruthabtguys, or follow me here on Tumblr and submit question that way.