Magic the Gathering

Girls don’t like guys who collect things, and they don’t like guys who play games—that is, non-athletic games, of course—so they definitely wouldn’t be too pleased to find out that you collect Magic cards, which you play with every Friday night in your mom’s basement with your posse of sissy virgins.

So if Magic cards somehow come up in conversation, first play dumb, and then after she explains to you what it is—or rather, after she conveys to you her embarrassingly primitive misconception of the game—just say something like, “Sounds gay,” and push the pack of Magic cards deeper into your back pocket.

The Writings of Hegel

Now I know this is going to be tough, since most of us guys have been reading Hegel since grade school, but you really should try to pretend as if you’ve never heard of him. For some reason, girls won’t give the time of day to any guy who’s familiar with Hegel. I know this because I studied Hegel for a year, during which time I couldn’t pay a girl to touch me. Maybe girls worry that his philosophy of history is too near an endorsement of tyranny? I don’t know.

If you have to pick a philosopher, go with Hume. Girls will tolerate Hume, but they still won’t like him. I know this because I studied him for a semester, during which I hooked up with this really drunk chick at the cast party of a production neither of us was a part of. She never returned my calls, though, probably because word got around that I used to be a Hegel scholar.

Premature Ejaculation

When you’re with a girl and you ejaculate prematurely, pretend as if you have no idea what the hell just happened. “What was that?” ask her. “What did you do?” This will make your problem seem like a freak accident as opposed to an inevitable conclusion, which should reduce your shame tenfold.

And who knows, if you appear genuinely confused enough, you might even leave her questioning what she experienced—“wait a second,” she’ll say, completely thrown by your not apologizing, “what did just happen there?”

RPGs

Because as far as girls are concerned, only losers need the vicarious fulfillment that role-playing games offer. And maybe they’re right. So don’t go bragging to girls about all the friends you made and all the glorious triumphs you achieved on the virtual battlefields of RPGs—such boasting will only get you laughed at. No, the only role you should focus on playing is that of the guy who doesn’t need to play RPGs.

Psychoanalytic Theory

Women don’t want to know what’s really going on in their heads, and they don’t want you to know either. So if a girl tells you about a dream in which “this guy—I don’t know who he was, he looked sort of like my dad, maybe, but no, I’m sure it wasn’t him—whips out this candlestick and tells me to wax it, with my mouth,” just tell her what a crazy bunch of nonsense it was and offer absolutely nothing in the way of interpretation, no matter how badly you want to.

And if the Oedipus complex comes up on, say, an episode of Law & Order you’re watching with your girlfriend, turn to her and say, “What a crock of shit, right, mom? I mean Tiffany. What a crock of shit, Tiffany.”

Renaissance Fairs

When your date tells you about her loser stepbrother who every summer goes to a festival in western Pennsylvania where everybody dresses up in medieval garb, eats lamb off the bone, and speaks in olde timey language, try to suppress your erection and laugh about it with her. “Oh my God,” you’ll say, “people actually do that? What losers.” And then ask what town the festival is held in specifically so that you can book a ticket online as soon as you get home.

Fetish Porn

When your girlfriend expresses her revulsion and disbelief after hearing about the existence of websites dedicated to unorthodox sexual practices such as “tree-hugging”—when a man, or a group of men, becomes intimate with the knothole of a tree—and “ass-licking”—when a man and woman lick the ears and face of a donkey before having consensual, pre-marital intercourse—try to express your outrage at such an abomination as you inconspicuously walk over to your laptop and delete your internet browsing history.

If your girlfriend sneaks onto your computer and discovers that you visited forty-six ass-licking pages late last night, just tell her you were doing research for your big campaign against sexual deviants. “How can you fight your enemy,” ask her, “if you don’t know who he is?” She probably won’t buy it, but still, she can’t prove you weren’t doing research with the lights off at two in the morning.

Politics

Because girls want to sleep with politicians, not with guys who blog about politicians. So if a girl asks you a political question, you should respond in a way that sounds both uninformed and adamant. Something like, “I don’t care for the Senate, never have, never will,” or, “I say we get more of that pork-barrel crap, because to me, honestly, it doesn’t sound half bad.” Because women prefer men who have strong, instinctive opinions to brainy losers who deliberate and carefully consider reasons.

Literotica

Because no woman in her right mind wants to be with a guy who finds words arousing. If a woman had to choose between a guy who pleasured himself to Literotica and a guy who pleasured himself to child pornography, she’d probably choose the Literotica guy, but she wouldn’t be too thrilled about it.

So hide all those dirty stories you printed out from the internet under your mattress, cancel your subscription to The Literotica Review, and when your date asks you how you feel about erotic literature, say, “I don’t know what that is, but I sure as hell don’t like the sound of it.”

History

Because as far as women are concerned, a real man lives in the moment and doesn’t give a shit about what happened ten seconds ago, much less five hundred years ago. So show a complete disregard for the past, whether it be what you had for dinner last night, what you promised your friend you would do today, or what the doctor told you about your diet last weekend. This will make you an impulsive, irrational, unreliable creature that women will be unable to resist.