Mate: Become the Man Women Want - A Book Reveiw

If you are a single man you may have been interested in the many books available that promise you more and better dates, more and better relationships, more and better sex. Many fall into two common genres: The Pickup Books by the members of the Pickup Artist Community (PUA) or the Woman Tells All (WTA) books. PUA books are bullshit and manipulative, and will leave you angrier than you started. The WTA books are simplistic - they are typically by one woman who claims to be letting you in on the secrets of the female mind. Well unless the author is Sybil, all she is telling you is about her mind. (And if she is Sybil, you don't want to know about hers!)

Mate, written by Tucker Max and Geoffrey Miller, is far broader, deeper, and wiser. Tucker Max is an author and humorist who's books about his adolescent drinking and sex binges were written as humor, not as how-to. Geoffrey Miller is an evolutionary psychologist from Stanford. Together they have written a book that gives solid advice on relationships for men of all ages and situations.

For those of you not familiar with your writer, I am a 57 year old single man living in the Austin area. I have been married and divorced twice, the first for 22 years and the second for 2 years. I have been single for 2 years and dating for 9 months. I received a BS in Chemistry (the physical kind not the relationship kind - drat) from Notre Dame and then studied medicine at the UTHSC San Antonio for 3 years before deciding on a consulting career in IT as a security architect. Having a technical background, I tend to favor and appreciate books that approach relationships from a medical, psychological, evolutionary basis.

And Mate does so in spades. Mate takes a 5 step approach to mating success. And from a scientific perspective, that is what dating, male-female relationships, and sex are all about, mating. As a single male, going out to hunt babes is exactly what males of all species have been doing for millions of years. Mate helps you understand how and why things happen the way they do so that you can shape your self, your appearance and your behavior for the best possible mating outcome. Mate explains the five principles of mating success:

• Making Decisions With Science (Not Bias)
• Account For The Woman's Perspective
• Own Your Attractiveness
• Be Honest (With Yourself And Others
• Play To Win-Win

The book then translates those five principles of mating success into a five step program:

1. Get Your Head Straight
2. Develop Attractive Traits
3. Display Attractive Proofs
4. Go Where The Women Are
5. Take Action

Some parts of the book were a complete eye opener for me. For example, in the section on the Second Principle of Mating Success: Account For The Woman's Perspective, the book gives both evolutionary and modern treatment of:

• why women evolved to have certain sexual concerns and preferences, given how prehistoric mating evolved;
• why women feel anxious and vulnerable to sexual harassment, stalking, rape, STDs, unwanted pregnancies and slut-shaming;
• why women seek different sexual experiences and relationships under different conditions with different guys, from hookups to boyfriends to husbands;
• why women value some key attractive traits in men, such as physical health, mental health, intelligence, willpower, kindness and protectiveness;
• why women value some key proofs of mate value in men, such as social success, material success, aesthetic style and romantic commitment;
• where women go to meet men, and how the supply and demand market works in these mating markets.

The authors do a great job of trying to help men understand why women behave the way they do in the mating market. And that is just Principle Number 2 of the 5 Mating Principles, and the mating principles make up the introduction. The 5 Steps make up chapters 1 through 21 of the book.

Chapter 17: Meeting The Woman You Want talks about where to go to meet women. And the authors start off with Bars and Clubs. Why? The standard place that men think they should be able to go to pick up women is a bar. And the authors explain why that is the worst place possible for men and women to meet. Women feel anxious and vulnerable about being molested. What do bars offer men? A set of drunken, sexually frustrated men, some looking for a fight, in a crowded, chaotic, noisy environment and a bunch of women, some irritable, some tipsy, anxious about being hit on by frustrated men and ready to reject them in a public display. And from the female perspective, women value their physical safety, the power of female choice, and social safety. What does a bar offer them? A dark, exposed environment with few places to hide; little protection from stalking or harassment; a jostling crowd of male strangers, many looking for hookups, with a bunch of female rivals and acquaintances to compete with who are watching who goes home with home to take note of and gossip about.

The idea that bars are great places for men and women to meet goes against all principles of human biology and psychology.

Chapter 15: Find the Right Mating Market lays out a methodology to determine the best mating market for you using OkCupid. That means country, city, neighborhood, school, job, etc. While you might not think about moving, might not be able to move, it might help you figure out your priorities. It will at least show you your options. And the chapter does a great job of explaining the mating market in terms of economic theory.

I heartily recommend Mate. It is, by far, the best dating book I have ever read for men. It will help men of all ages, from college to retirees. And the style is vastly humorous, without the science becoming overly technical. Unlike many dating books, this one covers all the bases and in depth in every one.