Learn the BASIC rule: If she likes you, she WILL go out

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many successful couples got together because the guy was persistent

i'm sure all of us have heard a woman describe their husband/boyfriend as "i didn't really like him at first but he eventually won me over"

women can be talked into liking almost any guy

This is just talk.

well I didn't think I liked a guy at first then I fell for him, but I think it was more I was denying to myself to believe I liked him at the start.

More like the plot to a bad chick-flick.

There are *good* chick-flicks?

My wife insists there are, but I have yet to see one.

That isn't playing hard to get. That's actually being hard to get. It's not the same thing.

No. A woman can not be talked into liking almost any guy. You've taken the wrong lesson from these anecdotes. The anecdotes aren't illustrating how any man can win any woman if he just tries hard enough. The anecdotes are illustrating that compatibility between two people isn't always obvious at first, or even second or third meeting. Persistence from a man who is compatible can end in coupledom. Persistance from a man who is incompatible with her will just inspire annoyance.

Women don't have "higher statuses". They are people, not video games.

Janissy, I always love your gentle wisdom. It's great.

ick 'proved themselves to be worthy'.

I'm certain he meant "higher social status". Social status isn't a videogame construct. It's very real. A movie star has higher social status than a store clerk. And a radiantly beautiful store clerk has higher social status than an unattractive one.

Social status is only limiting inasmuch as one uses it as an excuse not to try.

Yes, that's what I meant, which is why I put it in parentheses. As someone climbs in status, so does the level of the people they date or interact with. This is why musicians, actors, athletes, and other famous people tend to date each other, rather than some random Joe or Jane off the street (OK, it does happen, but is extremely rare).

Looks do play a part too, as women who are extremely attractive know it, and can be much more selective in who they choose to date. If an extremely attractive woman doesn't have a very high social status (maybe she doesn't have a great job or a ton of friends or whatever), the odds of her dating someone close to or equally as attractive are pretty good, but the rate of these types of women dating lesser men is MUCH higher - in fact a lot of people see this just walking down the street or at the mall/grocery store/etc. You probably wonder how that guy managed to get with that girl (or vice versa), right? These (arguably) "lesser" guys are brimming with confidence and have interesting lives, thus they are able to navigate through some of the resistance an extremely beautiful woman might put up. It's not exactly "winning her over", as someone else noted, but it's close.

How do you account for the fact that beauty is subjective?

I think movie stars date other movie stars because it is good publicity to do so. Name a couple of these relationships that have actually worked out long term. Even Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins have split.

There was another thread about this; objective vs. subjective. I think it's some of both with heavy weighting to objective. Everybody has their own taste. However, when sociologists measure which faces get the most positive responses across race and culture, they do find some commonalities. A certain eveness of features combined with markers of health are regarded as objectively beautiful cross-racially and cross culturally. If you go to an African village and ask people to select it's most beautiful girl, the odds are high that if you showed photos of the contenders to men in some other country, they'd pick the same girl, even if she isn't specifically their type. It isn't random.



Sometimes that happens. It probably happened even more when movie stars could not afford to be known as gay and visibly dated somebody of the opposite sex as cover. Sometimes movie stars are asked in interviews why they date other movie stars and they give two very plausible reasons:

1) they fell in love with their co-star because all that kissing in the scenes and forced intimacy bonded them together

2)they know that other movie stars will understand their career in a way that "civilians" (their term) will not and they'd rather be with somebody who doesn't roll their eyes when they complain about paparazzi and who doesn't get angry when a shoot happens in a remote location for 3 months

These sound perfectly plausible and I have no reason to doubt them


Yes. Even Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins eventually split. Eventual splitting doesn't invalidate the claim that people of similar social status and/or looks wind up together. In fact their coupledom is an argument for it (even though they split). They are both movie stars of a similar "looks" weighting- arguably good looking but each with a minor quirk. They have a similar status in Hollywood (Q rating, this stuff actually gets rated by the trade papers) and they met on the set of Bull Durham, where the played lovers- a common way for movie stars to meet.

What does all this mean here? Probably that men here shouldn't bash their heads against a brick wall by going for the "hot chick". But many here have already decided that anyway. Alternatively, if they are going for the "hot chick", they need to do something with themselves that will put them on par with the status her hotness confers. You don't literally have to invent Facebook, but if The Social Network is to be believed, upping his own social status was a goal for (suspected Aspie) Marc Zuckerburg when he did that.