A: Nothing says “your welfare means the world to me” like clocking a man’s mourning with a stopwatch.

Beyond how the guy isn’t up for a relationship right now, you seem pretty sure that you’re just the girl next door to the girls in his wank bank. So mooning over him is not the road to a relationship but the equivalent of trying to get from New York to California by doing endless doughnuts in a Walmart parking lot.

If unrequited love isn’t the point — offering you protection from heartbreak and distraction from pursuing a guy who’s a real possibility — you need to disengage. But the answer isn’t trying to stop thinking about him. Thought suppression actually seems to backfire. For example, social psychologist Jennifer L.S. Borton found that asking research participants to suppress a specific thought led to their experiencing it “more frequently” and led to “a more anxious and depressed mood.” 

Because of this, when you have a thought of the guy, don’t try to shove it away. Instead, shift how you think of him. Focus on how he isn’t emotionally available and then on how he probably never will be for you. Next, take action. You could opt for a thought-occupying distraction like watching a movie — or, better yet, make an effort to shift your circumstances by going on dating sites to look for men who might be possibilities for you. 

This ultimately allows you to be there for this guy as a friend, offering him a Kleenex to dry his tears — as opposed to mentioning that you happen to be wearing a very soft and super-absorbent pushup bra.

 

The shoo maker

I’m a single dude in my 30s, and I really want a girlfriend, but I keep striking out with women. My female co-worker says that if I want a relationship, I need to upgrade my shoes. I wear a pair of super-comfy New Balance sneakers that I’ve had since college…yes, even wearing them on dates. In the summer, I wear Crocs sandals. What’s the problem? Are girls really that shallow?

— Footloose

 

Sadly, the CDC has been remiss in informing men of the exceptional protection against sexually transmitted diseases that open-toe shoes can provide.

Men’s shoes speak to women. They are a form of what anthropologists and zoologists call “signaling” — communication between organisms. In the mating realm, signals advertise quality in a potential partner — or sound the alarm when it’s lacking. 

Wearing bad shoes (like your stanky, hobo-ready sneakers) suggests you lack the social intelligence to dress like a grown-up and/or the interest in taking care of more than your own needs — like for the five basic bachelor-dude food groups: beer, Hot Pockets, pizza, Doritos, and pot edibles.

Evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller surveyed women — straight single American women, ages 20-35 — on what they like and loathe in footwear on a potential partner. The women were asked to imagine going on a casual lunch date with guys wearing 32 different types of men’s shoes, from Birkenstocks to chukkas to leather Oxfords.

Women’s preferences were “strong” and “consistent” and point to the following advice: Wear leather shoes — nice leather shoes, like Oxfords or loafers — that cover your feet. (Women hated every single sandal, from Crocs to Birkenstocks to flip-flops.) Your shoes don’t have to be expensive. You can probably do just fine with a stylish loafer you get on sale for $50. (Passable sneakers, scoring okay but not so well as the leather shoes, were the classics: Vans and Converse All Stars.)

Finally, it isn’t enough to just buy the right shoes; you have to take care of them. (Another important detail that ladies notice.)

Learn how to polish and clean them. Take them to a shoemaker for resoling and other upkeep. These might seem like little things but they are actually part of a whole of living like a man instead of a manchild. 

Admittedly, living the man way isn’t “super-comfy,” but consider where your priorities lie: more in the realm of Dr. Scholl or Dr. Kinsey?

 

Waif watchers

I’m a 33-year-old woman, and I’ve always been thin. I lost about 12 pounds after a tough breakup. I’m working on getting back to a healthier weight. However, people keep making cutting remarks about how thin I look. Yesterday a friend said, “You’re so skinny it’s gross!” I’d noticed that she’d gained quite a bit of weight, but I didn’t say anything…because that would be rude! She made other digs about my weight, and upon hugging me goodbye, she said, “Eww, is that your shoulder bone?!” What’s with this double standard? There’d be hell to pay if I said the slightest thing about anyone’s weight gain.

— Tempted To Lash Back 

 

It is more taboo than ever to make cracks about a woman’s weight — that is, unless she doesn’t have a whole lot of it. Then it’s open season: “Wow, what happened to you? Forget where the supermarket is?”

However, it probably is not “people” but “people who are female” who are thin-shaming you. Welcome to female intrasexual competition — competition between women — which is covert and sneaky (and thus poisonous) in a way male-on-male competition is not. Men, who evolved to be the warriors and protectors of the species, tend to be openly aggressive. A guy will give another guy a beat-down or publicly dis him: “Yeah, bro, sure you can get a chick to go home with you — if you’ve got five grand for a sex robot.”

Psychologist Tracy Vaillancourt explains that women seem to have evolved to avoid physical confrontations (and in-your-face verbal attacks that can lead to them), which jeopardize a woman’s ability to have children or fulfill her function as an infant’s principal caregiver and meal provider.

Women instead engage in “indirect aggression” to “reduce the mate value of a rival,” like by “disparaging the competitor’s appearance … or using derisive body and facial gestures to make the rival feel badly about herself and thus less willing to compete.” (Yeah, that’s right. It seems “Mean Girls” was a documentary.) 

The tricky thing about these indirect attacks is the plausible deniability they confer. Call a woman out for thin-shaming you and she’s likely to duck behind “I’m just worried about your health!” 

So instead, simply tell her that remarks about your weight hurt your feelings. Speaking up like this says that you aren’t likely to let any future digs slide, yet you remain on moral high ground — instead of giving back in kind: “Wow, looks like you’ve been exercising a lot. Do you do the backstroke in frosting?”

 

Endship ring

I was roommates with a girl five years ago. I was a spoiled brat for many years, but I’ve worked very hard to change. She, on the other hand, is still supported by her father, has no job or interests, and just wants to get married. Whenever she calls, she wants advice on the same boy drama. I just don’t have the time or patience for this anymore. I tried not responding to her, but she keeps calling and texting, “I need to come over right now!”  

— Drama-Weary

 

“I need to come over right now!” What are you, a day spa for her emotions crossed with the Burger King drive-thru?

It’s easy to confuse the chunk of time a friend has been in your life with reason for them to continue being there. It helps to unpack the mystique about how friendships form. Social science research finds that a major driver of friendship is similarity  shared values and attitudes, for example. But demographic similarity is part of it, too — like both being 30-year-old single female zoo workers who went to a crappy college. 

And though we want to believe we carefully choose the friends in our lives, personality psychologist Mitja Back and his colleagues are among the researchers who’ve found that “mere proximity” seems to play a big role in who our friends are. 

This means, for example, living in the apartment next door, working in the same department, or, in Back’s study, being randomly assigned to “neighboring seats” in a college class. In other words, you probably became friends with this woman because she was sleeping in the next room, not because you conducted a nationwide search for the best possible buddy for you. 

Now’s the time to choose whether she stays in your life — and you don’t do that by hoping she’ll hear your vigorous eye-rolling over the phone and take the hint. Breaking up with a friend — if that’s what you want to do -- should work like breaking up with a romantic partner. 

Don’t just wordlessly cut off contact; that’s cruel — and likely to backfire. Tell her that you need to end the friendship, explaining the problem in broad terms: You’ve “grown apart” or you’re “in different places” in your lives. Even if she presses you, keep it kind by keeping it vague.

The point is telling her it’s over, not informing her that she’s got all the emotional depth of a goldfish and then ducking out forever via call waiting: “Sorry — gotta go. Important robocall from Rachel from Card Services on the other line!” 

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(c.) 2018, Amy Alkon, all rights reserved. Got a problem? Write Amy Alkon, 171 Pier Ave, #280, Santa Monica, CA  90405, or e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it (advicegoddess.com). Weekly radio show: blogtalkradio.com/