I was talking to one of my good female friends, when she dropped this bomb on me that had me thinking most of the weekend. "Men entertain themselves with an image of women that doesn't reflect reality". After thinking about that statement, it became crystal clear that what needed to be done was to have a moment of
introspective reflection into how we (male relationship bloggers) contribute to the
female fear of rejection. While I bounced ideas around in my head during
the creative process of publishing this post, I realized that we don’t
have an accurate image of the women who are reading our blogs. Here’s a few things we do know:
- Ratchets don’t read.
- Gold-diggers spend time digging for gold, not reading on how to find love.
- Women who are convinced they're doing everything right in their lives, will more likely never turn to a blog for an ounce of advice.
With that said, it’s pretty ironic how much effort goes into those
three topics. So, how can we fix this? I came up with five key areas that
cause male bloggers to continuously miss the target.
1. Failure to give positive feedback
If you are a male blogger who cannot remember one post that you’ve
ever written to uplift women, stop blogging. As male bloggers we have to
take time out to give positive feedback to women every now and then.
We’ve got to give that positive feedback regardless of the fact that she
will probably quickly forget it or overlook it entirely.
2. Inability to know what our readers are going through
I’ve written a post that had nothing to do with women and received a
comment that turned into the worst tirade I’ve ever heard in my life. It
wasn’t just me. Other readers couldn’t figure out where she was coming
from or really why she was so mad. I knew what it was. It was that as a
blogger you have no clue what’s going on in your readers’ lives. We’re
never going to be able to know exactly what word, sentence or reference
strikes a chord in a reader. Therefore, we’ve got to be careful not to react to an angry comment or misdirected criticism.
3. Reluctance to point out male malfeasance
When men step out of line, male bloggers must make sure that we stand
up and speak on what we believe is right. If the men are in the wrong,
then let them know or at least let women know that you don’t support
male malfeasance. One of my biggest pet peeves about discourse with
women is their blind disregard and defense of female malfeasance. They
will blindly go wherever they need to go to protect one another. Male
bloggers cannot engage in discourse like that. We’re not searching for
far outside reasons for why, “dude lost his mind and left her at the
altar.” We’re not looking for a random reason for the part women played
in him ending up the way he is now. We’re just responsible for saying,
“look here man, that boy cray cray.”
4. Blogging for all the wrong reasons
If you’re a male blogger and you’re out here trying to use your blog
for sex, shame on you! I’m not going to lie, there are some bloggers
whose sole purpose is to trick women into bed. If that’s your gimmick, I
won’t knock your hustle, but do me a favor and stop pandering. When you
pander for women and tell them what you think they want to hear in
exchange for the panties, they develop a false sense of self-esteem. When
they develop that false sense of self-esteem, they find it difficult to
understand the reasons why they can find someone to sleep with, but no
one to commit to them.
5. Creating a fairy-tale world
My favorite line from Shawshank Redemption is, “I wish I could tell
you that Andy fought the good fight, and the sisters let him be. I wish I
could tell you that – but prison is no fairy-tale world.” There’s a
bunch of male bloggers in the streets preaching a fairy tale world of
sex, dating, and relationships. They are setting women up for failure.
They are giving them lists upon lists of what they need to do, or not do
to keep men happy. They paint this picture that somehow this one piece
of gospel is going to take them to the promised land of love. However,
the birds and bees are “no fairy-tale world.”
I’ve been blogging for almost a year now, and I’ve only tried to
approach this game by providing a real perspective on things. In
reality, it’s hard, it’s tough and it’s not a nice world when you’re
trying to find true love. Everybody experiences success and failure;
they go hand in hand. As male bloggers we have to make sure that we put
the advice on the table, as passionately as we can, but then walk away. My words aren’t the gospel, they’re supposed to inspire
thought. People
retain the right to glean what they want from our posts and see if it
applies to them. If it doesn’t or they haven’t reached the point in
their life where they’re ready to digest that, that is perfectly fine. Male bloggers rarely have the ability to conceptually see how their
words lead to women being scared to put themselves out there. We’re not
supposed to cater, coddle, or write our blog posts to women. We should
just realize that we play a part in the problem that is, "The Female Fear
of Rejection". We can help more than we do right now. We can be more
honest, we can share more sides of the coin than just the ones we agree
with or feel passionately about. Most of all, we can admit that it’s
partially our fault, too...
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