I also own a cat

I've got a real problem with books like this one, and not just because it says men who own cats are undatable.

No my problem is that it's dating advice* and we don't know anything about the advisor. Every time I see one of these things, particularly when written by a woman, I keep having the same question creep into my mind.

“And how long have you and your husband been married?”

Because, being such an expert, they must be married, right? Can’t be some group of bitter, single, angry women who can’t actually find anyone because their rigid standards have excluded all male on the planet, right? And their husbands do fit all the criteria in this book, right? I mean, they didn’t have to knock down their standards to find a guy, did they? Found the perfect man that fit each and every one of their little hints?

…

They don’t even have boyfriends, do they?

The point is, we don’t know and that’s the problem I always have with relationship books. I wouldn’t give my car to a mechanic that wasn’t experienced and certified, nor would I get computer advice from someone who had never displayed ability to double click a mouse. And yet, people will take relationship advice from any idiot who can get a book deal because they wrote more than three articles in Cosmo. You have no idea if this person has working relationships, no idea if their ideas are even their own or just some wishlist of features they’d like to have, and no idea if they’ve ever found out they were dumped because their stuff was piled up on the lawn with a note pinned to it reading “Fuck off, you vicious bitch!” in sparrow’s blood. That happens more often than you’d think.

That’s my problem, who the hell are these people? We don’t know. What is their relationship status? We don’t know. Have they ever been dumped via sparrow’s blood note? Yeah, probably. They don’t think men should own cats, they’re probably fired by sparrow’s blood notes. They probably get sparrow’s blood notes from their mothers for their birthdays.

After all, they don’t like cats, they’re likely (and rightly) shunned by all decent members of society. They don’t think cats are just for girls, don’t give me that shit, they just don’t like them. People who don’t like cats should be shot on sight, because they aren’t human. It’s one thing to like dogs better, or not to have pets at all because of allergy, lease, or lifestyle difficulties, but to just plain claim a man shouldn’t have a cat? Put a stake in its heart because it isn’t human. It may look human, but the cat thing was a bit of a giveaway.

In the end though, really, I come back to qualifications. Have these women formed stable relationships? Have they found men who are willing to treat them well? Have they found men at all? Do those men treat them like trophies in the same way they seem to treat the men? Are they just abject losers sitting on the edge of the internet making snarky comments at passersby who couldn’t care less what some silly bitches like them think?

See, I don’t like everything that someone like Mystery says, but I do know his methods work. For a given value of "work", you understand. He at least gets the results he claims you'll get if you use his methods.

I can get behind his idea of peacocking at any rate.






*Well, actually it seems to be a shopping list of arbitrary things that will exclude a man from these chicks' beds.