In this day and age, pointing out gender-differentiated behavior is a rather dangerous thing to do – it smacks of a misogynistic, patriarchal, pro-glass ceiling perspective that any guy hoping to ever have sex again would be better off simply avoiding altogether. That being said, I simply cannot refrain from sharing at least one small guy vs. girl observation I’ve recently noted. Namely, that girls tend to believe all of their friends are more attractive and all of their enemies less attractive than is actually the case, something guys simply don’t do.

Illustratively: a hunch-backed, toothless wildebeest of a girl would inevitably be described by every one of her friends as “absolutely beautiful,” or, at very least, “really, very cute.” Conversely, a Victoria’s Secret model who had once given that group of friends a dirty look would be dismissed as “honestly, not that attractive; I mean, seriously, what do guys even see in her?” It is my sense that women aren’t actively trying to bend the truth with these statements, but rather that their attractiveness appraisals are simply more highly influenced by personality. Guys, by way of comparison, have no trouble separating personality and looks, hence the frequency of friend descriptions like “who, Joe? Yeah, he’s a good guy, but he’s pretty fuckin’ ugly.”

All of which tends to get us guys in trouble, as women are nearly always in the process of setting single guys up with their single girl friends. Extrapolating cross-gender from our “call a spade a spade” approach, we guys tend to assume that the description of the girls we’re being set up with are largely objective. And, sometimes, they are. But more frequently, we hit the bar, meet the date, and realize that the liquid fortification required to actually kiss the girl goodnight would require a rather significant proportion of the week’s salary.

All of which, I suppose, leads me to this dating advice for fellow men: if the set-up is a close friend of the matchmaker, be wary. Ask for a picture. Or, at very least, buy a flask, and reduce the cost of your necessarily excessive drinking.