How to spot a player.

A frequent question in the sphere is how to help young women spot a player.  The answer is he will be that perfect boyfriend she has been searching for.  Laura Fraser at Marie Claire describes the experience (H/T Vox & Han Solo):

I met [him] in line for a film screening while visiting Manhattan from San Francisco. I was convinced I’d found my ideal man: intellectual, witty, artistic, and hot. We spent a passionate week together, and when I left town, I thought I was leaving behind a new long-distance boyfriend—one who, it turned out, didn’t like to call or e-mail…ever. I thought our fling was the start of a relationship; he thought it was a fling, period.

This wasn’t a fluke:

Disappointing, but it fit my usual pattern. I would fall for a brilliant guy with an irresistible smile who never quite fell for me but who possessed all the qualities I liked in a man: a sense of humor, certified smarts, smoldering looks. Each time, these men—dashing chefs, moody architects—would give me just enough attention to keep me in their narcissistic orbit. Whether or not they’d ever call was just part of the thrill, always keeping me on edge. Outwardly, I told myself I was having fun and it was just a matter of time before someone wanted to settle down; inside, I started to worry that I wasn’t lovable or exciting enough.

There are a number of reasons this is the case.  The first is that these are the men who know how to open the bra, and opening the bra means being the kind of man a feral woman will fall in love with.  Such men are in limited supply to begin with, but this brings us to the second reason the man a feral woman falls in love with is almost guaranteed to be a player;  men who can open the bra and want to settle down are not only rare, those who fit this description have almost certainly already settled down.

Don’t hate the player, hate the game…

This is an unpopular truth, because the ability to open the bra is our new test for moral righteousness.  There must be some mistake, since everyone knows players are easy to spot and obviously unattractive to women.  But there is no mistake.  So long as a woman is playing the uncommitted sex game, she is going to find herself seeking the best players of that game.  The mistake is in pretending she wasn’t playing the uncommitted sex game in the first place, not in failing to identify a man who will play it better than she does.