Ten Kinds of Women to Avoid at All Costs

And so it has come to this A guy I know, someone with whom I used to play football, a fellow who, you'll have to trust me, used to have a fair amount of gumption, called me last week to announce his belief that the vote should be taken away from men.

"Listen," he explained, "I know it sounds drastic, but it's the only way things are ever going to change. We men have run this world for thousands of years now and look where it's gotten us. We've destroyed the environment and brutalized entire populations in precisely the same way we have, as individuals, butchered relationships and brutalized our women----"

"Excuse me," I interrupted, "but how did you come up with that notion?"

There was a momentary pause at the other end. "Uh, well, actually, it was my girlfriend who kind of threw out the idea...."

How else?

Christ, have they done a job on us! As a sex, we men have been in headlong retreat for so long that we have come to accept as plausible just about any accusation hurled by an angry woman. They tell us we're spoiled children, incapable of relationships based on mutual giving and trust. "Yeah," we say, "there's a lot of truth to that, we guess." They tell us we're congenital bounders, unable to commit to someone for a month, let alone a lifetime. "Ok," we admit, "that is a problem, but we're working on it."

All right, there are some less than ideal men out there, Neanderthals of the James Cagney grapefruit-in-the-face school, and fellows whose idea of romantic fulfillment is making 300 women, including at least one from each Common Market nation, before the age of 30.

But this nonsense about all of us, as a species, being tainted has gone on long enough. It's about time for general acknowledgment of a very simple truth: The vast majority of men, like the vast majority of women, are looking for healthy, nourishing relationships. All we want, for God's sake, is to feel good with someone.

How, then, did we get such a bad rap? A lot of it has to do with simple repetition. Since more than a decade ago, when the women's movement identified the long, now familiar list of economic and social inequities that had marked this society from the beginning, not a day has passed without some reference in the media to the woman's struggle for equality. It was a very short step from recognition of those inequities to the assertion that men, in general, are oppressors; and, from there, that we continue to oppress in each of a thousand ways, daily, unthinkingly, unfeelingly. It didn't take long for the movies (Carnal Knowledge, Diary of a Mad Housewife, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, An Unmarried Woman, Girlfriends, et al.), and then even TV, in its tepid way, to pick up the theme. Since there was a large element of truth to it all--a great many men had been insensitive to what was going on in their mates' heads and hearts, and many continue to be--it was easy to swallow the canard whole.

Then, too, women have exercised the power of numbers. There has been much disdainful talk in recent years, most of it by women, about male bonding, but during this era of pitched battle between the sexes, it has been they, and not we, who have come together for collective security. Forget about Now and the other mass organizations. Every day, by the hundreds of thousands, women gather in groups of four or six or eight to discuss, as one woman I know delicately puts it, "our mutual concerns." Every session, she adds, a bit less delicately, they "end up trashing men."

Indeed, every time two or more women get together, in a "feminist group" or simply over lunch, chances are excellent that the conversation will turn to men and what, individually or en masse, is wrong with them. For many women, it has become almost a reflexive action to compare notes and share experiences. When, for purposes of this essay, I called a woman friend at work for her up-to-the-minute assessment of the male animal, she cut me off in midsentence. "Wait a minute," she said, "this should be done by committee. Hey," she called out to her co-workers, "this guy wants to know what we think of men."

"They're babies," announced one voice in the background. "You're supposed to spend your life catering to their fragile little egos."

"They give you the impression they love you and then you never hear from them again," came another.

"They take too long in the bathroom," added a third.

We men, on the other hand, have shared precious little. Indeed, virtually the only organizations we have created to deal with the social turbulence threatening to engulf us are male consciousness-raising groups, those gatherings of earnestly hangdog fellows whose self-criticism sessions are so eerily reminiscent of those sponsored by certain authoritarian regimes.

It is no wonder, under the circumstances, that we have been so terribly vulnerable to attack. Alone, without support, it has been easy to believe that we are as guilty as constantly charged in the undermining of relationships--and that women are as guiltless.

But, in fact, it is just not true. There are as many destructive women in this society as destructive men, as many women who are petty and irresponsible and cruel. Men have plenty of horror stories to tell, too; we've simply been too cowed to go public.

But no more.

The following are ten general categories of women to be avoided at all costs. Consorting with these women will almost certainly lead to no good; they are the kind who can give loneliness a good name; they will, if given the chance, break a heart or stomp on an ego as readily as the vilest man dissected in the pages of Cosmo or Savvy.

We aren't trying to promote divisiveness between the sexes; everybody's had enough of that. As much as anything else, this survey is provided as one small step toward a common wisdom for men--a service to all you guys, young and not so young, looking to love. The women cited might appear, to the naked eye, utterly charming, even eminent candidates for the happily ever after.

But that's still more reason for this piece--we men always have had a tendency to rely too heavily on our eyes, haven't we?

The Tragedienne

There are a startling number of people in this world who don't know they're experiencing emotion unless it's pain. They are not happy, these people, unless they're deeply unhappy, and you can imagine how much fun it is to be around them. Succinctly put, their notion of a relationship is that you have to take the bad with the bad.

Oh, there might be sporadic periods of calm, but those will only set her to worrying: Something's wrong, she should feel more, is this all there is? And then, likely as not, she'll provoke a scene that would embarrass Sarah Bernhardt, only to reassure herself that there is, after all, still passion between you.

So, inevitably, these relationships are all push-pull, an incredible amount of crying and screaming, perhaps even an occasional threat of suicide, followed by a stirring reconciliation scene. If trapped in one of these nightmares, you will find yourself getting jumpy and your work will undoubtedly suffer; but one of the few compensations will be that your reconciliations will probably be accompanied by magnificent sex, replete with back scratching and moans that it's never been so good with anyone. But then, the next morning, you'll be back to the flip side--there's a hell of a lot of flip side to these relationships--and the flip side of the sexual question is all those times she makes it utterly obvious that she can hardly keep her eyes open.

Some women of this genre have, in fact, been known to abruptly alter the sexual ground rules in order to keep things popping. One hapless fellow reports that his ex-girlfriend, a dancer, would periodically cut off sex entirely, with the explanation that she loved him too much to sleep with him.

"What the hell does that mean?" he would ask.

"It means," she would say softly, averting her eyes, "that we shouldn't risk tainting something so beautiful." Which would lead to another fight, which would culminate in a feverish bout of lovemaking, which was, of course, the point in the first place.

These relationships can be endlessly interesting--there's no question of that--in much the same way that a car wreck featuring big-time mutilation is interesting. The problem is, in this case, you're the victim.

Nor are your problems likely to be kept to yourselves; invariably, there will be marathon phone conversations between her and her friends of the "he (continued on page 195)Ten Kinds of Women(continued from page 148) said--I said" variety. Drama, after all, needs an audience.

Any man who can put up with the choreographed chaos for more than a few weeks is to be commended for his perseverance--and probably should be written off himself. Only a bona fide masochist can learn to live with this kind of thing.

The Neuter

Early on, in a relationship with this woman, you will undoubtedly be convinced that you have stumbled upon nirvana. Never has your ego been so fervently massaged. It is apparent from her adoring gaze that at last you've found someone who recognizes that you're as brilliant, as witty, as downright adorable as you always suspected you were.

Then you find out the terrible truth: This woman has no critical faculties whatsoever.

Indeed, you soon learn that she is unsure even of her sense of humor. Lacking direction, she will laugh just as hard at 1941 as at Woody Allen--which is why she makes a point of watching you so closely and laughing only on cue. Your political opinions will become hers, and your biases; she'll even begin dressing to please you.

Quite simply, you have been invited to fill a void in her life--and the void happens to be 90 percent of the life. She allows you to envelop her because, in effect, if there is no man in her existence, there is nothing else. That is why the relationship progresses with such stunning alacrity: Within four days, she's telling you that she loves you; within a week, she's stopping to admire babies on the street and letting you know how much she wants one of her own.

Your first indication that she may not, in fact, adore you exclusively for your matchless qualities might come when you hear about her previous boyfriends. They are entirely different from you, and from one another, and you get the uncomfortable sense that you would loathe every one of them. The only thing you all have in common is her.

"How," you ask in bewilderment, "could you have been interested in a Greek disco dancer and then in me?"

She looks confused. "What do you mean?"

"We're so incredibly different."

"Well, I loved you for different reasons."

The different reasons, upon your further investigation, turn out to be that she happened to be with the Greek disco dancer then and with you now.

There is, of course, an element of genuine sadness to such a person--but the time must come, as it has come for all the creeps who preceded you, to recognize that it is her problem and not yours. In the end, to continue will leave both of you deeply frustrated: you because it's no fun sharing life with an amoeba, because, inevitably, you will grow contemptuous of her; she because being an amoeba affords a person precious little self-respect.

One last thing to watch out for: the words "I've never felt this way," spoken within five days of your first encounter. Trust me; she's felt this way before.

The Too-Recent Casualty

A guy I know, a grizzled veteran of the romantic wars, has promulgated a theorem about women lately split from longtime mates: Expect one year of erratic behavior for every four years of serious involvement; if the woman has been jilted, add another six months for good measure.

It is, of course, terribly easy to be facile at other people's expense, but the principle is nonetheless exemplary. None of us finds it easy to instantly regain equilibrium after an emotional mauling, but--with apologies to feminists in the crowd--women generally have it even harder than men. This observation is by no means meant to be slighting; anyone whose emotional machinery is in proper working order should take some time to recover from a wrenching experience. It is merely being suggested that it is not a good idea to throw yourself into the arms of someone who has recently been so wrenched.

After a period of intense joy--profound relief is always an occasion for joy--chances are excellent that she will resume her brooding with a vengeance. The old boyfriend, whom you'd hoped you'd buried with that early, endless, tearful conversation about what had gone wrong with that relationship, suddenly begins surfacing in her conversation with galling regularity. Often you'll find yourself compared with this faceless (unless, of course, she still keeps a pile of photos of him in the drawer by the bed) rival. "I'm so happy you don't play tennis. Jim was the number-two junior singles player in Michigan." "I can't stand to hear the sound track of Saturday Night Fever. It always reminds me of Allen."

Worse yet is the woman who never mentions the departed, his presence hanging over both of you like a poisonous mist. And then one night you wake up and find her sobbing beside you.

But the absolute killer is the phenomenon, as common as crab grass yet somehow always startling, of the woman who purports to despise her former lover, snarls about him constantly, appears ready to slay him on sight, and then turns out to be in regular contact with him. Indeed, if she despises him hard enough, for a sufficient length of time, it is altogether likely that she will pick up and leave you for him.

A great-uncle of mine, living in a Florida retirement village and still peppy at the age of 78, had very much the right idea. "You must be doing pretty well." I remarked on one visit, "with all the widows around here."

He clapped a hand on my shoulder.

"Only divorcees for me, son. There's no percentage in competing with ghosts."

The Victim

This is the woman for whom everything has always gone wrong, personally as well as professionally, but it is never her fault. A friend of mine was recently involved with one such woman.

"At first," he says, "I was sympathetic. How could I not be? Here was this terrific, sensitive woman, and all this terrible stuff was happening to her. Her marriage had broken up because her husband was so selfish; she'd been fired from her job with a local TV station because her boss was jealous of her; she was being threatened with eviction from her apartment because her landlord, who wanted to jack up the price, was pretending he hadn't received the rent.

"I began to get suspicious only when she explained that the reason a check she'd given me had bounced was that the bank had it in for her; I knew for sure I was in trouble when, after our first big fight, I was chewed out by a couple of our friends who'd heard, in vivid detail, about what a monster I'd been from the beginning."

That, of course, is what it invariably comes to. In the end, she will contrive to screw up the relationship, as she screws up all else--and guess who will be asked to accept the blame.

These women are rarely easy to spot early. Indeed, one of the reasons their tales of persecution are so convincing in the first place is that they often appear to have everything going for them--brains, looks and composure. One fellow of my acquaintance reports that he was deeply infatuated with one such woman, before he began to understand precisely what he'd gotten himself into. "Ok, so she'd made a lot of enemies along the way and her romantic past was a disaster area; I thought she was just unlucky. Then one day she begins talking about how unhappy she is, and suddenly, out of the blue, it turns into an attack on me. 'It's your fault,' she keeps saying, getting angrier and angrier. 'My life is in pieces and it's your fault.'

"It was only then that I recognized the symptoms. I went to the closet, dug out some Krazy Glue and tossed it to her. 'Here,' I said, leading her to the door, 'fix it up yourself.'"

The Man's Woman

This is the woman with no women friends, on the face of it a trait that might appear to have little bearing on your relationship with her. Indeed, if you are of a particularly optimistic turn of mind, you might even perceive it as a plus, leaving her all the more available to you. Would that it were that simple....

Women see things in other women that we men, struck insensible by a coy little smile, or the purr in a voice, or an appropriate roundness in all the right places, rarely spot until, panting, with our hearts lying on the floor, it is much too late. Women know that females who tailor their beings to appeal to men are, at best, empty ninnies and, more often, coolly unscrupulous wretches. While we are studying the exaggerated sway to their hips and the suggestion of come-on in their smoky eyes, women see the other side--the gratuitous put-downs and malicious smirks. While we shake our heads in admiration over the cut of their clothes or the luminous glow of their skin, women shake theirs in wonderment at the lunacy of devoting two thirds of a modest salary to wardrobe and every single daylight hour to sun-bathing.

Your problem, if it is your misfortune to align yourself with such a woman, is that sooner or later you will find out all the things the other women already knew--and then some. For, congenital flirt that she is (probably, according to just about any shrink you ask, with profound unresolved problems vis-à -vis her father), she will be constitutionally unable to suddenly alter her behavior. In all kinds of ways, subtle and overt, she will give the impression of coming on to other men, perhaps even to your friends. And when you point that out, she will almost surely deny it, appearing for all the world to believe her denial; it is, she will say, simply the way she is.

In return, the compensations afforded by such a union are very slight, indeed. "For a while," recalls one fellow briefly involved with such a monster, "it was reward enough just to be seen with her, to enter a room and know that every man there envied me. Then I rented a summer house with four other guys, and within a week I was miserable. This woman wasn't going to be happy until she had every one of them panting after her. I'd sit there, watching these incredible scenes--she'd talk to them about their problems, stroking their heads, and afterward suggest we all go skinny-dipping together--and later, when I'd rant and rave at her, she'd accuse me of being an insecure little jerk.

"It took a visit from a woman cousin of mine to straighten me out. She watched my friend in action for an hour and a half and told me, very firmly, to get the hell away."

The Tinkerer

The woman who instantly sets about trying to change her man has probably been around since the dawn of human relations, and in recent decades, thanks to the comic strips and the movies and television situation comedies, she has assumed her place as a full-fledged cultural stereotype, right beside the sympathetic barkeep, the harried husband and the whore with the heart of gold.

Still, a cliché is not always obvious. Often, this woman will operate with a deftness that would give Fred Astaire pause, insinuating her way into your life. Then one evening, as you're en route to dinner with your boss (such is her timing), she may broach the question: "Don't you think your hair is a little too long?"

From there, it usually will not take long for her to get around to your habit of fishing ice out of your glass and popping it into your mouth, the way your place is decorated, your choice, for God's sake, of friends. "My goodness," she might put it, if she really knows her stuff, "you're so much more interesting than those schmoes you hang around with."

And then, if allowed to get away with that, like an aggressive power whose expansionism has too long gone unchecked, she will almost surely try to tamper with your very essence. "One evening over dinner," reports a San Francisco friend, "this person just lit into me. 'You're too reserved,' she told me, 'you laugh at the wrong things, your values are a mess.' Then she started playing analyst, shooting at me all kinds of questions about my parents and grandparents--all of which implied that I was a mess and had better change." He pauses and shakes his head at the memory. "People talk about figuratively running away from someone. I left that restaurant and literally ran away."

Not a bad policy, that. Ultimately, if one has any self-respect whatsoever, having such a person skulking about becomes intolerable. "I'm a very patient guy," notes my friend Paul. "I agreed to change my wardrobe to please her, went all the way from baggy jeans to Brooks Brothers to please her, because I happen not to care about clothes.

"But when she started belittling me for playing weekend Softball, which is my favorite thing to do in the world, I put my foot down. Actually, our parting scene was kind of touching. She looked up at me, gave me a little kiss and said, 'You could be such a wonderful person--if only you were different.' "

The Overly Adamant Feminist

There is no need to catalog the ways in which the feminist movement has altered--indeed, revolutionized--personal relations between men and women. The fact of trying to relate on new, more equal terms has meant a profound adjustment for us all, one that has rent asunder thousands upon thousands of couples; but, in countless other cases, it has been the basis for a new, thrilling kind of mutual understanding. I know a great many men who would dismiss any woman who did not ascribe to basic feminist beliefs as a fool, someone not worth bothering with.

But then, of course, there are those women so vigilant in defense of their version of ideological purity, so inflexible in the face of transgressors that they render life unlivable for any man unfortunate enough to have stumbled into their midst. Say something in the presence of one of these latter-day Carry Nations that she deems "sexist"--call a 17-year-old a girl, for example, or make a lighthearted remark about a terrific recent sexual encounter--and you can expect, at the very least, a scowl, and most probably a vicious tongue-lashing.

There is often ample cause to speculate on the motives, conscious and unconscious, of these people, for anything beyond perfunctory observation of them is likely to raise the question: Is the rhetoric, though sincere, in fact a smoke screen behind which hide profound insecurities and shortcomings?

One would be advised not to look into the matter in that kind of depth. Existence around one of these women, to hear the tales of the survivors, can be a living hell. Says one, "The message was drummed into my head every day in a dozen ways--you're bad and I'm good. I'd start to make the most innocuous remark and then catch myself and wonder--will it pass muster? You end up feeling like a ridiculous pip-squeak; either that or you become as self-righteous and humorless as she is."

That, perhaps, is the gravest danger of all. "For a while there," reports another fellow, "I went around parading my high consciousness as much as she did, flaunting my new superiority to every man I knew. My girlfriend loved it--and all my friends stopped speaking to me."

Often the testing does not cease even in bed. "She used to decide how many orgasms she was entitled to," adds the same guy. "God help me if I got mine and she didn't get hers."

Baby Doll

There are certain females in this world--we're talking now about people over six years old--who stick pictures of Snoopy on the wall, refer to their fathers as Daddy, name their plants and call the bathroom the little girls' room; chances are, if you get to know one of these people well enough, you will eventually run into a stuffed animal, too.

To be sure, a woman of this kind can be diverting for a while, as any child can be. But there will come a time when her inability to function as an adult will become absolutely maddening. For, like any child, she is very good at taking but has a whole lot to learn about giving and sharing. Invariably, the attitude with such a woman is: You buy me the fancy dress and in return I won't cook. Announce you're bringing Walter Cronkite home for dinner and she'll send out for pizza. The chances are excellent, by the way, that she will be equally passive in bed.

The reason you had hoped, at the very least, that she would be reasonably domestic is that you'd learned at the outset that she was in no way prepared to handle the responsibilities of a serious career or, for that matter, even to carry on a lucid conversation with a bank officer after messing up her account. What both of you will very soon discover is that conducting a relationship is even more demanding than balancing a checkbook.

Still, it can be very amusing to observe one of these people, as long as she is with someone else. The following was actually overheard on a New York City elevator. "Please, Bernie, help me. You know I don't know how to work it."

Ms. S. Glick

And then there is the representative of the new breed, the woman as obsessed with getting ahead as any man you know; she is never without her bulging briefcase, is constantly popping up from meals to make vital phone calls, is so often preoccupied with office politics that she is seemingly incapable of talking of anything else. Indeed, in attitude she reminds you of nothing so much as the men in the office you most detest, those cold-eyed bastards who never stop.

But at first her galloping ambition is stimulating, precisely because she is a woman. It is likely to be a pleasant change from the aimlessness of other women you have known--and, besides, you get a chance to demonstrate for all the world how unthreatened you are by a successful woman.

But if she is one of the increasingly large number of the truly relentless distaff division, lots of luck in trying to make a success of the relationship. The shooting star you've latched on to will almost certainly have little time to waste on you, let alone any leftover emotion. Any liaison with her is by definition tenuous, and very low on her list of priorities. When you gaze into her deep-blue eyes, thinking of your future together, she will be gazing back, thinking about quarterly earnings. It will not take you long to develop an acute sympathy for all those suburban wives of the cold-eyed bastards who seem to spend every evening waiting around, reheating dinner.

The bottom line--a term she probably uses a great deal--is that there is simply no future in this arrangement. It is not cost efficient for her--she would do better to slot in a relationship for 45 minutes a week, between appointments--and it is keeping you on an emotional diet about as nourishing as a three-martini lunch.

The Perpetual Noncommitter

The stigma of evading enduring commitment has, of course, long been attached to men. It is perhaps the accusation with which we have been more frequently confronted by women than any other. But, in fact, there are thousands of women out there, and their numbers are increasing, who have precisely the same tendency.

Usually, as in the case of their male counterparts, these women will initially disguise their constitutional aloofness, may even come on surprisingly strong. The object is to get you to commit. Only at that point, their egos satisfied, their insecurities once again allayed, do they feel free to retreat.

And often the retreat is as total as it is unexpected. "I thought things were working out beautifully," recalls a writer I know. "We'd spent a glorious weekend together at a country inn in Upstate New York, one of those places with antlers and flagstone everywhere, and on the last night, beside the fireplace, over brandy, I told her that I loved her. For two weeks after that, she didn't return my phone calls."

Yes, these people can be absolutely heart-wrenching. Some of them, in fact, pride themselves on their ability to bloodlessly cut things off. "It gives me a sense of power," confesses one woman I know, "to look a man in the eye and tell him, 'I'm sorry, I just don't love you.' I kind of see it as getting even."

Others, less overtly hostile, will endlessly profess that in the abstract, of course, they are looking for a lasting relationship; they have simply been disappointed by every man they've run across. The truth, it does not take a Ph.D. in psychology to work out, is that these people are incapable of being satisfied. 'What they don't have always looks better than whoever happens to be at hand. If you have a glaring fault, they will find it and obsess on it until they can barely stand to look at you; if you do not, they will create one and dwell on that. If you're white, they will wish you were black; if you're black, they will wish you were Jewish; if you're Jewish, they will wish you were a Sikh.

A woman of this kind does, however, have one decided strong feature. If you can manage to keep her at emotional arm's length, she is the ideal person with whom to have an affair--after you've been through the ringer with one of the nine others.

"You have been invited to fill a void in her life--and the void happens to be 90 percent of the life."