To find really true love and escape bad romantic situations, you need to understand The Get Scaleand you need to develop a keen eye for get scale inequities.
Given a relationship where there's an inequity in the relative ranking on any of the get scales, you need to wonder why, you need to proceed cautiously.
The standard Get Scale Inequity is the story of rich and powerful using and discarding youth and beauty, and you need to make the decision in advance to sidestep situations where you’re likely to be used and discarded.
Watch what can happen when a really cute guy plays up to a girl who isn’t used to that kind of attention – we all know he’s after her money, but she’s too nervous to suspect:
Watch the whole clip, so you get the idea of how unpopular and undesirable she is – but the gorgeous Montgomery Clift shows up at about 3:45 minutes in. Watch how easy it is for him to manipulate her -- now and forever after, this seduction con won't work on you -- you've educated and thereby innoculated yourself.
Another great movie illustrating the concept is Dogfight, where a group of jerks have a bet:who can bring the ugliest girl to the party.Here’s the scene where River Phoenix sweet-talks Lili Taylor, a girl who isn’t used to that kind of attention.
This movie is worth watching in its entirety, although it’s very painful in parts.
To survive romantic encounters in the real world, you must have a realistic assessment of where you stand on The Get Scale, and you've made a good start.
The most important Get Scale Inequity is The Dorothy Stratten Get Scale Inequity, which we’ll get to soon enough.
The Hollywood Dweeb Marital Fallacy I: An Offer of Marriage Instantaneously Rights All Wrongs.
It's the wicked stepsister of "Love Conquers All". It's revisionist history at its most insidious. It's hooked a lot of fine women up to men who don't really deserve them. It's the pinnacle of crazed fantasy which precedes the raging abyss of marital property division and child support enforcement.
It's the standard romantic comedy denouement, so ingrained in our unconscious that it's startling to realize we really don't believe it in our rational selves.
If I'm too late and you actually believe the fallacy, ask any two hundred married women -- they will assure you quickly that marriage hardly erases a man's faults.
We’re going to talk at length about playboys in movies, those perennial non-committers, as we go, but for now, know that Pillow Talk represents the standard – a gorgeous, cool guy sleeps around with everyone on the planet and then accidentally falls in love with an intended conquest.
Somehow, in Pillow Talk, nobody ever stops to wonder how Doris, who fell in love with chaste, polite, chivalrous Rex Stetson is going to be happy married to rude, selfish womanizer Brad Allen. But I want you to.
And nobody really worries about Gwyneth Paltrow – we all just assume that Iron Man and playboy Robert Downey, Jr. would give up all the bimbos if he made a commitment to her. But I want you to.
This Hollywood Dweeb Marital Fallacy should have no place in your own decisions about making lifelong commitments. All I'm saying is watch for it. It's the basis for almost all Hollywood happy endings and almost no real life ones.
I was single far longer than any of you will be, and I survived. I'm here to guide you to the goal of Gloriously Married - just follow along; you can learn everything you need to know about love from old movies.
