NO MATTER HOW you define your goals, it seems to me, you can claim you’ve achieved them only once you have someone with whom you can share that victory. That tribe includes friends, family, and, optimally, a partner as well. I’ve got the first two nailed down—a group of loyal friends and the best family anyone could ask for. But as I wrote earlier, a Google search will quickly reveal how I’m still working on that special someone.
Professional athletes aren’t often thought of as relationship experts. I get it. I’ve been divorced twice. But believe it or not, my friends and I spend a lot of time talking not just about women but about relationships and love. I think at the end of the day, every guy just want to be with somebody who understands him. I don’t think anybody except for a Hugh Hefner wannabe really wants to be that eighty-year-old guy surrounded by twenty-year-old girls.
When I say that I’m not perfect, that I’m a student of life and that fear of failure drives me, some people assume that I’m being falsely humble. But if there’s an area where one can see that I’m a work in progress, it’s my love life. I was always the guy who wanted to be married, who wanted to be the football player who came home to his wife and kids. It didn’t happen that way, obviously, as both of my marriages ended in divorce. But that doesn’t mean I’ve given up on love—on the contrary. For me, figuring out how to find a true, long-lasting love is like trying to figure out how to get to the Super Bowl when your team has lost season after season. It’s another instance of improbable, not impossible. Just because it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean it won’t happen in the future. As you can tell by now, I’m a guy who constantly rewinds the tape, studying my own path and the paths of others. In the process, I’ve observed a few things and made a few goals. Here’s what have I observed from all those years reviewing the tape of my own romantic mistakes:
1. GUYS LIKE THE CHASE. We respect somebody who challenges us. That’s what the thrill of the chase is all about. Here’s an analogy: If you see something that is expensive and out of reach, you process it along these lines: “I want that. How long would it take for me to attain that? I am going to get that!” Once you get it, you take care of it. It is precious. It matters to you, and the more work you put in to get it, the less willing you are to give it up so easily, so quickly. But if you see something and it’s easily attainable, you’re likely to be careless with it. The same is true for relationships.
2. PHYSICAL ATTRACTION GOES ONLY SO FAR. There’s no denying it—men put a lot of emphasis on looks. We know from the instant we meet somebody whether we’re attracted to them physically. That’s the easy part. It’s the soul chemistry that takes more time to figure out. After a date or two, we guys think we know whether or not our personalities are compatible with a woman’s. But increasingly, as I mature, I’m starting to wonder if we’re all too affected by how disposable our culture has become. Some treat relationships like an iPhone, something you update every time a new model is available. Or, say, a coffee cup. Nowadays you have your coffee and throw the cup away. Back in the day, you would carry around a thermos, take it home and clean it out. You kept it forever. Now we’re such a disposable society, we’ve even begun to think of our relationships that way. We men eventually get around to slowing down and realizing not everything is disposable, but only after we’ve matured a bit.
3. MYSTERY IS SEXY. One of the easiest ways to get a first date off on the wrong foot is to tell your whole life story in the first twenty-five minutes. There is nothing sexier than a little mystery.
4. MEN LISTEN MORE THAN WE’RE GIVEN CREDIT FOR. People think men don’t talk enough, but that’s because we listen more than we are given credit for. We ask questions because we’re trying to pick up little pieces of information about you. By listening, we can piece together a woman’s life—her attitude, her feelings, where she is in her life. By listening, we piece together a personality, the story of who this person is and who she might become.
Here’s the rub: as much as we enjoy listening, if a woman talks and talks, but doesn’t ask any questions, it gets boring very quickly. While we’re piecing together her story, we want her to show that she thinks we’re interesting as well.
It has to be a two-way conversation. If it’s a one-way conversation, in his head the guy’s probably saying, “I can’t wait to get out of here because she won’t stop talking!”
If I don’t get a word in on a date, then I am looking for the exit. Like my friend Jay says, I will get the check, call her an Uber, and then I’m out. Because I know if I start a relationship with this woman, I will wake up to talking and I will go to sleep to talking. I can imagine myself driving around the neighborhood just so I don’t have to enter the apartment.
5. WE AVOID HIGH-MAINTENANCE WOMEN. We want a woman who looks good. That’s the first thing that attracts us. But we want her to look good in a way that can be casual and spontaneous. So if we say, “Hey, just throw on some sweats and let’s go to a movie,” she can do it and still look great. We like women who are flexible and confident enough to stand in their natural beauty. No man likes a woman with too much makeup on. That’s too much commotion, too much maintenance.
Once I was on vacation in Mexico with a few friends, one of whom had this girlfriend who took forever to get ready. Every night, we were all late for dinner because we had to wait for her to glop on all this lipstick, makeup, and perfume. She was trying to be perfect; meanwhile, all I could think was “Relax. We’re on vacation in Mexico.” The ironic thing was that she was prettier without makeup, but she just couldn’t see it.
Most days don’t involve luxurious experiences. Most days do include hanging out in jeans or sweats, running errands or doing casual things such as going to a movie. That’s real life. There are women with swag who are extremely sexy even when they’re very casually dressed. It’s just the persona, the aura that they give off, and that’s what we’re drawn to.
6. SWAGGER IS A PHEROMONE. We love women who are confident because they’re good at something. Success is very sexy. Men shouldn’t be intimidated by it. A smart man shouldn’t be intimidated by a woman with a career.
7. LEARN TO ACCEPT A COMPLIMENT. How a woman reacts to a compliment teaches us so much about who a woman really is. If I pay a woman a compliment and she deflects it, then she’s probably not comfortable in receiving compliments. She probably doesn’t see herself the way that I do—and that lack of confidence is very revealing. Unfortunately, far too many women just aren’t comfortable in their skin. If you offer a simple “Oh, you’re really pretty” or “You’re funny” or “You’re so talented”—they ooze discomfort. It’s a fine balance. We want a woman to look us in the eye after we’ve said something nice about her and nod confidently.
8. PERFECTION IS BORING. Women get too caught up with being perfect. Perfect isn’t real and it isn’t interesting. First of all, what is perfect? Perfect to everybody is different. The greatest memories that I have are the mistakes, the things that I laugh at.
I remember the unusual, the spontaneous, and the unexpected, not the so-called perfect. When I played a great football game, I never left the stadium thinking. “Oh, man. That one move I made was perfect.” I left the game and said, “Man, when that one play happened, I never saw it coming, but then I did this to counteract it. I’ll remember and utilize it next time I’m in a pinch.”
A woman may go through a lot of trouble to plan the “perfect evening,” but odds are the guy may go home at the end of the night and say, “That was one boring date.”
I really love that movie The Best Man Holiday, and one of the reasons is that it doesn’t glorify perfection. A video of one of the guys’ wives surfaces. It turns out that when she was in college, she took money for sex at a fraternity party. You expect to find out that it really wasn’t his wife, it was mistaken identity or nothing really happened behind the closed door. Instead she says, “I’m sorry, I was young and dumb and I needed the money.”
He responds by saying, “I love you and it happens.” Of course, it’s a movie, but the point is we are all flawed. Get over it!
9. SOFT TRUMPS EDGE. My business partner Constance spent much of her career as a female exec in the NFL. To date Constance, you had to be a strong man, because she applied, in my opinion, the toughness she used to get ahead in business to her dating life. She was a woman who was used to being in control, running her life, doing what she wanted to do when she needed to do it. It was very intimidating for men.
She’d no sooner have a guy than she would test him. And they all failed until she met Mike, now her husband. He was strong enough to call the test out for what it was.
I understand our softness is the most precious thing we can share with anybody and it renders us vulnerable. What’s true for Constance is true for me, and most everyone I know. No one is truly comfortable being in a position of vulnerability. It’s hard to get comfortable when you feel like somebody else has access to your deepest emotions. We’ve all had things that have happened to us throughout our lives that prevent us from letting others in; we’re afraid that one day that person may use that vulnerability against us. Been there. Done that. But I don’t intend to be cynical about love. I guard against the cynicism and work on letting the hurt feelings go.
10. WILL YOU STILL LOVE ME WHEN I’M 92? When I think of people who have great relationships, I think of my friends Peter and Stacy Hochfelder. Peter is one of the nicest people you could ever be around. He and his wife are like a newlywed couple. They met on a blind date. They even named their boat Blind Date. They always make sure that they are affectionate and romantic with and toward each other. The relationship makes them happy. They wake up happy and then spend their days nurturing that relationship.
Jocular, fun people, Peter and Stacy are as playful with each other now as they were at the beginning of their marriage twenty-six years ago. They remind me of my parents. They can’t live without each other. I figured out only recently that when I’m talking to my mom, my dad is always on the phone. One day I called her in Texas and started talking mess about my dad. My mother, mind you, did not stop me. Then my father pipes up with “I’m on the phone.” Thanks, Mom.
Mom and Dad, Peter and Stacy—those are my examples.
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As I put into practice the ideas I’ve explored in this book, I know my sense of satisfaction will only grow deeper once I find that one person with whom I can do or say anything without feeling judged. In return, I’d like to provide a similar haven for her. Perhaps a relationship that is unconditional and nonjudgmental is as elusive as a Super Bowl ring, but that doesn’t mean I won’t try.
I’m learning how I want to feel in life. I’m learning how I want to feel in a relationship. I’m learning, again, as I did in Texas, a newly arrived kid from Germany, how to be by myself sometimes. More and more, I take walks in Central Park by myself. I go to a movie by myself. I’m learning that I need to be comfortable by myself. It’s only going to help me learn to be comfortable with somebody else.
In August Wilson’s play Seven Guitars, one of the main characters talks about what he’s looking for in a relationship. He says, “I get me three rooms and a place to have a little garden and I’ll be all right. Three rooms and a woman know how to sit with me in the dark, what else can a man want?”
It’s what I call being comfortable. You don’t have to say anything, but occasionally you look over and catch a little glimpse, a glance of the eye, and that’s what matters. I want to come home, lay my head on her lap, have her rub my back while I lie there, still and at peace. I want that “Baby, why don’t you come here and sit on the couch with me” kind of love. The sweetness of knowing “We don’t have to talk, we can just be still.” I talk enough in my day job!