Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man

Steve Harvey's book, Act like a Lady, Think like a Man, is funny and straight-to-the point. He lets women know exactly what a man wants: Support, loyalty, and "the cookie"--and if any of those items are missing, he will go elsewhere to find them.

He points out how essential it is for women and men to continue to understand the differences in our expectations of each other. He also explains that women show men very quickly whether they are the keepers or the ones to have a good time around, without the need to commit. He gives interesting examples. Here's one. If a man tells a woman she is looking good, the keeper will say something like, "I believe in being healthy and fit." The woman not to take seriously will shimmy and shake her booty while doing a little turn-around to show off her assets.

Mr. Harvey was recently interviewed by Time Magazine:

"Why do you think so many women who want to be married aren't?
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"Here's what's happened over the years. Women's standards and requirements have lowered. And as men, we know that. We have taken advantage of it. We've created terms that we feed to women that allow us to exist as we do. We created the term nagging. There's really no such thing as nagging. As soon as a woman starts registering her complaint, we call it nagging. We let you know it will drive us away. We created another term. When you first meet a man, so you don't ask a lot of personal questions and questions about his business, we created the term gold digger. Now why would a woman not be concerned about her financial future — for herself and her children? But we created the term gold digger, so now, because you don't want to be known as a gold digger, you never ask a man anything. You don't require anything of a man. So many standards have been lowered by women that now a man doesn't have to climb over a very high bar to get to her. So now you have more men who can get away with more things with more women without any repercussions."

"In your chapter on affairs, you say that women have to take some responsibility when men cheat. Have any women taken issue with that?"


Not yet. I'm pretty sure they're coming. I tried to release women, to let them know that usually when your man cheats it has nothing to do with you initially. We men try to use you to justify what we're doing, but it's usually that we don't have ourselves together. [A man] is weak in some area, and so he goes outside his relationship. But there are some things women do to contribute to this. I have a chapter in the book talking about what a man has to have: support, loyalty and "the cookie" [sex]. If any of those things are missing, he's going somewhere to get it, because he has to have it. I try to tell people how important sex is to a man. All you gotta do is look at prisons. That's the roughest analogy I can give. If it's not happening at home, he's going to get it somewhere. He's just not that good of a guy that he's going to sit there and do without it. And a lot of times men cheat because there are so many women out there willing to cheat. If women say, "I'll take something rather than nothing" — wow, that's a playground for us. I know that answer doesn't fare well with women. But we're very simple creatures. I told HarperCollins, this book could actually be about 35 pages. Because we're guys. We are that simple."

Yes, the book is very simple. It could be written in under 35 pages. But the explanations are humorous and have the ring of truth, so it's enjoyable. It emphasizes the importance of women having standards. This is in keeping with my dating and relationship philosophy. Though this book deals with understanding men better, my point of view is that some men are not worth understanding or attracting. They are The Dirty Seven. However, when you have encountered a man who is not one of The Dirty Seven, then Steve Harvey's book is a painless and delightful way to learn how to Act like a Lady, Think like a Man.