What follows does not stem from any particular experience I have had, but rather, it is from observing dear girlfriends go through what I am about to describe and reading emails sent from girls living at this blog who have also gone through the same thing. Am hoping that this entry may help some girls either avoid or let go of their own ‘Mr.Adjective’.

Every once in a while, I post a personal opinion on straight men and the straight women with whom they interact.

Tonight, I’ve decided to discuss one such caricature of a man.

Society at large calls him A Player.
Women call him The Love of My Life.
Men call him Stud.
I call him Mr. Adjective.

The man with the thesaurus
Mr. Adjective doesn’t have to be spectacularly beautiful, but he does have to be charming. He needs to know how to work a room and everyone in that room (male, female, straight, queer, undecided, fetishist, child, etc.). For the most part, Mr. Adjective does this by making every single person in said room feel like they are the very centre of his attention. This is often done by his undivided almost creepy concentration on and awareness of you when you’re in his face. He’s heavy with eye contact, will ask you intimate details about your life and may even share intimate details with you. (In hindsight and when you revisit his words, you’ll recognize that he didn’t really give you much of anything, let alone something honestly intimate.)

Mr. Adjective will tell you you’re ‘innocent’, ‘childlike’, ‘fragile’, ‘delicate’, ‘breakable’, ‘exposed’. Lines that are well practiced and well placed in Mr. Adjective’s game of seduction. He’s smart enough to understand these words evoke a need for protection, and who better to provide that protection than the very man seated before you telling you how strong and sexy you are. ”And yet, how oddly ‘fragile’ you appear to be.”

It’s relatively simple: He’s a predator, and he’s supreme at what he does.

I’ve been lucky because I’ve had one such experience which I recognised immediately and so was able to avoid (as it was being executed rather poorly by a man I am inclined to call a mental handicap).

A small aside to any women currently suffering the aftermath of Mr. Adjective: What he doesn’t know yet is that he’ll peek and then drop as soon as he hits 40, due to the repeated intake of antibiotics used to fight his many S.T.Ds.

Your role in Mr. Adjective’s game
The problem with Mr. Adjective is that whereas he may be playing you (& recall: “Players only love you when they’re playing”), Mr. Right will also throw adjectives around because he means it. Whereas the former is somewhat of a loser in need of validation received from throwing his d*ck in anything that moves, you will genuinely enthrall the latter (how could you not?). You have to learn to differentiate and to hold Mr. Adjective at arm’s length. For the most part, Mr. Adjective will make a killer friend because there’s a lot to learn from him in terms of male/female interaction (just as there is to be learned from Ms. Player where men are concerned).

Unfortunately, there’s no equation here. There’s no simple word or moment or indication that will help you differentiate between Mr. Adjective and the nice guy; it’s a matter of trusting your gut instinct & your intuition and ultimately, of learning how to be a good judge of character. If you’re Ms. Player, it’ll be easier for you to pinpoint Mr. Adjective, understanding his game and seeing his tactical moves before he does. Ms. Player will play it back in spades. (e.g. evoking what every man wants to hear about himself: strength, alpha, provider, protector, etc.)

Be the smarter woman and know what’s happening as it’s happening. While doing this, permit Mr. Adjective the illusion that you’re falling for his every word. Essentially, let him think you believe what he’s saying to you (because being seduced by Mr. Adjective is really quite lovely). Then move on.

The aftermath of Mr. Adjective
If you fell for the seduction willingly or otherwise, your interaction with Mr. Adjective will be short lived. When all is said and done, he’ll do one very particular thing: he’ll insist that you call him. Over and over again, he’ll insist that you call him. This happened to F and I had to sit back and watch it without saying a word because she wouldn’t allow any of us to ‘slander’ the boy in question. The fall out from that situation was devastation where she was concerned, but she’s a better woman for it today.

Understand that he’s not asking you to call him because he wants you to call him. It most definitely is not because he wants any sort of a relationship with you. It is his way of pussying-out. And by ‘pussying-out’, I mean he doesn’t ever have to call you. You may call five times or maybe even ten times. Every time you speak, he’ll tell you how happy he is you called; he’ll tell you how great it is to hear your voice; he’ll tell you he’s sorry he’s not called but he’s been so busy that he’s not had a moment to “even” shine his ego. He’ll never commit to calling you, not even at the end of that conversation…instead, he will ask you to call him again.

Mr. Adjective never wants you to think ill of him. He never wants you to discover he’s an asshole, and so he always wants you to walk away thinking he still wants you “if only”. “If only” he had more time. “If only” he didn’t have such a busy schedule. “If only” he got that rash cleared up. “If only” he wasn’t such a gigantic enormous leech on your emotional well-being.

That’s his hook, because it validates what you were looking for: That he wanted to hear from you, and you can’t be angry with him because he was happy to hear from you. Wasn’t he? I mean, why would he ask you to call back if he wasn’t happy to hear from you?

There are two things Mr. Adjective can’t handle: (1) you discovering that he’s an enormous d*ck; and, (2) a woman sharp enough to know what he’s trying to do. Re the former, if he showed you he really wasn’t pleased with your call, you’d think he was an asshole. Re the latter, he will immediately back off, not even attempting to pursue Her because she’s not good for his ego. He won’t be able to seduce Her, and that would be a huge defeat where Mr. Adjective’s concerned.

He feels good when he seduces you.
He feels good when he wins at his own game. (He’s a winner!)
He feels good when you call him.
He feels good because he never has to feel guilty.
He feels good because you pay him way much more attention than he ever deserved.

In closing…
If he wanted you, he would have come after you and nothing in the world could have gotten in his way. That’s the bottom line with men, and if they’re incapacitated and incapable of pursuing what they want (you), you don’t want them anyway. Don’t kid yourselves about Mr. Adjective; he’s a messy variation of ‘p*ssy’ because he doesn’t have what it takes to play you and walk away from you like a real woman. Instead, he half-asses it and plays you while still wanting you to like him and think he’s a nice guy. I actually can’t help but feel sorry for Mr. Adjective. But I’m arrogant that way.

Never believe that you’re the exception to the rule but always know that were he lucky enough to bag you for the long haul, no body else could compare.

Don’t sit around waiting for him, because he’s not thinking about you. (Sweetheart, he’s too busy trying to find an acceptable adjective for ‘underage’.) Believe what he says to you in the moment because you are all those things, including fragile and sexy and sensual. Because Mr. Adjective may have been lucky enough to hit the nail on the head thanks to his bedside thesaurus, it doesn’t make it’s reality any less true.

It’s very nearly Saturday evening and a nice guy is waiting for you to step into his life as Mr. Adjective sits at home and applies his ointment. Get out there and have some safe fun…