Men fight because it feels good. It’s thrilling. Testosterone explodes and adrenaline surges. The hormonal musk kicked up by a MMA fight is potent enough to grow hair on a grapefruit. We have love of the battle in our blood. There are biological and evolutionary reasons for this. Like many male mammals, men compete for territory, food, and, most importantly, females. After all, it’s our genetic compulsion to spread our seed. Violence is part of our nature. It comes in handy when a giant, shambling mound of protein with tusks needs to be taken down. It’s a negative when … well… read the news. If I were a cynic, I’d say that war was invented to keep the surplus of men down.

Ladies, let your pubic hair grow. Allow it to run riot like a wild, verdant jungle. Shave not your delicate triangle of womanly power. Not all dudes demand a shorn ‘gina. I know that many do, and I apologize on behalf of those creeps. And it is creepy – I can’t help but think a lot of dudes drool over the bare look because it’s infantilizing. This might not be a conscious kink, but it’s true. I’m not so into the pre-pubescent look. In fact, I’m all about ‘70s porno bush.

Then again, when it comes to sex, I don’t demand much. That she shows up, likes me, and takes her clothes off are my biggest concerns—and that she gets my name right.

You can’t change the one you love. Your significant other isn’t a fixer-upper that you can repaint, renovate, and redecorate to suit your whims. Loving someone for who they could be, should be or as you see them in your dreams isn’t love: it’s self-absorption that says more about your own flaws than theirs. To totally massacre President Kennedy’s famous call to action, ask not what love can do for you, but what you can do for love.

Dear Missionary Position,

You don’t get any respect. People think you’re old-fashioned, or bland or submissive. The other positions are more popular than you are. Flashy pornos feature kinkier ways to go at it, and popular magazines feature sex positions that would make a carnie contortionist reach for the Ben Gay. Some of those positions are just balancing acts for acrobatic show-offs more interested in human Jenga than sex. And then there’s Shakespeare, who called you the “beast with two backs.” Don’t worry, I don’t believe he wrote all those dull old plays himself either.

To many women, looking stylish is a total obsession. And I don’t think you dress to kill to impress the men in your lives, because we just aren’t that picky, nor are our tastes refined enough to offer substantial critiques. I gave up watching “Project Runway” (the female equivalent of UFC) after the second season because I always backed the losing designer, without fail.  I think it’s a ladies-only horse race. Women dress up for other women. Dudes are casual spectators of your beloved sport.

When the current woman I’m dating (I know how you ladies love nicknames, so let’s just call her “the current woman I’m dating” or TCWID) dolls up, she makes me sweat like a prom date.  She looks beautiful and reminds me of a cactus flower: a colorful, delicate, powerful little bloom that a thorny, ugly world shouldn’t produce but does. And then there are the nights where she greets me at her door wearing nothing but a t-shirt, boy shorts and glasses and my heart high-fives my brain. Packaging isn’t a huge priority to men. But that doesn’t mean we don’t appreciate the short skirts.

It is not important for my girlfriend’s father to like me; we are all far too concerned in this modern age with being “liked.” There is no virtue in the pursuit of instant, superficial approval. Her father and I aren’t peers, or buddies, and we’re not dating. I’m the dude who’s nailing his little princess, and our entire relationship is based on one thing and one thing only—that I’m making his daughter happy. One of the ways a man makes his beloved happy is by meeting her dad, something no man likes to do. These meetings are like high-level diplomatic negotiations between nations, rife with courtliness, subtext, and menace. We meet the father not because we want to, but because it makes you happy. And that’s all he wants to know.

There are only two reasons why I’d move in and live with another girlfriend. We’re married and determined to fill a sweatshop with our nimble-fingered love critters. Or she cracks me in the head with a shovel, sews my mouth shut, replaces my eyeballs with marbles, and sits my stuffed body in the corner. Whatever you do, don’t move in with your boyfriend. What? It’s too late? Sweet Zeus, Odin, and Quetzalcoatl, winged serpent god of the Aztecs! I hope your cohabitation doesn’t end the way two (two!) of mine did – with helicopters launching off the roof amidst tornadoes of debris and smoke, a single individual hanging off the skids, flipping the bird to the person whose name is on the lease.

Men should buy women flowers. They are colorful. They smell nice. And without them, flora would never get laid. To many, purchasing flowers is cliché or corny or tacky. And to others, it’s an outdated ritual in our modern era of gender equality. I’d like to address the men reading this (all five of you): buy the broads flowers. Trust me. And now to all the women reading, who outnumber us dudes 100 to 1: allow the douches in your life to buy you flowers. Trust me. 

Women always seem to ask me where all the good men are, as if these near-mythical dudes are hiding behind bushes, chained up in some vampire’s basement, or are just rare and elusive, like the snow leopard. Normally, I have to resist responding, “Maybe the good guys are just avoiding you.” But the answer to this frequent, lovelorn lament is simple: The good men are right under your nose. And that’s the damn truth.

The old cliché warns against judging a book by its cover, and this is especially true when sizing up a lover. You just can’t tell how sexually adventurous a person is by looking at them. Appearances don’t always deceive; sometimes they just obscure the truth. And I’ve learned over the years that just because she looks Amish, doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a vibrator the size of a jackhammer under her bed.