Just like with any kind of human interactions, there are many attempts to create theoretical frameworks for attraction between sexes. The quality of different theories explaining attraction can be measured in two aspects:
1) How well they explain certain cases of successful (or unsuccessful) romantic interactions
2) How well they predict the outcome of interactions that are yet in progress
Recently, from one of the forums which I regularly read, I learned about a humorous, yet very interesting theory known as the “ladder theory”.
Being described in many online resources, this theory outlays the differences in how men and women perceive their potential partners, or as it puts – rank them on their attraction ladders.
And although this theory has its share of drawbacks, I was very intrigued to realize that there is one case which can serve as an excellent illustration of its principles in action. I am talking about Cheung Wai Lan whose story was described in one of the previous posts. Let me present the main postulates of the ladder theory and then show you why it is relevant to Cheung’s case.
According to this theory both men and women make a quick (and mostly unconscious) evaluation of the potential partners and calculate a score according to which these partners are rated on their attraction ladder. It is also called a good ladder.
Men make their judgment basing on woman’s looks and perceived probability to have sex with her. Meanwhile, when women look at men, their main criterion is the man’s social value (money and power) followed by attractiveness. While there is a relative scarcity of rich and powerful men who presumably can get any woman they want, most of the women will choose among those men who seem more attractive.
However, the paradox is that in order to understand what makes a man attractive – the last thing he should do is to ask women what they are looking for. Because all descriptions of nice guys who should be “serious”, “kind”, “intelligent”, “humorous” (… there are also other adjectives that you can find in my posts) have little to do with what attracts women indeed.
Ladder theorists believe that men can increase their attractiveness in women’s eyes by being unusual (or novel) and by demonstrating their lack of interest in women. This is exactly that field of “personal development” where multiple dating coaches (or as they call themselves – pick-up artists) put most of their efforts in transforming nice guys with no guts into cool dudes.
Here comes the central point of the ladder theory. While men have just one ladder on which they grade women according to how much they would want to sleep with them, women have two ladders! The first one is for men with whom they would like to sleep (the real ladder, the “good” ladder). The other one is for those nice guys who make great friends but have little chance to jump from friends-ladder to the real-ladder.
And there is no doubt that they want to jump. Cause guys (even nice ones!) have just one ladder and for that reason a guy and a girl cannot be friends. Ladder theory finds only three exceptions to this sad rule:
1. The guy is gay
2. The guy does not find the girl attractive
3. The guy already has a woman that is much higher on the ladder
Now let’s get back to Cheung Wai Lan. As you remember, he developed attraction to Ms. B – a young Chinese girl (who was an exchange student in UK). She was very friendly with him, readily accepted his courtship and even went out with him to few dates including the birthday party of Cheung’s friend. They had long and quite intimate conversations until one day (or more exactly one night which they spend in the bar) Cheung decided to make a movement but got a “slap” in his face when miss B. said that she “had no idea” and “was right busy now”. The strangest thing was that following that incident Miss B. continued to actively seek for Cheung’s company.
And here is the interpretation of what happened according to the ladder theory.
Cheung is indeed a nice guy and gentleman. And from the very beginning miss B. assigned him to the friends ladder. All the efforts that he put into pursuing the girl only helped him to climb higher. Balancing on the top of the friends ladder, he tried to jump from there to the real ladder but it was nothing more than the step into abyss.
There was, however, one peculiarity in miss B’s behavior. Besides going out with Cheung to dates, she used to hold his hand and cuddle him. Fathers of the ladder theory have a special name for guys who get such kind of treatment – cuddle bitches.
Cuddle bitch – a guy who never gets to sleep with a girl but gets to have intimate moments with her like cuddling, spooning, or otherwise being affectionate <…> The cuddle bitch often thinks he is on the good ladder as opposed to the real ladder. So he gets all excited about his position instead of realizing he is being completely used. So this poor tool is really setting himself up for a fall at that point.
I cannot help myself to make few speculations regarding Chinese dating culture from the point of view of the ladder theory.
First of all, there is a term – “ladder disparity”.
It often happens that one person is a lot higher on your ladder than you are on theirs, or vice versa <…> If the man is in the upper position the disparity is a measure of how long the woman will put up with him cheating.
Taking in account how widespread the marital infidelity in China is – it can be explained by one of two reasons: either Chinese women often marry up or their value drops drastically down once they get married.
Here comes to my mind the issue of gender imbalance and millions of Chinese guys without a chance to find brides. Seems that women can be pickier. But what will be the result? Will Chinese girls climb up the ladder or will the disparity of the average marriage increase?
And what about Chinese “leftover girls”? Ladder theory has explanation for this phenomenon as well. Let’s recall that according to it, deep inside all women are gold-diggers looking for money. But here is a catch!
What is important to know about the money/power piece is that previously it was thought of as static. Now we know that the money/power piece of attraction displays time-variance. That is, the amount of money needed to get maximal “points” in the money category varies according to the age of the woman. When a woman is younger her perspective is different as to what makes a lot of money. As she gets older the amount of money necessary for full points increases.
Wow! So, it seems that once Chinese girls miss the optimal age at which they should marry, not only the growing number of wrinkles reduces their market value but they foolishly insist on targeting less and less attainable men.
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You know what is the best thing about the ladder theory? It is that its authors have a sense of humor. So, if you want to get ranked on my friends ladder, you can become my friend on Facebook ;-)
Crystal Tao
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