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Complete Woman
February/March 2008
Everything You Know About Men IS WRONG
Big Shots television star and single guy Michael Vartan tells CW readers what men are really thinking...
By Lora M. Wintz
We're in love with Michael Vartan and we're pretty sure you're about to fall in love, too. Granted, we were enchanted with the French-born actor before he even spoke one word during our exclusive interview—after all, he married Jennifer Garner in Alias, gave Drew Barrymore her first real kiss in Never Been Kissed and brought together Jennifer Lopez and Jane Fonda in Monster-ln-Law, all while looking and acting as the dashing, he's-so-perfect guy we all dream of. Now with a starring role in the ABC primetime series Big Shots, Michael is once again capturing our attention, playing good-guy James Auster.
But all character roles aside, who we really want smiling at us from across a romantic dinner is Michael Vartan himself. Michael is that great guy all our friends and mothers spin fairy tales about, even if he doesn't think so himself. Yes, he's that nice—and that single, admitting he just can't seem to find the right women to date. It's a topic he and his single friends have discussed at length, along with a slew of other female-related issues. And lucky for us, Michael is willing to share all the details of what's really going on in the minds of men...
The Truth About Men...
MEN TALK ABOUT WOMEN... A LOT
"I'm surprised there's this notion out there that men don't talk about women. That's absolutely false. We talk about them all the time. That's all I talk about. I'm a hockey player and I hang out with my friends in the locker room. We talk about chicks and why she didn't text-message me back. Women are a good sixty to sixty-five percent, maybe even sometimes seventy-five percent, of the conversation. What we say about them depends on the woman. There are some women that we absolutely detest and can't stand and some women that we adore, so it depends on who we're talking about. Overall, though, I've always felt that women are nastier than men when it comes to talking about the whole love game. Women will lay into another woman and just destroy that person's character and get really nasty. Men are a little more laid back. But we do talk about relationships and women a lot, make no mistake about it."
MEN WORRY ABOUT MEETING MS. RIGHT
"I live in Los Angeles and traditionally, it's a very tough town to date in. It's a whole different atmosphere in terms of the kind of people you meet. There are wonderful people in Los Angeles, obviously, and horrible ones just like everywhere else. But, overall, you meet people who are really career-driven and trying to make it in show business. It makes it hard to date because you never know who you're dealing with, and what their angle is. Most of my friends are single. I have a core group of maybe five or six guy friends that I would consider my true friends. We're all single, we're all in our late thirties. We're not upset about it, but it's just, I think we realized it's very hard to meet someone who you just want to settle down with. We do talk about it a lot. 'Oh my God, I can't believe I'm thirty-eight years old and I can't meet anyone. The women all say 'like' every other word and they don't know what the capital of the United States is.' We talk about it a lot."
MEN ARE CRUSHED BY REJECTION
"Men get no props for how hard it is to go up to a woman and ask her out. It's so hard to go up to a complete stranger you think is cute and ask them out. It takes all of your energy. And to be shot down and ridiculed in public is absolutely crushing. I hate the kind of woman who shoots down the guy who went up to her. Some women will look at you and give you this snarl like, 'I wish you were to burn in a car accident fire.' It happened to me the other day and I walked away from that situation thinking, 'Wow, that person is really nasty. She could've just said no. That's all she had to say.' Just be nice in the rejection or at least have the decency to lie. Say you're engaged. Say anything. Lie through your teeth."
ALL MEN DON'T NEED SUPERMODELS
"I think when you're young as a man, looks are much more important. All I wanted was, 'Wow! Look at her when she's naked! She's pretty.' As men get older the looks/personality ratio switches. Now I'm much more interested in a relationship of the mind and, you know, plenty of little things... like the sound of a woman's voice is much more important to me than it's ever been before. I'd rather be with someone who's less attractive, intelligent and sweet than someone who's a knockout who's not all that nice. And I've never been a supermodel kind of guy. My friends like to call me The Greatest Wingman Of All Time, because while they're busy talking to the mindless models, I'm talking to their normal-looking friends who I find absolutely adorable and cute and inevitably are the ones with the spunk and the personality and the quirkiness that makes women so attractive and interesting."
MEN WANT THEIR FRIENDS AND A GIRLFRIEND
"I tend to pick my friends and my girlfriends based on the same set of rules and values, so more times than not, my friends will get along with who I'm dating. If they don't, that could be an issue for me because I value their opinion and if all my friends hated my girlfriend, I probably would have to take a step back and say, 'OK, there's obviously something here I'm not getting. Let's take a closer look at this girl.' Ultimately, you want everyone to get along. You want your girlfriend to be one of the guys sometimes, and not other times. We want it all. We're very selfish."
MEN WON'T WAIT TO CALL IF THEY LIKE YOU
"I personally don't wait to call a woman if I like her. I think the longer a man waits to call a woman, the more insecure he is. The truth of the matter is, if you meet someone at a club or at a bar or walking in the street or at the library and you exchange numbers, if you call her five minutes later, if she's into you she'll be glad you called. This whole waiting to call someone is the most archaic and bizarre enormous waste of time. What a stupid game. If a guy meets someone he really likes, has enough courage to approach her and humiliate himself in public and actually gets her number, then waits three or four days to call, he's trying to send the message that his life is so big there's no room for you at all, and meeting you was so inconsequential that he's going to pretend he forgot you even met until he pretends he stumbled across your number. Who wants to go out with that guy? It's absolutely ridiculous. If he's into you, he should call right away."
MEN WILL GO TO THE ANTIQUES FAIR
"Ultimately, I think a good relationship is one where there's balance, and you're both willing to give and take. For instance, the idea of going antique shopping on a Sunday afternoon during football season makes me want to kill myself and put needles in my eyeballs. But if my girlfriend has watched football with me for two weekends in a row and cooked for me in the afternoon and just indulged me in my sports fanaticism, then the right thing to do is to suck it up and go to the antiques mall. You just have to do it. That's part of compromising. Otherwise... A woman's doghouse is a much colder, nastier place than a guy's doghouse. That's one thing I've learned."
MEN WANT TO TAKE YOU TO THE GAME
"I'll tell you one thing, if it's annoying for a man to take his girlfriend to the game, he should break up with her. He should not be in that relationship. Get rid of her. Honestly. I think that's one thing about being older that's so great—you really focus on the friendship of the relationship as opposed to all the bullshit that comes along with most relationships. Like the next woman I date, she's gonna come out of the box ready to go and so am I. We're going to be friends first and foremost and therefore enjoy each other's company and that goes for antique shopping and for the hockey game. If taking my girlfriend to the game is going to be a problem then there's a much bigger problem underlying and that's not a good relationship."
MEN HAVE GREAT ADVICE FOR WOMEN
"I don't really talk about my relationships with my female friends. To be honest with you, I don't really have that much relationship activity going on, so there's really nothing to talk about! It's like a dry well... But I usually end up talking about their relationships with the men in their lives. They ask, 'Why are guys so shallow? Why didn't he call me back? What's wrong with me?' And my usual answer to all these love questions is: If he hasn't called you, he's not into you. Trust me, if a guy is into a girl, he will break down the walls of a castle to get to her. If he hasn't called you, he is not into you. Give it up, let it go. It would save my female friends so much heartache and trouble if they would just let it go. Why get invested in someone who's not calling you?"
MEN KNOW THERE'S A RIGHT WAY TO DATE
"I'm trying to remember how long it's been since I've been on a date. And I'm accessing the part of my brain that has cobwebs... I think when you meet a woman and you take her out for the first time, it's nice to pick her up and do the romantic stuff. It's not about taking control right away, it's more about, "I'm gonna take you out tonight, I'm gonna pick you up, we're going to this nice restaurant." I think women like that, too, and that it's the right thing to do. You don't want guy to show up like, 'Where's the nearest In-N-Out Burger?'"
MEN CARE ABOUT YOUR FRIENDS—AND PARENTS
"I absolutely care if her friends like me or not. I think that's the most important thing. You gotta make a good impression with your new girlfriend's friends and her parents. If her parents or her friends don't like you, man, it's gonna be a long haul. It's gonna be a long road. I've been down that road; it's not a good one. You're constantly trying to please a whole set of people, a whole group of family. It's horrible."
MEN WANT TO END IT NICELY
"When you're ready to stop dating someone, the way to break it off, honestly, depends on how long you've been seeing the person and what you define as 'seeing someone.' Some men and women date someone for a week and they quantify that as seeing someone; some guys will date a woman for six months and not be committed to the relationship. But I think if you've been dating for a couple of months, then a phone call is, A) necessary, B) the honorable thing to do, and C) it's the kind thing to do. You don't want to just drop the ball and leave someone hanging without any notion of what went wrong or what's happening. You gotta be honest when you talk to a woman. If you've seen someone a couple times and you're not getting the vibe anymore, then you just don't call them. They should understand after three non-returned calls that you're not into them. And by the way, that happens to us men as much as it happens to women. The number of times I've called a girl I was interested in three or four times and never got a call back... At that point you just gotta move on."
CW Readers Ask Michael Vartan...
Kristy, 24, Syracuse, NY: "I know you were born in France. Do you prefer European or American women?"
Michael: "I have no preference. It's completely insignificant. Women are women, no matter what language they speak, so, I like them equally as much."
Meghan, 23, Chicago, IL: "Are you flattered or annoyed when random women approach you and talk to you?"
Michael: "I'm always flattered when someone approaches me. But once they do come up, it depends on how they act. When they're nice and kind and sweet and polite, then it's wonderful. If they're rude, obnoxious and crazy and aggressive..."
Tali, 22, New York, NY: "I've heard some men think women who wear glasses are hot. What's your opinion?"
Michael: "Absolutely. There's a funny little French saying which means basically, a woman who wears glasses likes sex. Glasses are incredibly sexy and the whole librarian thing? I'm definitely into it. The idea of an educated, very smart, very sophisticated woman who takes off her glasses and goes nuts, that's very sexy."
© 2008 Associated Publications
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