There is a brilliant concept expressed in The Outsider, by Colin Wilson. He asks whether a man with a lifelong toothache is egotistical or self-centered. Let's ask that question of women.

Is a woman's need for love the cause of her vanity or the basis of unselfish giving? Let us ask still one more question: does a man love the woman who is self-sacrificing?

The answer to the first is that any woman with something to be vain about is vain and usually has other genuinely good qualities as well, but she is vain. The woman who has nothing about which she can be vain usually ends up being self-sacrificing. There are many times when a man comes to certain conclusions about the world to which he wishes he didn't have to come.

But to continue, men love the self-centered woman as a woman and the self-sacrificing woman as a person. There is another saying which goes: "You give me a self-centered woman, and I'll give you a great wife, you give me a self-sacrificing woman, and I'll give you a great Sunday school teacher." This is an oversimplification, but points out that woman truly interesting to men as women are fundamentally self-centered. The self-centered woman's life fundamentally revolves around herself; then she moves outward to others, if at all.

You may have an excellent relationship with a self-sacrificing woman by primarily discussing ideas, events, work, or your own ambitions. But no matter how important ideas may be in the eternal scheme of things, you don't win the self-centered woman unless your words appeal to her in terms of her immediate experience which is centered in herself. Any man who has anything to offer the world desires to win a self-centered girl.

Self-sacrificing girls are unfortunately last choice, whether they ought to be or not.

This may sound callous, but it is true. Once more, I wish that it were not so. Don't make the context of your relationship the things that really count; put the things that really count into your relationship with her, based on her self-centered need to be the focus of attention.

Words charm. A man charms women by talking to them about themselves. Dwell on their needs, their feelings, their attitudes, their looks, their ambitions, and, if on some rare occasion she comes up with an honest-to-goodness "abstract" idea that doesn't directly pertain to her own immediate experience in life, treasure it and pray that some day there may be another. Women possess goodness, but it is not in their nature to live in the world of ideas. A woman might just as easily write a book on man's failure to live in the world of feelings. Each sex has its own realm which is home and the other realm to which it makes occasional visits.

There are two aspects to the use of words. One is the choice of words and the other is the way in which the words are spoken.

Women are greatly affected by the physical sound of a man's voice; not the meaning this time, but the masculinity of the sound itself.

A man ought to speak strongly, articulate his words clearly, and mix up the pitch regularly. He probably won't unless he already has, but now he can't say he hasn't been instructed.