How I Met Your Mother's Dating Rules - Do They Really Work?

as you know i only have one rule barney said this a lot [Music] should dating rules ever be followed how i met your mother was full of a lot of dating rules often voiced by barney stinson who lived and preached the bro code his infamous framework of do's and don'ts and all things related to women dating and hooking up of course barney's formula pursues a specific set of questionable goals money suits and sex without consideration of his impact on other people but he fervently believes there are proven almost scientific principles you have to respect if you want to succeed romantically you never make plans with a girl further in the future than the amount of time you've been going out and in this he's far from alone the show's focus on rules reflects that for as long as people have dated they've had to navigate a host of perceived laws about how to act who's an acceptable match and how a potential partner's behavior should be interpreted the guy doesn't call you he doesn't want to call you and while today many of how i'm at your mother's rules are cringe-worthy and dated displaying a retrograde understanding of gender they still get at a deeper ongoing desire to codify dating and relationships into a clear set of laws maybe that's because making our romantic and sexual lives into safe predictable ventures would take away a lot of the fear anxiety and guesswork that actually characterized the search for romance hey what's up nothing am i dreaming i'll leave you alone forever now thanks so does how i met your mother really believe it's necessary to follow the rules of dating the show ultimately underlines that love can't be contained by any rules or rational constraints this woman has a hold on my heart that i could not break if i wanted to but at the same time as much as ted and the gang frequently dismiss barney's rules and don't want to abide by them i'm sick of all the rules there's too many of them in some plots they do end up proving the rules right how i met your mother seems to understand the absurdity of dating rules in balance with people's urgent need to make and follow them here's our take on whether any of how i met your mother's rules were on to anything and why real love demands throwing out the rule book [Music] if you're new here be sure to subscribe and click the bell to be notified about all of our new videos [Music] as obnoxious as barney's dating rules can be the need to have some rules and structures in place around romance is universal since medieval chivalry there have been largely agreed upon rituals and etiquette for courtship in past eras this revolved a lot around the social suitability of matches as well as measures to prevent young couples from being sexually intimate before marriage whether through physical means or supervised visits he took out buggy riding in the late afternoon without a chaperone in our modern post-sexual revolution era where daters are less concerned with chastity and more with choice the rules are a lot more psychological and up for debate so it makes sense that deciphering nebulous dating expectations and trying to lay down romantic best practices is a common pastime in romantic comedies and sitcoms not dinner not necessarily on the first date because halfway through dinner you could be really sorry you asked them to dinner whereas if it's just a drink if you like them you can always ask them for dinner the central premise of classic 1989 rom-com when harry met sally is basically to question and eventually affirm a dating rule at its center men and women can't be friends because the sex part always gets in the way and many beloved tv shows feature characters discussing rules in an attempt to determine the appropriate etiquette of a romantic scenario a couple breaks up and they had plans to go to a neutral place who withdraws what's the etiquette episodes of sex in the city are often structured around the women debating or dissecting a particular dating rule or inquiry in the context of 1990s and 2000s manhattan are we simply romantically challenged or are we even if you look back to shakespeare as you like it is centered on rosalind's playful tests of orlando's love for her through a series of evaluations and rules she secretly imposes on him how i met your mother's rules feel undeniably dated today but that's because they're a manifestation of this universal impulse reflecting their specific era in the same month the show premiered in 2005 the game a memoir of neil strauss's time in the pickup artist community became a best seller by teaching men often sinister techniques for seducing women the playbook contains every scam con hustle hood wink gambit flim flam stratagem and bamboozle i've ever used barney is the embodiment of many of these shameless practices including peacocking where a man wears a loud standout piece of clothing to call attention to himself or the infamous negging where a man insults a woman to damage her self-esteem and make her vulnerable to come ons amazing eyes you wearing colour contacts negan that's hilarious saying something negative to a pretty girl in order to undermine her social value it's supposed to make you want to win his approval while men were being taught how to trick women into sleeping with them women in this era were being told to get wiser about reading the signs of men who are wasting their time released a decade before the game in 1995 the rules time-tested secrets for capturing the heart of mr right sold millions of copies by educating women on how to be withholding with men and play hard to get i thought you were serious about this guy you can't sleep with him on the first date oh god here she goes again with the rule 2004 saw the self-help bestseller he's just not that into you made into a 2009 film which urged women to stop making excuses for a man who acts non-committal and recognize that he's not interested if a guy is treating you like he doesn't give a he genuinely doesn't give a together these male-oriented and female-oriented guys added up to a pretty hostile view of dating as essentially a battle of the sexes where it's assumed all men want casual sex and women should deny that sex if they want to be respected or to hook a man as strauss admits in his book a side effect of sarging or using these techniques to pick up women is that it can lower one's opinion of the opposite sex while stephen poole wrote in a guardian review at the time and yet as strauss has described it the inverse is true a low opinion of the opposite sex is a prerequisite for sarging but while much of our culture has thankfully moved on from this war-like mainstream dating narrative and books like the rules and the game are no longer in their peaks of popularity dating rules are still very present and have shifted to fit the times you're wearing glasses it obstructs your eyes which provide us with a very strong signal of whether or not you're trustworthy as an individual dating apps have arguably just created more rules and material to interpret as one has to decipher whether a user is on a particular app for hookups or a serious relationship who the real person is behind a profile how to translate oneself into a witty sexy profile how long to message before a date and how long to give a date before cutting your losses if there's no chemistry a lemon law from the moment the date begins you have five minutes to decide whether you're going to commit to an entire evening some studies have shown that swipe-based dating apps can lower self-esteem or even increase depression and anxiety more rules just makes dating feel like more of a minefield so what's the point of all these rules anyways all of these made up rules can get overwhelming but one rule i actually believe in is that you should use hello fresh to make cooking and eating at home easier how fresh is america's number one meal kit because they deliver farm fresh pre-portioned ingredients right to your doorstep letting you save valuable time in the kitchen hellofresh cuts out stressful meal planning and grocery store trips so you can enjoy cooking and get dinner on the table in about 30 minutes or less plus eating healthier has never been easier with low cal carb smart vegetarian and pescatarian options every week and no matter what you choose every single recipe is packed with fresh produce sourced directly from farmers some of the mouth-watering hellofresh recipes i made at home recently are nacho crunch burgers salsa verde enchiladas and tilapia with scallion sriracha pesto these all made such quick and delicious dinners and totally took the guesswork out of cooking at the end of a long day go to hellofresh.com thetake16 and use code the take16 for up to 16 free meals and three free gifts again that's hellofresh.com thetake16 and enter codethetake16 to nab this very special deal [Music] it's no accident that in a show that includes a lawyer in its cast and a lot of privileged people how i met your mother's rules take on a legalistic tone you do realize that one out of every eight adult women in america is a prostitute you just made that up withdrawn it's as if they're laws that can be used to protect guys like barney and legitimize behaviors that are clearly creepy when they're not predatory since barney's rules primarily apply to men dating women they tend to spend a lot of time dissecting and evaluating women inflating the male ego and abdicating responsibility for actions the rules for girls are the same as the rules for gremlins many are rooted in male insecurity and the desire to exert power over women but their allegedly objective perspective on dating creates an environment where mistreating women is simply science rather than a self-serving and cruel decision this is why barney articulates his bro code as having a basis in authority that is either historical there should be a set of rules that govern the way bros comport themselves among other pros or biblical articles his other dating rules are also occasionally made to sound like they're taken from literal scripture we wait three days to call a woman because that's how long jesus wants us to wait one category of the how i met your mother rules is about criteria for what kind of women men find desirable to sleep with or date some of these are hilariously baseless girls whose names end in l-y are always dirty holly kelly carly lily oh yeah i know it's true others like barney's hot crazy rule a girl is allowed to be crazy as long as she is equally hot thus if she's this crazy she has to be this hot c is on something a little more pernicious the way that women's behavior in dating is scrutinized and deemed crazy if it in any way diverges from whatever a man wants her to act like meanwhile the hot crazy rule implicitly assumes men are more logical but can't help but be overwhelmed by the beauty of the women they're attracted to and this leads us to another category of the rules ones that help barney and other men evade accountability consider the mermaid rule every woman no matter how initially repugnant has a mermaid clock the time it takes for you to realize you want to bone her the idea that men must inevitably want to sleep with every woman they get to know suggest that their behavior is on some level out of their control and therefore they can't be blamed for it even rules created by women reinforce this assumption that certain things are just out of the control of helpless men like ted's mother's rule nothing good happens after 2 am when ted violates it by going to hook up with robin before breaking up with victoria his choice implodes his relationships with both women still the 2am rule that he ends the episode by saying that he proved positions ted's double betrayal as just an unavoidable side effect of it being late in the evening i managed to hurt two people i cared about there's a lesson to be learned here it's this when it's after 2 a.m just go to sleep there are occasional rules on how i met your mother for women to determine which men they should date you never want to date a guy with perfect fingernails jerk nails exactly but these don't receive nearly the same amount of attention and when we look to other shows or movies that center women we see that women's rules focus a lot on cultivating desirability being the kind of woman men think they should date in charlotte's introduction on sex and the city she's talking about hiding a key aspect of herself to avoid turning off a mate most men are threatened by successful women if you want to get these guys you have to keep your mouth shut and play by the rules share from clueless's rules of seduction focus on how to make oneself appear desired by others and sexy i sent myself love letters and flowers and candy just so he'd see how desired i was sometimes you have to show a little skin this reminds guys of being naked and then they think of sex beyond that many of the books aimed at women like the rules and he's just not that into you come across like self-defense protecting women from getting taken in and treated as prey by the barneys of the world they teach women a set of parallel rules that invert the male chase you've got to make him chase you okay if it's easy he'll move on so much so that you can see the rules emphasis on being hard to get as a reversal of the aloofness men were supposed to display through things like the three-day rule that's why the book says never sleep with a guy on the first date totally or the second date tell me how many dates 17. in season five how i met your mother explores this philosophy through jennifer lopez's guest starring role as anita a rules type author who tries to teach women to tame the barneys of the world of course you're still single take a look at yourself you dumb is a brilliant book and it scares away guys who are only interested in getting laid anita uses the power of no to control most men and seems to have a chance of breaking barney this girl that barney's going after she kind of sounds like the anti barney until in the end barney ends up using her own no strategy on her to win maybe you might get lucky after the 12th date no the 11th date no tonight before dinner the show uses its most cartoonish character barney to voice all these rules with an air of silliness and give the series deniability but ted the show's protagonist goes back and forth over how much to believe in them as ted tries to figure out some kind of cheat code to find his soulmate the show's narration is in a sense ted crafting his own set of rules not designed like barney's to pursue lots of meaningless sex but to find true love and understand the dynamics of long-term commitment at times ted follows barney's rules it's not cheating if you're not the one who's married it's not cheating if her name has two adjacent vowels and it's not cheating if she's from a different area code often to regret it other times he pushes back against the rules and defies them you have to wait three days to call a woman that rule is completely played out i got a new rule it's kind of crazy but i call it you like her you call her he texts women early tells them he loves them far too soon for conventional wisdom and dates people in his immediate personal orbit but sometimes this blows up on him and he comes around to thinking the rule was right after all after barney tries to convince ted not to go out with his doctor stella because she violates the platinum rule of not dating people you can't avoid like co-workers or in this case your doctor the platinum rule never ever ever ever love thy neighbor ted rejects the entire premise of barney's rules chances are stella and i are not gonna live happily ever after that doesn't mean i'm not gonna try and when it does fail so help me god it's not gonna be because of some rule but while ted sounds right here the ensuing plot doesn't prove barney wrong stella refuses to go out with ted until after their doctor-patient relationship is over thus avoiding the platinum rule problem and eventually their relationship ends because of the violation of another rule at least that's how ted frames their breakup in his narration don't ever ever invite an ex to your wedding if someone had given me that advice well it would have changed everything and walt's head ignored this rule because as usual he was putting robin first and wanted her at the wedding it's a case where all the other members of the gang including robin agree no x's at a wedding is just a sensible rule of thumb i kind of get the no x's thing why ask a failed romance to come and watch your successful one other rules on the show do seem to come true too like the mermaid rule which can be interpreted in a positive light some of the best relationships come from people in proximity getting to know each other well as friends and liking each other's deeper personalities think of chandler and monica harry and sally or a couple most people thought should have stayed together on how i met your mother robin and barney who develop a romance after spending enough time together to appreciate just how much they enjoy and fit each other what seems to be the trend on how i met your mother in other stories and in real life is that dating rules often do hold true for a while only to fail in the face of a real connection because love doesn't really obey the rules charlotte has to let go of her meticulous checklist of ideal qualities in a man when she finds herself drawn to her divorce lawyer harry who is almost the opposite of her theoretical prince charming and picture-perfect first husband trey harry was bald and he talked with his mouth full but i loved him anyway but eventually she does have the type of fairy tale romance she always wanted it's just with a bald hairy non-wasp man she slept with before they actually went on a date in clueless when cher realizes she likes josh she doesn't know how to act because she'd feel weird putting on some artificial shell for him ordinarily i'd strut around him in my cutest little outfits and send myself flowers and candy but i couldn't do that stuff with josh but this is precisely why they belong together because he knows and loves her as she really is the main characters of how i met your mother are convinced by the rules in a number of plots with love interests who aren't the one but go on to frequently break them when it comes to their true love this is what ted articulates in the three days rule episode his love plot with holly basically proves barney's rule right in an inverted way we should get married that's it we're totally going to brazil together in the end i didn't need to wait three days but holly really really did but ted adds that when it comes to his soulmate he did throw out the rule when i got your mother's number i called her right away we see the same thing happen when lily returns to marshall in season 2 episode 7. the episode where barney puts forward the crazy eyes as grounds for marshall to reject his date chloe ted says she has the crazy eyes what's that uh apparently a thing women have that guys can see and it tells them that the girl's crazy by the end of the episode lily displays full crazy eyes but it doesn't matter because the power of love is greater than any rule you have crazier eyes than anybody that i have ever met i've missed you so much moreover the central rule ted believes in about the friend group's ideal couple the olive theory the olive theory is based on my friends marshall and lily he hates olives she loves them in a weird way that's what makes him such a great couple perfect balance turns out to be inaccurate lily i like olives we'll make it work so there's no good reason why lily and marshall are perfect for each other they just want to be together and don't reliably follow any rules besides ones they make up for themselves which they might even break too similarly when ted inadvertently gets stella back together with tony if you look at it from stella's and tony's perspective the deeper story is again that they were following love and no rule following could have really stopped this in the long run and that kids was the perfect ending to a perfect love story it just wasn't mine this fallibility of the rules also applies when it comes to deal breakers or the personal laws people think they can't give up for a partner ted has specific things he wants in a woman and believes he's unwilling to compromise on maybe there are some girls who wouldn't like it that i called them right away or said things too soon but guess what those aren't the right girls for me but he time and time again puts robin first even though she doesn't want kids like he wants most of all even barney gives up his player's life first for robin and then permanently for his daughter in fact the reason barney says no to anita is that he's made a promise to robin who on some level he still loves which is why he means no and is able to break anita's will and the plot ends up proving that any rule however on the money it is just can't compete with the power of love for most people following any dating rules religiously doesn't lead to love or happiness this is the moral of the movie don john where player jon relishes his routine of picking up girls until his match on the female side of this game barbara succeeds in hooking jon into a serious relationship by intentionally withholding sex from him all these rules on both jon's and barbara's side don't nurture an authentic two-sided connection jon only starts to think more deeply and intentionally when he goes to night school and is influenced by esther a more experienced woman who doesn't care about any rules what do you get from porn that you don't get from sex with an actual person i lose myself undeniably observing common patterns and rules of thumb can be useful in evaluating another person's interest or developing good instincts about whether a potential partner is right for you yet any adherence to rules and expectations has to be fluid like a lot of rules there are times to follow them and times to not taking into account context and re-examining the rules as life changes just as relationships and people are dynamic and multifaceted when marshall and lily notice they've broken the majority of their wedding vows they make new ones then i've had to keep updating them as we go because one set of vowels it can't cover a lifetime of growing and changing with you any practice of adhering to rules is essentially controlling and hiding one's feelings to retain a certain image instead of truly following where a love connection takes you yet the birth of real love depends on a level of abandon being willing to go to a place that may be humbling scary and out of your control it also needs to be nurtured by a feeling of warmth and openness and communications when we instinctively sense a person is playing games that coldness can actually kill the organic developing attraction as a culture we're obsessed with the rules of attraction because these interactions involving people's feelings are specifically not governed by the kinds of rules that theoretically structure other aspects of life where it's much easier to follow a correct path to get the outcome you desire men don't want a woman who's too self-sufficient ultimately the majority of dating rules have been about trying to get another person to like you but when artifice and etiquette are stripped away after rules have been followed or broken the truth boils down to one thing that you can't control they either like you or they don't if everyone in the world followed every one of your rules the human race would cease to exist oh hi friends this is the take on all of your favorite movies tv shows and pop culture don't forget to subscribe and ring the bell for notifications we're gonna need a bigger screen [Music] [Music] so you

Channel: The Take

Views: 134,716

Keywords: how i met your mother, rules, barney, ted, robin, lily, marshall, dating, gone with the wind, bridgerton, the patriot, slepless in seattle, harry met sally, seinfeld, friends, sex and the city, himym, the mother

Id: TfxkPADGLXs

Length: 23min 11sec (1391 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 22 2022