The dating wisdom of “Swingers”: Tell the truth.
The dialog of the movie Swingers includes some really bad dating advice. The film's story-line, however, provides some profound and valuable dating advice.
It's possible to watch Swingers and overlook the wisdom.
If you’re at all drunk or high when you watch it, or if it’s playing in the background at a party, you may only pick up the loud, obnoxious, semi-clever banter of the obnoxious friend Trent, who believes that a man’s joy and fulfillment come from getting "digits" and getting laid. You may pick up on his advice to wait before calling a woman who has given you her number.
You might not get past the way a couple characters objectify women, treating them as nothing more than sexual conquests who get tricked into making themselves vulnerable to smooth talkers. You can get the impression that the movie glorifies the objectification of women.
Watch it again.
While the film does present a couple negative portrayals of female characters, it’s a hell of a lot harder on the men. The most unlikeable woman in the movie has a short scene where her response to an interested man is only to ask what kind of car he drives. The rest of the women present with insight, boundaries, depth, and are consistently too smart to be fooled by the men who 1) assume they’re dumb or uninformed, and 2) aren’t brave enough to introduce themselves authentically. And the men who objectify women are ultimately portrayed as idiots.
The value of Swingers is not exemplified by Trent's games or showboating. Instead, the movie wisely shows the power we gain when we have given up on avoidant games, face our pain, and allow our pain to come with us as we show up authentically in the world.
Lesson #1: Don’t hide behind the games. Show yourself.
The movie follows Mike (played by the film's writer, Jon Favreau), as he tries and fails to impress women. These failures were mostly his fault. We can't blame him for not getting on well with the women who disqualified him based on his car, but the rest were blunders he committed by hiding something about himself, or assuming that a woman isn't as smart as he is.
Our first indicator that he thinks women are easily fooled is a waitress doesn't respond to a joke he tells her, and assumes she’s too dumb to get it. A few minutes later, she calls him out on it. She just wasn’t in the mood.
Lying to Lisa
Shortly after, he tries to pretend to be more established in his career than he is, to a woman he assumes wouldn’t know any better:
LISA: Do you ever perform out here? I'd love to see you.
MIKE: No...
LISA: You should. A lot of comics play Vegas.
MIKE: Well, I'm afraid it's not that easy...
LISA: Why not?
MIKE: There are different circuits... it's hard to explain... you wouldn't understand...
LISA: Who's your booking agent?
MIKE: Oh? You know about booking agents... I don't, uh, actually have a west coast agent as of yet…
Lying to Nikki
His third failed attempt at connecting begins when he meets a woman named Nikki at a bar, and casually mentions that he's shopping for an expensive car. Nikki, it turns out, remembers him from when he ordered an espresso from her at a Starbucks and asked for a job application. He tries to deny that it was recent, ashamed to admit to a woman who works at Starbucks, that he needed a job at Starbucks.
Many men do believe that you need financial and career success in order to get a date, and though it helps to have a job and something interesting to talk about, so does telling the truth.
Telling Lisa the truth
In both cases, he probably would have made better connections by expressing the reality of his situation than he does by bullshitting. Instead of hiding his fresh-on-the-scene status from Lisa, he could have owned it, like so:
LISA: Do you ever perform out here? I'd love to see you.
MIKE: No...
LISA: You should. A lot of comics play Vegas.
MIKE: I'm open to it. I'm still getting my feet wet in LA. How do you enjoy working in Vegas?
Telling Nikki the truth
And see how well an honest conversation with Nikki might work:
NIKKI: Remember? You asked me for an application? I introduced you to the manager?
MIKE: That's right! Thank you for helping me out that day. How do you enjoy working there?
NIKKI: It's OK. It's not what I want to do forever, but it helps pay the bills. I start at the _______ academy next month.
MIKE: Really! You're going to be a _______. I want to know about that.
NIKKI: Well, it's something I've wanted to do ever since...
When he finally tells the truth about his experience, he succeeds. He acknowledges to a woman that he’s been feeling down, and she relates. It turns out, women also struggle with their careers. Humans find humanity relatable.
I recommend imagining that everyone around you gets an accurate sense of you on some level. If you’re insecure about something, it’ll come across one way or another. If this is the case, which is more attractive, someone with an insecurity that he’s working on, or someone who believes his flaws are so shameful he needs to lie to you?
Lesson #2: Own your dark side
Mike's play-acting makes him awkward. His reality includes his fear of failing as a comedian and an actor, and his grief of a former relationship. These strong feelings make it hard for him to pretend to be detached, cool and successful. The more he tries, the more he trips on his own feet. Eventually, he falls flat on his face, fighting with a friend before he goes home and leaves half a dozen messages on Nikki's answering machine.
He finally gives up. Feeling as if he's hit rock bottom, he rests. He sits in his feelings by himself for a while until he gets a supportive visit from a friend whose words amount to encouragement to accept his feelings instead of continuing to fight them off.
“I mean, each day you think about it less and less. And then one day you wake up and you don't think of it at all, and you almost miss that feeling. It's kinda weird. You miss the pain because it was part of your life for so long. And then, boom, something reminds you of her, and you just smile that bittersweet smile.”
When he next emerges, he’s not happy. He’s given up on fighting off the feelings, because he now knows he won’t win that fight. Instead, he allows his feelings to come along with him. This allows him to be sincere as he interacts with his friends, and then with a woman in a club. Having connected more with himself, he’s better able to connect with others.
Lesson #3: Let go of the need to change anything
Often, when we’re urgently needing a result, we’re not in the best state for achieving that result. This is most true when our goal is to connect with or influence others. Whether we’re calling it "neediness," "desperation," or “coming from a place of scarcity,” a state of urgent need doesn't empower you. You are not more likely to get the relationship, the friend, the job, the promotion or the client, when your urgent need has you behaving as if the option in front of you is your last chance. It’s easier to gain friends when you have friends dates when you already have dates lined up. You will have an easier time getting a new job when you still have your old one. And I have always found it was easier to get clients when I wasn’t sure I had space for them in my schedule.
Swingers deals with this phenomenon quite well, along with the inverse: things seem to come easily when you've let go. Throughout the film, Mike shows a strong need to to talk to his ex-girlfriend, who won’t return any of his calls. Magically, once he’s got a potential date in the works, she calls and tells him she thinks about him every day.
Attracting a crowd when you don't have a crowd
The film also gives and answer to the apparent paradox: if abundance attracts abundance, how do we find abundance when we are without it?
A popular answer to this question is the “fake it till you make it” cliche. I’ve never been a fan of the strategy. I appreciate how Swingers contests it by showing Mike’s fakery as buffoonery.
And then it shows Mike succeeding when he lets go of his need for anything to change.
He doesn’t stop wanting company or success. But he allows himself to experience the reality of his moment. He’s lonely. He’s scared and sad. But he’s got friends, and he’s got an adventure to build a new life. Sometimes grounding ourselves in the present requires us to let go of the drives generated by our intense yearnings.
Letting go allows contact with the present moment
Letting go can be scary. “If I let go of my dream, does that mean I’ll never achieve it?” “If I let go of the need for my relationship to function better now, does that mean it never will?”
Letting go of the need to control what we can’t does not mean giving up on what we want. It means allowing ourselves to be aware of what’s going on right now.
When Mike lets go, his new awareness allows him to notice when a woman is noticing him. He approaches her without any need to impress her, and almost everything he says helps build the chemistry between them.
Get in touch
Michael Giles LCSW is a therapist who specializes in anxiety, trauma and men's mental health needs, in the Austin, TX, area. Call 737-241-8135 to schedule a free and confidential consultation.
