You need to date a “SIMP”

Besties, in this week’s episode, Aja invites you into the Ladies Lounge for a serious conversation about dating a guy other men would classify as a “simp.”

Unfortunately, there’s a dominant narrative that men who “simp” for their women are weak or emasculated, and Aja is here to argue the opposite.

Let’s break down what the term simp really means and how a popularized, often misused phrase has been weaponized against men who actually give a sh*t about their girlfriends, partners, and wives.

Besties, let us know what y'all think on this one!

-Grant & Aja

Transcript

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I don't know about you, but I'm not trying to date a man that's not head over heels obsessed with me. So in this episode of the Ladies Lounge, we're gonna be talking about why dating a simp is the best kind of man that you can date. They make the best husbands, boyfriends, partners, people. So let's go ahead and get into it. We're gonna start by defining what a simp is. So here we go. In internet slang, a simp is someone, usually a man, who shows excessive attention, devotion, or deference to another person in the hopes of winning romantic or sexual favor. Then it goes on to say the term generally describes someone who tries too hard to please someone who doesn't reciprocate their feelings. So I want to go ahead and linger on this for a second. The term simp is often attributed to a man who bends over backwards for a woman, who shows respect for a woman, who is loyal to a woman, who listens to a woman, who shows up for a woman, who respects a woman's boundaries. And a lot of the time, when you hear this word, it is in online spaces social media, Instagram, Facebook. Sometimes you might even hear it like on TV. And the issue with how the word simp is used is that it is weaponized against men who treat their women with respect. And that is the major thing that I want to unpack here with you all today. When you hear another man calling your man a simp, you might think that it's embarrassing. And it took me a long time to get over this hurdle. Because when I would hear somebody say, oh, your man's a simp, I immediately felt very defensive of him because it's like, no, he's not. He's not a simp. He's masculine until I had to redefine what simp meant to me and what these men thought simp meant. And so they're telling me that my man is a simp. Why? Because he listens to me, because he values me, because he respects my boundaries, he takes me on dates, he buys me flowers, he'll stop anything he's doing to take a phone call from me. That's a simp. I'll take a simp over a masculine, manly man any day of the week. And it's really important for you to redefine that type of language when people are attacking your man or you and saying these types of negative things about him. It is a weaponized phrase to mean that you are overly ambitious or overly involved in your romantic relationship with a woman. And shouldn't men be ambitious in their pursuit of romance? I vote yes. I vote yes, pick me. You know what I mean? I have the answer. The answer is yes. So I want to get further into why you should date a simp and the psychology behind why men find it so emasculating to love and revere and adore women. The first thing I want to say is people act like being adored is embarrassing. But at the same time, we all want that fairy tale life. You've seen it on all of the comment sections on Instagram where men are like, oh, you've got a real one. I want a real one. She's a writer. That comes with being adored, that comes with being respected, that comes with being trusted. And women want the same thing. But I think that we've convinced ourselves for so long that it's corny to be in love, that fairy tales don't exist, and maybe they don't, but on some sort of spectrum, they do. And we have wrapped ourselves, we have shrouded ourselves in this ideology that things aren't always as good as they seem, or that type of love doesn't exist, so that we partition ourselves from actually being able to experience something like that. And everyone wants to be adored on some level. So why wouldn't you want a man who's obsessed with you? Healthily obsessed, of course, that is the caveat here. We want him to be obsessed with you in a healthy way. And that goes back to people think it's so embarrassing to be with somebody who adores you or to be adored, or for somebody to show public affection towards you, that they like claim you publicly. That should not be embarrassing. Because why would you want to be with the cool nonchalant guy when you could be with the chalant guy? You could be with the man that thinks you're incredible, wants to claim you, desires to make you happy, goes above and beyond for you. You could be with that man. But because it's cool to be with the nonchalant guy, so many of us want to take that route. No, no, no. I'm telling you right now, the corny guy or the guy that you think is corny will be the best partner you have ever had because he's going to listen to you on a deeper level than you've ever experienced from anyone else before. And the issue here is that so many women are being taught to distrust the love that we so deeply desire. And that's why when we see words like simp online, they are not only damaging to men who want to display acts of love and affection to women, they're also damaging to women because we start to believe that men who show affection, adoration, and who want to love you out loud are embarrassing. It's not cool. We're so overly programmed to be drawn to the nonchalant guy, the cool guy, the guy that reserves his feelings, the guy that doesn't show you how much he cares about you or how he feels about you. And we romanticize these things because we're obsessed with the chase. We're obsessed with the high of does he or does he not? Listen, all that stuff is cute when you're young, but as you start growing older and your brain starts to mature, baby girl, you're not gonna want to play those games anymore. You wanna be with somebody who you know how they feel about you. And you don't ever have to second guess that because he's too cool to show it, or you're scared that he'll be called a simp by some random strangers online. Point B, men can act disrespectful to women all day online in it as seen as normalized behavior. But the minute that a man shows his love for a woman out loud and then platforms it on social media, that man is berated and so is his woman because being whipped and being in love are things that we now feel are corny. There is a huge stigma around men being able to display their love and affection for their women. And a lot of the stigma for simping is about men policing other men for showing too much love and affection towards women. Now that we've spoken about how simps are portrayed on social media and the conversation that often swirls around them, I want to get into the psychology of why men think that other men who simp are lame. There's a few points that we need to discuss here. And the first is that men are taught that power comes from caring less about something. A lot of men grow up absorbing the idea that the person with the most power is also the person who is the least emotionally invested. You see this everywhere when it comes to dating. Don't double text, don't seem too interested, make her chase you, act like you don't care. Women love negging. We don't love that stuff. We know that we don't love that stuff. But the underlying message here is that attachment creates vulnerability. And men often want to distance themselves from being vulnerable so that they can maintain the illusion of power they have when they are not emotionally attached or invested in something or someone. So unfortunately, in our current social climate, a lot of men are seen as don't give too much of yourself to a woman because you are surrendering your power and you are giving her leverage against you. And the core issue here is that a lot of men see relationships that are supposed to be healthy as a power struggle, that they have to find a way to maintain dominance rather than understanding how to navigate a partnership. A point that needs to be underscored here is that men both fear rejection and vulnerability. And I would go so far as to say that they fear vulnerability even more than they fear rejection, because breaking down your wall to allow yourself to be vulnerable to somebody and then being rejected is worse than being rejected if you didn't show interest. That's why a lot of men have a hard time reconciling doing nice things for women or telling women nice things like I'm proud of you, I love you, I miss you, because those are vulnerable actions to a lot of men. If they do not feel that as being reciprocated, they can shut down. And all of those things require deep vulnerability. And for a lot of men, emotional distance feels safer than emotional honesty. So mocking the guy that's a simp becomes a mechanism for these men to defend themselves and fortify their lack of emotional intimacy by making fun of the men who are emotionally intimate. And doing so is a defense mechanism against their own fears of being vulnerable. This is something that we all know, right, ladies, men perform masculinity for other men. They don't do it for us, they do it for themselves, they do it for each other. And if you talk to any stripper, this is important. If you talk to any stripper, when she when they talk about how much money is being thrown on them all night, the idea, if you haven't had any experience in a strip club, right? The idea is that, oh, they do this so that other women know how much money they have. They don't. Men do that so that men know how much money they have, so that men see how little this money means to them. That throwing 10 bands on a stripper in Houston, Texas means nothing to them. Then it becomes a pissing contest. Now they're competing with one another. Obviously, this bodes well for the strippers. Shout out to the girlies out there getting the bag, right? But this really goes to show just how far men will go to perform masculinity for other men. They will shut themselves off emotionally, they will spend money, they will spend time in the gym, they will do all of these things online to get the eyes of men on them, the approval of men. So to me, this is not surprising, but a lot of male behavior is driven by their need for male approval. So when these men start prioritizing this energy elsewhere, such as getting a girlfriend, you'll start hearing these disses being hurled towards them because they're leaving the social male hierarchy to invest that time and energy elsewhere. That's why you hear certain phrases like, oh, she's got him wrapped around her finger, or oh, he's a simp, or oh, he's whipped, because he's no longer investing that energy into impressing other men. He is now diverting that to impress his woman. And that is a disruption to the male hierarchy. Simps have it hard. Simps really do have it hard. And I hope that you're staying with me through this video and really understanding the gist of what I'm trying to tell you. And that is that there are so many social layers to men showcasing emotion and vulnerability and how that also translates to how they treat women that we need to break down in order for men to be more emotionally vulnerable and for women to also accept more emotional availability from men. Because just as much as men's lives revolve around impressing other men, they also use their proximity to women to oppress other men. That's why pursuing a woman is so cool. Oh, he's got all the hoes. Oh, he pulls all the girls. Oh, he's got 10 girlfriends. Oh, he's had this many bodies. All of those things are very cool in the manosphere, right? But as soon as a man locks in on a woman who he chooses he wants to be his permanent mate, then all of a sudden that pursuit of getting a woman and showing men that you have access to women becomes the same thing that kind of stabs you in the back. It's a double-edged sword. A core part of the issue is that society celebrates men who are in pursuit of women, but then become uncomfortable when men start valuing women. When women are no longer seen as just a conquest and they're actually seen as people, all of a sudden, here we go with that, that here we go with that phrasing again: man's a simp, man's lame, man's corny, man's whipped. That is massively detrimental to men's psyche, but also teaches them that women are only conquests. They're not people. And if you're not gonna receive accolades by other men for pursuing women, then what are you doing? You're you're actually in a relationship that you value. No, you're supposed to be doing this for sport. So as long as, as soon as a relationship is no longer for sport, men start to change the narrative around what it means to have a woman in your life and to be with a woman. Because it's fun to be outside, it's fun to cheat, it's fun to hunt. But then when you have a woman that you truly value, it becomes something that you are then berated for and mocked for. And you hear it in a lot of the language. Like I said before, oh, she has him wrapped around her finger. Oh, she has that man whipped. Oh, what do you have to get advice from your wife or your woman before you do X, Y, and Z? And that is because a lot of men genuinely dread and despise female influence. For some men, they are not insulted because a man loves a woman. They become insulted that a man will now tailor his decisions to how his woman feels because she does have some sort of influence over him. And influence is not the same thing as control, but he is taking her life and her desires into account. That if that's a simp, give me one of those every day. Okay, I got one, but I recommend that you get one. Now that I've gone on a 15-minute spiel about what a simp is, why men don't like simps, and what the psychology behind hating on simps is, let's actually talk about why dating a simp is the best thing that you can do. And the first thing is a simp has already chosen you. He's showing up for you, he's being present with you, he's trying to make your life easier. He's not going to test you to see what types of things that you'll allow. He's not going to try to find out where your boundaries are by putting you in uncomfortable situations. He's going to try to prevent those things from happening to you. So when you hear, oh my God, that man is a simp, you might instead think, wow, he respects his woman's boundaries. Wow, he shows up for his woman. Wow, he is present-minded with how she feels and just has a general respect for women. A simp is not going to leave you wondering, like, oh, does he like me? Is he serious? Am I too much? He's not going to do that. He's going to communicate with you on your level to make sure that you are in a good place because you are the woman that he chose. And like I said, he wants to make your life easier and not harder. The best relationships aren't emotional scavenger hunts. I know that so many of us have grown up in emotionally turbulent situations where we conflate, meaning that we confuse an emotional roller coaster with love and with passion. That is not the case. So when I say the best relationships aren't scavenger hunts, you're not going to have to run around town and put together a bunch of pieces trying to figure out how this man feels about you. You are going to know because a man that adores you as a simp would thinks about your needs, he checks up on you, he answers your phone calls, he's not playing games, he's not leaving you on red for hours just to see how many times you'll text him back to back. He doesn't have time for those games because he's trying to build a future with you. He's trying to get to know you. And if you have walls, he's trying to dismantle them. A lot of us women spend so much time trying to invest ourselves into emotionally unavailable men. So when a simp comes around and he's showing us that he is emotionally available, it's kind of jarring. Like we don't know what to do with that information. That was an issue in my relationship with Grant for quite some time. I did not know how to reciprocate his openness to me because I wasn't ready to be open because I was only used to chasing love, not receiving love. So when you're with somebody who wants to open you up and be with you and show you that they care about you deeply through consistent repetitive behavior, it can be a weird thing. But you have to train yourself to know that you are deserving of it. And this is where a lot of women get stuck as well is we want to make fun of the guy that's a simp too. We want to fall right in line with those masculine tendencies that other men display, where it's like, oh my God, how corny is it of him to love another woman like that? That's so lame and so unrealistic. It's not lame and it's not unrealistic. We're just being programmed to think that it is so that we lower our standards and we accept less and we continue to default to emotionally unavailable men. Being with a simp ruins everything for a lot of people. But the one thing I hope that it ruins is your perception on what you deserve and what type of beauty that can be found in a relationship where somebody is really showing up for you and not using you as a part of a game or a trophy or a chess piece. And speaking of chess piece, something that is very underrated about simps is that they actually like women. I know it's so crazy. We are so conditioned to believe that men do not like women, that finding men who truly like women is such a rare trait. I will agree it is, but it still exists, right? And there's so many conversations swirling around, oh, men don't really respect women. That's not the truth. Simps do, but there are pretenders, y'all. So don't be coming at me like, oh, I dated a simp and he turned out to be a cheater. No, there's pretenders. But a man that really loves and adores you, you will know in your heart of hearts that that man will never betray you. Yes, like I said, there are some pretenders, but you got to ask the right questions. And hopefully you've seen him in certain situations to know how he would act and what type of standard he holds himself to. Like, for example, my man, he says, he tells me all the time, I don't fuck with cheaters. If any of my friends cheated on their girlfriends, I'm holding them accountable for it. And if they don't want to be accountable for it, then they can't be my friend. That is such an admirable trait. There are not a lot of men who hold other men accountable. So if you are with somebody who is able to express to their friends disappointment and their infidelity and the choices that they've made that have betrayed their female counterparts, that is the type of man that you really want to keep because you know for a fact if he's holding his friends to that high standard, he holds himself to an even higher standard. A man who enforces boundaries like that, even within his friendships, really truly values women as people, not just conquests. A simp tends to value a woman's opinions, respects women, and also understands and wants to learn more about how women think and feel. One thing that my boyfriend says that I love so much is he always says, I love listening to what women have to say because I genuinely believe that women are smarter than men. There are men who say things like that that are performative. Mine's not one of them. So hopefully you find a man that's not performative. But when you find a man who is saying things like, I genuinely think that women are smarter than men, women make better decisions than men, women are better equipped to deal with pressure and emotional turbulence than men. Those are the kind of guys that you want to look for. The kind of guy that's gonna show up for you and really has something to say and doesn't want to just tote you around like a token because you're a woman and pretends like he actually likes women. No, you will know when a man really truly likes women just based off what he says, if you are really listening for it. The last two points I want to make here about dating a simp is simps see your happiness as their happiness. I cannot tell you how many times my man has been in a great place and I don't feel like I'm in a good place. And he wants to make sure that I'm in a good place. I don't put that on him. I'm not sitting here being like, oh, well, I feel broken today, so it's your job to fix me so that I can feel whole also. He genuinely feels us and sees us as a unit. So whatever, whatever happiness I have, whatever happiness is derived from me or our relationship or my accomplishments, those feel like happinesses to him, accomplishments to him. He praises me just much as I praise myself. He praises me just as much as he praises himself. There is no imbalance in the value that we share in our relationship. He gets genuine satisfaction from not only making me happy, but seeing me happy. And not because he's weak, not because he's wrapped around my finger, not because he's a doormat, but because my happiness matters to him. That is so important. More women should be able to experience how their happiness truly matters to the man that they're with. And the older you get and the more boys that you mess with, you're gonna realize how truly rare it is to find someone who values your happiness at the same level as their own or even above their own. That is an incredibly rare trait that I hope more women get to experience. Being with somebody that is quote unquote called a simp to me really means that you're with somebody who is sensitive to you, who understands your boundaries, because the only reason he's being called a simp is because he's understanding and caring of women. What greater compliment is there? What greater compliment is there? It's easy to default and feel shame when somebody is calling your man something that's out of his name. But if you are able to reframe what that means in the context of your relationship and your life, it really does change the landscape of how you feel about certain words that are being hurled at you that are intended to be insults or attacks, but end up being accomplishments. I can't tell you how many times now, since I've reframed the word simp, men have said, Oh, your man's a simp. And I just respond, simps make the best partners. My man never disrespects my boundaries. He always listens to everything that I have to say. He wants me to be happy. He values my input. He thinks that I'm smart, he thinks that I'm kind beyond thinking that I'm sexy and pretty, he thinks that I am a beautiful person. He wants to hear my thoughts. He will literally come to me and try to get my opinion on his business because he values what I have to say. You should be with somebody that values what you have to say. And if a man who values me, who makes me feel safe, who makes me feel adored, who makes me feel loved, who never makes me second guess my placement in his life, if that man is seen as a simp to other men, then give me that. Give me 10 of them right now. Fantastic. Sensational. I'll take 20 of them. We have to stop romanticizing emotionally unavailable men. Oh my God, I changed him. Oh my God, he's different now because of me. I know that that sounds so fun, but it's really not. Because how much more effort are you gonna have to pour into him to keep him with you? How easily can the next girl? Catch his eye and sweep him off his feet. These emotionally available men are not sustainable. And something that women don't talk about enough in love and relationships is how important emotional sustainability is beyond financial sustainability or financial compatibility. Beyond those things, emotional sustainability is one of the strongest pillars that you can build a relationship off of because you always know where your partner's gonna be. There's nothing more difficult than being with a man who loves you on Tuesday, hates you on Wednesday, and then is making you grovel and beg for his attention on Thursday. A simp's not gonna do that to you, babe. And if he is, he's not a true simp, okay? He's a faker. He's a faker. And we need to weed out the fakers. My closing argument to all of this, my closing statement: women have been taught that the most desirable men are the ones that love them the least. We are taught that it is sexy and hot to compete for the attention of men, and that once you gain the attention of that undesirable, nonchalant man who all the women want, that you are somehow higher in the pecking order, that that somehow makes you special. And I get why that feels like that's the case. But ultimately, competing for the love of somebody that you want and you desire, that should not be the type of action that women reward themselves with. Under no circumstances should you chase a man, babe. Under zero circumstances should you chase a man. We've been taught that men are these wild animals that we have to tame, that they're hard to read, that they're emotionally unavailable, that they might have one foot in and out the door, that he might keep you guessing. We're taught that staying on our toes in relationships is this fun, sexy, normal thing. It is not normal to be emotionally dysregulated. You should be with somebody that makes you feel emotionally regulated. Your relationship should feel emotionally sustainable. And it's funny because the way that we pursue most men, where we're chasing them, trying to show them that we're the best option amongst all the other women. I'm different, I'm pretty, I'm funny, I'm this, I'm that, trying to position ourselves in opposition to other women who are also competing for perhaps that same man. We often idolize chasing men. But then when we talk about the type of man that we want, he's the man that adores us, prioritizes us, is proud of us. You see, you see the connection, the disconnection here between how we're being socially raised to pursue men versus it being totally against what we want. The overall message here is that we have convinced people that being deeply loved is something that should be avoided. That's why we're on this hamster wheel chasing men that that we don't mean anything to, because we're taught that we should be a part of the chase. And that's really not the case. I don't mean to be Dr. Seuss and rhyme that that rhymed. Dr. Seuss, run me my coin. But a man who is absolutely gone about you should not be somebody that is also being ridiculed online for that same thing. Your man should be gone about you. He should wake up being like, oh my God, I'm so blessed and lucky to be with her. I wake up. Grant will literally stare at me in my sleep. And he will stare at me and move my hair. Well, most of the time I'm wearing a bonnet, but if I'm not wearing a bonnet, he'll move my hair out of my face and be like, oh my God, you're so beautiful. Oh my God, I love you so much. I used to have nightmares. I don't have nightmares anymore because in the middle of my dead ass sleep, my man is telling me affirmations about how much he loves me, how pretty and smart I am. But that is my wrap-up on why women should date simps. Just to go over it again, he's gonna be there for you. He's never gonna make you second guess, and he's damn sure not gonna make you chase him. Thank you for coming to another episode of the Ladies Lounge. We love you, besties. Let me know if this hit home for you. Are you dating a simp? Do you wanna date a simp? Do you feel like you're afraid to date a simp because of the social ridicule around simping? Let me know. And if any men listen to this episode, do you consider yourself a simp? And if so, shout out to you, King. Hopefully, you're not a pretender. All right, besties. I'll check you on the next one. Bye.