For The Women – Girl Game
There was a relatively short-lived blog named “LaidNYC” that existed in 2013 and 2014. The blog is gone but the posts are still floating around the Manosphere in a variety of forms. The original blog was primarily aimed at men. However, the post below was written for women. The advice is sound, if not a bit difficult for women to read. It’s worth it.
In game blogs, it is often asserted that women can’t have game beyond some gold-digging exceptions. I disagree. The problem is guys who make that claim are looking at it through the lens of ”guy goals” of money and sex. Sure, there is little a girl can do in that regard besides find a sucker and be a hot slut.
However, girls are more concerned with getting a man to bond to her on a deep level and acquire his love. For that, there are some things she can do.
Girls, Lets get two things out of the way first:
90 % of your appeal to men is your looks. If you don’t have the genes, this can suck but you have to do what you can: Stay thin, wear makeup, keep your hair stylish and dress to look good, not to assert your status to women.
Fear the wall. Do everything you can to delay or lessen the blow of the wall through healthy living, but know it is coming. Know that you will be gross and undesirable long before your male peers. This is not fair. This sucks. But you must accept it.
But enough about your looks, you shallow, superficial woman! What about your personality?
Act like the guys you aren’t attracted to. For example, a guy who brings gifts to a woman before sex will surely not to get laid. How about the other way around? A girl once brought me a little keepsake on our second date. ”I got this for you”, she giggled. It was a little painted figurine of something we had talked about on our first date. Nothing special or valuable. Yet I keep it in my ”girl box” full of memories of girls past, like slips of paper with phone numbers, birthday cards, panties, etc. I never slept with her (her choice), yet I still think about her sometimes.
Know how to compliment a man. For every time you call a man nice, sweet, and sensitive, tell him ten times that he’s confident, a leader, funny, charming, handsome, manly, ambitious, and athletic. Men instinctively know nice guys get cuckolded. The first girl to ever reject him probably told him he was nice. Being nice is bad. Even if he is nice to you, that is not how he wants to be defined. Show him you see him how he wants to be seen.
Leave cute notes for him to find. My favorite thing a girl has ever done for me was leave a note in my underwear drawer that said ”Roses are red, violets are blue, I like having sex with you <3”. It doesn’t even have to be a sexual note. A simple note reading ”I did your dishes babe, *muah*” gets the job done just fine. Girliness of handwriting counts. Write in pink or purple ink/marker. It is my educated opinion after years of dating that American girls need some serious work on their note-writing game.
To the guys: Steal this tactic. Girls I date now get lustful Post-it scribbles from me inside their panties and bras.
Girl up your voice. High, feminine voices are heart-melting. I have a voicemail from an old fling saved on my hard drive. She wasn’t saying anything special, just calling to make plans, but her voice was so sweet and girly that I can still listen to it and enjoy her essence. What if your voice isn’t high? If you smoke, quit. You sound like a gravely road. If you don’t smoke and your voice is not pure girl, consider some voice/singing lessons so you can better control it.
Let him do things for you, then show appreciation. The key: Have him do masculine things, not emasculating things. Ask if he’ll help check your oil or protect you from something. Don’t ask him to hold your purse or run to the store for you. He should feel like a protector filling masculine gender roles, not a servant doing a butler’s job. When he does something for you, show genuine appreciation. He’d prefer it be sexual in nature, but it doesn’t have to be. A sincere thank you is bare minimum.
Men want to be men, give him the opportunity.
Present authentic emotion. I once had the First Big Fight with a girl I had been dating for about four months. When it became clear to her that she was wrong and I really was considering leaving her, she kneeled in front of me, tears streaming down her face like a faucet, begging me not to leave her.
I saw passion. Deep emotional capacity. Modesty. Willingness to submit. Real fear of losing me. Until that moment, I really didn’t know I meant so much to her. I didn’t leave her. It brought us closer together.
Some might say ”she manipulated you by crying”. Nah. A man with enough experience can tell the difference. Not all tears are manipulative but there’s a reason women try to use manipulative tears: Men respond to real tears.
The corollary of course:
Cut out the fake tears. If you cry to manipulate and play the victim, you won’t respect the man who falls for it, and you will piss off the man who doesn’t.
Cook, clean, sew. Fill the feminine void in a man’s life. If he loses a button, you say I can fix that for you. You always have a new recipe you want him to try. You bake him and his friends chocolate chip cookies just because. Your first reaction when you go to his place isn’t to plop on the couch, it is to clean the kitchen.
Be sunshine. Brooding men are hot. Brooding women look infertile. Starting today, your default emotion is happiness. Your default facial expression is a smile. You treat people pleasantly and sweetly. You do not make sarcastic jokes. You laugh at other people’s jokes. You giggle. You don’t engage in serious or negative conversations. You are a ray of sunshine and you do not care if people who are less happy judge you for being happy.
Earn trust. There’s sexual trust, and there’s verbal trust. You need to earn both. For one, he needs to know you won’t sleep around on him. One way to show this is by not sleeping with him too fast. Men instinctively know that girls who spread their legs quickly for them spread their legs quickly for other men as well. He also needs to know you won’t spill any secret he tells you in confidence. This is, I believe, the rarest quality for a girl to have. I’m not sure I’ve ever fully trusted a girl in this regard, not even my own mother. If you are a trustworthy girl who does not gossip you are worth your weight in princess cut diamonds.
Avoid projection at all costs. Women are attracted to leadership, humor, status and ambition in their men, so some girls falsely believe they can attract men by being ambitious and status-driven. This does not work. The feminine attracts the masculine. To attract a man, do not act like a man.
I’m not just being hard on you here, girls. Men are guilty of projection as well. Beta males want girls to be devoted and emotional towards them, so they give out their emotions and devotion easily. Men are very attracted to looks so we end up with chest-shaving metrosexuals. Men are just as guilty of projection in this area as women.
A word on clinginess. If a guy thinks you’re ”clingy”, he’s just not that into you. Remember Vince Vaughn in Wedding Crashers alerting of a ”Stage 5 Virgin Clinger”? This was a problem because he wanted to fuck her and leave her as soon as possible. If your goal is to be fucked and chucked, then by all means present yourself as time-free pussy. If not, cling a little. Take some intiative in texting him. Give a little PDA. Show him you want to spend time with him.
I’m not saying become an obsessive stalker, but when a man is looking for a girlfriend, a little clinginess is much better than the alternative. Players don’t want the emotional commitment that clinginess signals. Boyfriend material does. The hotter a guy thinks you are and the more he wants to keep you around, the less of a problem your clinginess is.
Go forth and girlify.
The Private Man 
He made a point of saying that he’d make his posts available in another format (i.e. an emailed .pdf or something), but I haven’t heard anything. Do you have any sources for his stuff? His writing was gold.
I’m doing some digging on this. I really hope all of his content is available somewhere.
He did a zip of all his writing. Look in your inbox. You’ll have a nice surprise.
I’d like a copy of that if it can be arranged.
A few comments on dressing. Learn to dress well, not like a slut. Long skirts with a well fitting waist (show off that all important waist to hip ratio). Long sleeves and a modest neckline. Something that flows well when you walk. I really shouldn’t be able to outshine you when I’m wearing a tuxedo, make sure you can dress to match. Style does count. Learn to walk smoothly, don’t tromp around. Don’t slouch, keep your head high, especially if you are taller than average.
I’m from Texas, so jeans and boots can look really good to me, but if you aren’t built like a barrel racer, you might want to give this look a pass.
One other thing, go take Aikido for a year or so. It will improve you balance tremendously and you will learn how to fall without hurting yourself. I’ve known too many women who have been injured in falls on snow and ice, or even a wet floor. Plus, Akidoists don’t tend to have the violent nature that is not uncommon in other martial arts, so you might even find a keeper there.
Grace matters. I’ve known a number of women who weren’t that attractive until they were in motion. There are classes that can teach this.
Grow your hair long, at least past your shoulders. There are very few women who can look good in a pixie cut. I understand if you don’t want to grow it so long that you wind up sitting on it, the look is fantastic, but it can be impractical.
Personally, I don’t ever want to teach a girlfriend how to shoot again. Being competent and safe around firearms is a plus for a lot of men. But, again, I’m a Texan.
I still have the first couple of post it notes my gf left me at my place proudly planted on my corkboard to re-read every now and then.
Girly notes can make your day when you know they come from a place of adoration and respect with a sprinkle of girl crush.
And +1 to all the info about ‘cling’. So true.
Good post. Very good points.
Still disagree about status and career. It might not be what sexually attracts men, but it’s a commitment marker. The sphere feels differently. Life experience tells me something else.
n game blogs, it is often asserted that women can’t have game beyond some gold-digging exceptions. I disagree. The problem is guys who make that claim are looking at it through the lens of ”guy goals” of money and sex.
This reminds me of an observation I made as a kid. Ask any man what they would do if they were reincarnated as a woman and you’ll always get the same answer. They’d come back as a prostitute.
Interesting. Why?
In the US, prostitution is highly frowned on, illegal in 99% of our country, has a high risk of violence, not to mention the threat of STDs. And let’s not forget rape, when people who know you’re a sex worker refuse to believe you are “off the clock” or force you to perform an act you don’t want to do.
If the law were changed and it was a legalized/standardized profession for men and women to get into…then there’d be a point. But until this happens, it seems odd to want to be a sex worker. (Not bashing any man or woman reader who is one!)
A high number of the men who answed this question usually followed up with something along the lines of, “And I’d be the best and the richest prostitute that ever lived.” I doubt that they envisioned the lower rungs of the profession. Still, as a kid, I found it facinating that the same men who could be quite judgemental about proper female behaviour would choose something entirely different for themselves. It was the first time that I saw the correlation of prostitutes being women who embody the masculine ideal of money, power, and sex. Well, at least in the idealized theory. The reality, on the other hand…..
Huh. I actually knew an escort/call girl in college. She was a pretty classy woman, about 22 years old, very nice and knowledgeable about current events.
She generally enjoyed her job (it was through a service, not her alone), but would be frank about some of the issues she had to deal with. Most of her clients were cool, but then there’d be the incredibly overweight guys…the ones who sweated all over and didn’t believe in deodorant…ones who tried to bribe her/force her to do anal or let them smack her around as “play”. Then there were the men like what you spoke of above who happily used her services, but then would sneer and make derogatory comments to her face after the deed was done. This is something I truly cannot understand…if your mindset is so fucked up that you think a woman having sex with you necessarily lowers her value as a human being or dirties her in some way, maybe you should be the one not having sex with her.
It seems certain parts of the manosphere believe that prostitutes just have sex with hot guys, or at least decent looking guys, all the time who are nice enough to get her off as well. According to the escort I mentioned, she often had sex 2-3x in one day…but her only orgasm was the one she gave herself before bed. It’s a job, and causes stress/frustration just like any other, especially if you are “on call”…People need sleep, and getting 3 hours of rest after a 12 hour shift only to get told you have to wake up, shower, make yourself gorgeous, etc. because another dude requested you does *not* sound like a good time. It’s not like you’re getting paid to have mind blowing sex with someone who cares if you are satisfied or happy…you’re getting paid to let people (yes, she sometimes had female clients) use your body.
Again, I’m not against sex work. If that’s what someone wants to do, it should be protected and legalized like other occupations. But it certainly gets overly romanticized/eroticized by those who don’t have to do it every day to pay bills.
I’ve known three. One who became an addict and the life chose her. The other two chose the profession. Of the ones who chose the profession, one was an escort and the other was more like a modern day courteasean. (Very wealthy men where there was a social aspect as well as a sexual one.) Definitely some romanticized /eroticized ideas floating around.
Tarnished said:
if your mindset is so fucked up that you think a woman having sex with you necessarily lowers her value as a human being or dirties her in some way, maybe you should be the one not having sex with her.
Well, this is pretty much the psychology that blows womens minds isn’t it? This is something that isn’t just directed at prostitutes but women in general.The fact is, it’s out there. And even though we are warned about it when we are younger, because it is so alien to our own psychology, we don’t really beleive it.
The thing is, I can understand a man’s desire to not be unfavorably compared to a previous lover of his wife…or to hear that she had a fun time with 20 lovers and he only had 3. Nobody likes a braggart or a manipulator, after all, and that would be a bitchy thing to do.
But at the same time, I’m so thankful to have a FwB who doesn’t think this way. He has had 12 previous partners…he’s my only one so far. Though I’m in no rush to gain more partners, he says I should and is completely fine with being one of many. As he puts it “Why the hell would I look down on a woman who just had sex with me? That’s the worst possible way to get a repeat performance.”
There’s a reason we’ve been FwB for 9 years…
Or rather, women don’t really believe that any man we would be involved with would turn around and project that on to us. But it happens.
This is gold…….nailed it.
These are the qualities that attract men.
Thanks for posting.
Lol, you might want to read from the beginning. Carefully.
No love for tomboys/non-feminine females, eh? 😉
Tarnished, wrote above:
“who happily used her services, but then would sneer and make derogatory comments to her face after the deed was done. This is something I truly cannot understand…if your mindset is so fucked up that you think a woman having sex with you necessarily lowers her value as a human being”
This mindset exists not because she’s having sex with him. It exists because he must pay her for the act not given of her own volition but by monetary inducement. It reinforces the occupy notion of the haves and the have nots. Only women can commodify sex. There is no equivalent demand of male sex workers to service females. The supply/demand only goes in one direction. Hence the John is annoyed with his own biology for having such a need and at the woman who exploits his need to turn it into a transaction.
When one class of people have such plentiful access to a resource they don’t need to pay for it (alpha) and the other class has to pay a premium for it (gamma), the ire will not be directed to those who get to consume on the cheap, but the one controlling the resource.
Imagine men controlled all chocolate distribution. Men enjoy chocolate every once in a while, but women kill for the shit, especially on their periods. Now imagine men arbitrarily decided girl X is cute – she gets free chocolate, girl Y – fugly.. she needs to pay lots for chocolate. Girl Y thinks thats unfair. I shrug my shoulders. At the end of the day girl Y will buy the chocolate because she really wants some fucking chocolate.. and she will really use derogatory comments to my face as i hand over the chocolate. I am lower than a human being to her despite my giving her chocolate. Because i have made it a commodity that has inequity of distribution and she happens to be on the wrong side of that distribution system… the one that has to pay for access to chocolate.
Sorry for going on such a tangent. I just wanted you to see why a John might not see a person who is selling him sex in a positive light. She’s not doing him a favor, she’s exploiting his biological urge for her fiscal gain – if you can point me to an equivalent action men perpetrate and exploit against women, i’ll be happy to hear it.
M3,
Hey, how you doin’? Haven’t seen you around for a while. Hope all is well with you.
Okay, back to our conversation…
Yeah, when you put it that way (aka making sex a commodity similar to a material product) it makes sense that the client would be upset with someone he sees as having the power to give or take something from him that is arguably a necessity. I think this is where the analogy fell apart a little, because chocolate is a Want, whereas sex (or at least physical touch) is a Need. With more self control, the women in your scenario could simply choose to not pay such prices and carry on with their lives sans chocolate. MGTOW to an extent have done this with sex and marriage, but that’s probably as close to a male version as possible. Goes back to the whole “Nobody is owed sex, nobody is owed commitment” trope.
In my view, it’s weird to think of sex as a commodity. It is a physical way of showing very deep, very specific love to another person…it involves massive amounts of trust and safety for both partners. I’d never be able to be a prostitute, because I can’t “fake it”. So it’s an odd thing, sex. Some can use it as a resource, but others can’t even consider it as such.
“In my view, it’s weird to think of sex as a commodity. It is a physical way of showing very deep, very specific love to another person…it involves massive amounts of trust and safety for both partners. I’d never be able to be a prostitute, because I can’t “fake it”.”
That’s why you are such an ‘odd’ woman. That you can’t ‘take it’ speaks to your ‘male like’ ability to not fake genuine desire/attraction.
Why so few men turn into Gigalo’s. Why so many women end up marrying and having pity sex with men they care nothing for or are not attracted to. For many women, sex is a means to an end – not about desire. This is probably an adaption to the transactional nature of sex where women hold supply and men control demand.
Prostitutes, gold diggers, status whores.. they all use sex as a trade off to acquire something they desire other than the actual act of sex itself. Even if they enjoy the act on a superficial level, it is in service to a higher purpose of gain not related to any actual feelings towards their target.
Men really can’t fake a boner and most don’t want to, unlike vast swaths of women who evolved this way strategically. That desire to be with that person is real – even if it’s for a fleeting one night stand – they still desire that person – and not for anything that they might extract or require from them in the future.
As Rollo would say, men love idealistically, women opportunistically. Don’t take offense to that.. we’ve already stated you behave in a manner at odds with the stereotypical behavior of woman many times. 🙂
It’s cool, M3. My mind is a freakshow, and I accepted this a long time ago. So…when are you going to get back to a post every now and then? 😉
… Then there were the men like what you spoke of above who happily used her services, but then would sneer and make derogatory comments to her face after the deed was done. This is something I truly cannot understand…
I think you’re missing the power-trip/domination angle of it for the male.
Sure, there’s plenty of truly alpha men (Eliot Spitzer, Hugh Grant, fill-in-biz-exec-here, etc.) who use sex workers for the time-saving convenience of it all, but they’re probably the least likely to go power-trippy on a prossy (i.e. they get enough of that kind of ego self-stroking every day just turning down all the hot wimminz who want to ride cowgirl on their jade stem for free, just to get another rung up the socio-economic ladder).
But consider the main consumers of pay-for-sex, the gammas who are themselves the down-trodden, and who have zero wimminz pursuing them for sex, ever… they just want a few minutes of feeling like the famous movie director with a casting couch… “crikey love, ya can’t act OR give a proper blow job, GET OUTTA MY SIGHT ‘fore I throw you out!”… puff up chest, enjoy the afterglow, then slink home to the land-whale wifey…
… and if you peruse the sex worker studies done over the decades, you find that for most female sex workers it’s these verbal put-downs that still rankle them years later, not the degrading and even dangerous porno-flick sex acts they performed. For Red Pill men, this is not so much of a surprise.
I think that makes sense though. They aren’t paid to be verbally abused or degraded, they are paid to provide sex. Performing potentially dangerous sex acts is something that escorts who decide to offer them is a job hazard, just like guys who pick heavy lifting jobs know there’s a better than average chance to throw out their back. But these guys still hate it when white collar dudes talk down to them or flaunt the fact they work on the 15th floor instead of in the warehouse.
As to paying for sex…would it be preferred if it wasn’t available at all? I don’t get mad at grocery stores for not giving me free food, and I didn’t get upset with the bank when I still had a car loan, just like I’m not pissed at my landlord for charging me rent. Shelter, physical touch, food/water, and (to a much smaller extent) transportation are all necessities of life. If someone is able to provide me with a commodity that I couldn’t otherwise obtain, they deserve to be rewarded for the work they put into it.
“I don’t get mad at grocery stores for not giving me free food, and I didn’t get upset with the bank when I still had a car loan, just like I’m not pissed at my landlord for charging me rent.”
It’s natural for people to bitch about inequality, even if that inequality is rooted in biological norms you ain’t gonna change no matter how hard you bitch.
You would get mad if the grocery store gave food to men at sale prices, but women had to pay full price with the rationale that men are rarely hungry and only eat once in a while but women are voracious and eat all the time. (Ovulation vs. Sperm production, ready to go status)
You would be pissed if the banker gives the good looking woman a car loan at prime+0.5% for unknown reasons you are left to imagine, whilst he tells you’re getting the same loan for prime+6.9% – in spite of the fact your credit score is 824! You would most certainly be pissed. (You aren’t owed a car loan)
You would be really mad if your landlord charged you $2000 for a 1 bedroom squat but let a bunch of nymphs room and board for nothing in the penthouse.
That for women, the idea of paying for sex is so alien should speak volumes to the inequity of the bio reality. Women are so capable of having a lover at any time satisfy their desire on their timetable that having to pay for sex is a foreign concept, or they are not interested enough in sex to justify spending financial resources on it’s acquisition during a dry spell. Women are INCAPABLE of understanding the experience of sex/lack thereof from the male perspective.
It’s a biological reality. Men want sex more than women. You can argue it till you’re blue in the face. The argument is not about ‘enjoying’ sex, but the frequency, the drive, the impetus. Only women who are at the height of their fertile period in ovulation, with their baby clock firing on overdrive can understand.. that feeling she has in her – that’s most men every single day their balls are full. Biologically, men want it more and that gives women sexual power over men. Hence commodity.
This biological reality presents in many women’s rants about biological inequality when it comes to things; like how men get to walk away after sex, women are sluts/men studs, women are preggo for 9 months, men piss standing up, women need more toilets, men don’t have hormonal swings, don’t bleed for a week, don’t need to spend on tampons, etc… all that bitching will not change the biological realities of men and women.
But bitching will ensue nonetheless.
“As to paying for sex…would it be preferred if it wasn’t available at all?”
It would be preferred if we didn’t have to suffer the biological inequalities we do.. but it’s not going to change… ever.
“If someone is able to provide me with a commodity that I couldn’t otherwise obtain, they deserve to be rewarded for the work they put into it.”
Yes. There’s no problem with compensation for commodity. Women have to do it all the time. Invitro, buying sperm at the sperm bank, etc.. that’s probably the closest analogy to men going out to buy sex, women going out to buy reproductive capacity – either because they are infertile, or feminist harpie cat spinsters who are so unattractive they can’t coax a man to impregnate her for free.
“There’s no problem with compensation for commodity.”
-Okay, that’s fine then. It’s when people say prostitution should be free that it is nonsensical. If someone’s job is to have sex, they should be paid for it.
I’m not sure if all your analogies make sense (men need more calories to keep a healthy weight not fewer, and more men tend to be obese than women), but I get what you’re saying. The thing is, inequalities always exist. If I found out that my landlord let HB 10s live there for free…whatever. I’m not going to fret about it. That situation would be unfair, true, but hey…it’s his property, his rules. I’m not obligated to stay there if it bothers me that much.
As to whether someone who is physically female can fathom the sex drive of one who is physically male? Don’t know.
I can honestly say I personally think about sex every few minutes, regardless of what my environment is. Physically, I’m always in “ready to go” mode and always have been, 24/7/365. The only time that changes is if I have a stomach virus and am literally *being* sick. I’m unsure if this is how it is for men. I do know that in 9 years I’ve never said no to sex, but he has begged off about 5 or 6 times. Doesn’t sound like this is typical though, so take it for the anecodote it is.
This is more like… how to be in a mini-relationship with a guy who really probably isn’t after a serious relationship, which… I’m not looking for. It’s all fine advice, otherwise, I suppose. Women need to be smarter about understanding what they really want, and whether what they want is at all feasible. If you want a serious long-term relationship, all of the good ones are pretty much taken by about 25, whether you’re a man or woman. It’s true that some well off men who are past their prime can get a “decent” woman (but there is always some kind of “exchange there because no man or woman wants to date someone who is significantly older/less attractive than they are) – but that’s all the more reason for women to consider just not bothering. And that doesn’t mean you can’t interact with men and enjoy their company. Just don’t go out of your way to get romantic with them unless you really think you have a good reason to – and if you do, be awfully careful with your heart, unless you can really have a quasi-relationship and not end up burned when the guy decides it’s been nice, but now it’s time to move on to a new glorified fuck buddy.
I don’t know Jules. I like swimming in oceans and fbuddy situations are a bit like splashing around in the kiddy pool to me. The guys in the sphere can be a cynical bunch, but, they don’t represent the general male population. As women, we’ve got it waaaay easier. Plenty of great guys out there. (You just wont find them at meet up or dances and such. Steak houses on the other hand….lol) Here’s the thing. Men don’t fall in love by connecting with your mind or your vagina. They connect with your heart. If fbuddy situations are your thing, than gaurding your heart is the way to go. If they arent’t, then you’re going to have to take a risk. Love ain’t for the faint of heart.
I guess my real point is that a lot of women are in fbuddy situations and think they’re in relationships. Really. He might even be “fond” of you. He might play boyfriend for a few months, even a few years, but he still very well may not love you in the way that you’d understand love (i.e. a partner and ally you’d try to stick with through trying times and boring times – probably especially boring times is what we’re not good at these days).
Well, let’s face it. A lot of these situations, especially when they go on for some time have a bit of “participation mystique “going on, or in sphere lingo, hamstering. To some extent, the woman knows somethings off. There’s distancing, last minute arrangements, and various other “tells”. A lot of times, women don’t want to ask the hard questions. They might get the hard answers. As long as there is a certain amount of plausible deniability, they’ll go along. And for some, as long as they have a toe hold, they think that they can change how he feels. And then there are women where it puts them in hyper drive, and they go out of their way to win the guy. And yet others who are quite willing to share a man. (idiots, but, whatever.) These are examples are where someone is getting strung along . There are examples where that isn’t the case, but that isn’t what we’re talking about.
Look, if a woman is getting the feeling that someone is emotionally evasive or emotionally unavailable, cut them loose. But she needs to be aware of what she is attracted to. She has to take a good long look at what she is attracted to. There’s a whole section of the dating industry advising men to act like assholes and spin plates in order to attract women.
Attachment theory is worth taking a look at.
Woops, one of my sentences went wonky. If a woman finds herself constantly being in situations like that, she has to take a good long look at whether or not she is attracted to jerks.
A good rule of thumb. Men fall in love way faster than we do . Give him the chance to do that. Be open with your feminine energy. Show and display that you’ve got an open and loving nature. If a long term relationship is your goal, hold off on sex until monogamy. It gives him a chance to fall in love with you.
And a good way to sort out the players from the guys looking for a relationship.
Women woefully underestimate how hard it is to tell in practice, although you are quite right about women rationalizing/hamstering. Even so, it’s always easier to trick someone than it is to avoid being tricked (just in general). And here, things are further complicated because the whole point of a serious relationship is that you are supposed to progressively place more trust in and feel more bonded to the other person. So if the other person is just playing along (and sometimes quite masterfully), you’re going to have a really hard time figuring the game out until it’s too late – and if you *are* trying to suss it out, you’re going to tend to seem “unreasonable”.
Actually, the note on clinginess is quite good. That’s going to tend to flush a lot of guys out, just as the author says.
This is true. There’s a few things that can help us along the way. Most people, male or female who are masters of manipulating without remorse are cluster b. So, these are your hysterics, narcissists, borderlines and anti socials. (Though I personally think that the later is inappropriately misnamed. I still use the old fashioned term of sociopath.)
The thing about cluster b’s is that even though they may be a narcissist or a sociopath, it’s hard to pin them down to one thing. At one point or another, they will run the gamut through the the cluster b laundry list.
So, reading up on the traits of such people help in identifying them. Here’s the thing. Such people go out of their way to be physically attractive and charming/charismatic. They’re bold and appear to be confident , and that can seem quite attractive. Once they figure that they’ve got you hooked, they’ll flip the script. And some people are hopelessly addicted to the push/pull of cluster b personalities. (The sphere would like you to think that this is only women, but it’s men too.) Here’s the uncomfortable truth though. A lot of times narcissists and co-dependant types will magnatize to one another. We can get finger waggy about cluster b types being horrible, buuuuuuut……..co-dependants and cluster b’s have something in common. A need for narcissistic supply. In fact, codependants and in particular, narcissists have been known to switch roles if the demand for supply isn’t being met.
If a person has co-dependant issues, at least they’re better off than the cluster b person. They can be helped with therapy. And something you’ll never see mentioned in the sphere. heal the co-dependancy, change your attraction cues. (attraction isn’t a choice. Except when it is.)
So, basicly, attractive and charismatic people who are outgoing and bold enough to push boundaries are suspect. (well that sucks.) Not everyone who is attractive is toxic, lol. Watch and observe. Always, always. always, actions over words.
And anyone acting charming as hell, lovebombing and rushing you into commitment. (IE planning your wedding a few weeks after meeting you is probably a narcissist at best but more likely a sociopath. Run.)
If you get any clear cues, yes, don’t ignore them. This alone is something too many people don’t do. And he doesn’t even have to be a dyed in the wool sociopath (although there are more of those than people realize, and it is a spectrum, after all). Like, if a guy you’re flirting with sort of casually jokes around about how women are chasing him/paying him attention, or worse, jokes around about how he used to have a lot night stands (especially if he’s “tired” of it). Done. Don’t date him. Ever. You are not special. He has just told you a lot about himself and none of it’s good. He’ll crush you.
Or yes, if he gets so far ahead of himself (planning marriage when you’re still just getting to know each other). A lot of women have plenty of work to do just avoiding the ones that should be obvious. But I am telling you, there are guys out there who can fool most people, including a dad who’s actually a “gamer” himself, and your no nonsense friend who’s a pretty amazing judge of people in general (as much as accurately judging people can be done). When you understand that these people exist, and have the good fortune to get a fairly complete picture of their life story and motivations, you will never again kid yourself that we can “just know” who people are, or that “I’m a good judge of character”. That of course applies to romantic relationships, but just in general, too.
But really, the guy doesn’t even really have to be trying to be evil (although in this case, he was, and he’s done it to several women – his basic goal is to hurt one so bad she’d commit suicide, not even kidding). Some of the absolute worst breakups I’ve seen are the “really nice” guy who just sort of flows out of the relationship like water… because he can. Because he never really cared about the girl as much as she cared about him, and she didn’t see that. And sometimes, that’s because it wouldn’t have been at all easy to see. He was probably “quite fond” of her, but that’s not real love. It can really, really look like it though.
Addendum to the last post is that women have way too much faith in their supposed intuition.
We live and breathe . There’s no garantees in life. Ever. We can try to steer around certain situations , but in the end the only thing that we can control is ourselves. Resilliance is in short supply in this day and age, but it’s something that we have to consciously develop and continue to develop. Otherwise, we freeze when making decisions, we freeze instead of feeling. We become disconnected and isolated. We stop growing. And in nature, stasis is death. Human nature is a funny thing. Without growth, there is no happieness. But we risk unhappieness in order to grow. In order to be happy, lol.
As a child, I learned the most valuable lesson I would need for resilliance and happieness. I had started displaying ocd tendencies and developing phobias. At one point my mother in exasperation told me that if I didn’t cut it out, I was going to end up in the nut house. That got through to me. And in order to to break the cycle, I had become a bit of a daredevil in order to master my fears. In other words, I learned to attach pleasurable feeling to risk becuse fear could be conquored. And fear felt miserable, isolating and enslaving.
There’s no garantees in life. But risk and growth feel better than fear. And sometimes that means dusting myself off afterwards. But most of the time, it brings really great things.
I guess that’s great, given your background, but risk is… actually risky. Any time you’re risking something of great value to you, that should always give you serious pause. Part of that is recognizing risk for what it is in the first place, and also trying to appreciate its potential scope. And if cavalier risk brought “really great things” most of the time in the sphere of romantic relationships, there wouldn’t be so many broken people trying to cobble themselves back together.
Ahhh, but you’re reframing. I didn’t advocate cavalier risk . There’s a difference between risk and reckless. But at the end of the day, risk is still required. And even on the most calculated of risks, you still might find yourself having to cobble together the pieces.
But, if you don’t risk, you don’t gain either.
To me, that whole post came off as feel-good “just take a risk gurl” rhetoric. If that’s not how you meant it, great.
I suppose if someone were in the boat you were in as a child, that sort of attitude might be the answer, but we’re talking about walking into a situation where we actually know the odds are against us. And not even just a little against us, really against us. Dealing with irrational phobias (which are irrational exactly because you probably won’t get badly hurt) is not the same thing as wading into a situation where the probability of getting burned is… really high. Certainly if you truly commit your heart in any meaningful way. And the more you get burned, the more it does lasting damage. So yeah, when you have an inkling of what’s at stake, you give the risk the respect it deserves.
Like you said. Risk is risky.
Look anything worth doing requires it. Buying a house, falling in love, having kids, taking that promotion, starting a business. All of it. I don’t think there’s anyway around it. And taking those risks means the possibility of failure. Actually, pretty high odds of failure. And most successful people failed a lot before succeeding. And there’s still no garantees.
Look, the only that you have to do int this life is pay taxes and die. The rest is your choice.