Female Bad Behavior Is Often Defensive

When women reject a guy harshly, guys often think those women are stuck up.

When women initiate drama in a relationship, guys often think these women are big babies or control freaks.

But in actual fact women behaving badly aren't usually stuck up, babies, or control freaks.

Usually, rather, they feel scared, frightened, threatened, or unsafe.

If you can understand this simple psychological principle, the way you approach bad behavior from women changes radically.

 

TRIGGER WARNING and Caveats for the Media Enmeshed

In a hilarious bit of unintentional irony, this piece on fearfulness in women triggering defensive reactions pinched a fearful nerve in some of the male readership and... triggered a defensive reaction in the comment section.

If you have any doubt I'm talking about a real, primal, elemental aspect of human psychology, just go read the first few comments we've got. You'll see exactly what I talk about in this piece, in action, right there.

So I shall bow to our neurotic, paranoid safe space culture and slap a trigger warning on this bad boy, then include some caveats:

• TRIGGER WARNING: we'll discuss female psychology here. And we won't discuss it in a way that concludes women are horrible, terrible beings!

• Caveat #1: just because we talk about female psychology does not mean we are endorsing that psychology. Is it right how women feel? Are their actions correct? Is female behavior justifiable? This piece neither answers nor even addresses those questions. It is an explanatory piece ONLY; not a judgment-passing one.

• Caveat #2: just because we talk about women reacting a certain way due to specific emotions they have, we are also NOT SAYING a man is obligated to do any certain thing. If a woman is overly rude, you do not abase yourself to her while saying, "It's all my fault." Instead you recognize her reaction is likely rooted in fear -- however, whether that is a fear you can allay, or whether it is worth it to you to do so, is going to depend on you, the girl, and the situation.

• Caveat #3: every woman is skittish about different things. Some women's skittishnesses you may find reasonable. Some you may find unreasonable. What you find reasonable vs. unreasonable compared to what the next guy does will be different. This piece is not about deciding who is right -- your line of reasonability, versus Tommy's line of reasonability that is far more lenient than yours, vs. Jim-Bob's line of reasonability that is far less lenient than yours. This piece is about explaining the root of the behavior ONLY.

• Caveat #4: I'M NOT BLAMING YOU. It's not "your fault" a woman is worried about her reputation while talking with you. It's not "your fault" she feels a spike of uncertainty while home alone with you and throws up LMR. It is not "your fault" you behaved a little colder than usual the morning after and she entered auto-rejection and now refuses to come see you again. You're not a PUA expert, you haven't spent years focused on this, honing the craft; stuff with humans is variable and difficult and often unpredictable. There is a huge, colossal, enormous difference between EXPLAINING something and BLAMING someone for it.

Further, one other note before I get into this discussion of female behavior, and that is this:

If you were/are triggered by this piece, it's because you're completely plugged into the media.

There is a narrative running through the mainstream media, and reflected back by its foil, the alternative media, that there is a Battle of the Sexes raging on. In this campaign, the mainstream media takes the side of women, talking about how sad it is for women, how hard it is, and how vicious and mean men are and how men must do so many things to make it up to women. Meanwhile, the alternative media takes the side of men, talking about how sad it is for men, how hard it is, and how vicious and mean women are and how women must do so many things to make it up to men.

These two sides of the media -- the pro-woman mainstream media and the pro-man alternative media -- are organs of the same body; they feed into each other and amplify one another. Each uses content published in the other to outrage its audience further, and further polarize audience members.

If me saying, "Hey, when women behave bad, it's not because they're bad people, but because they have worries," triggers you, that tells me you are in deep need of a total media detox, and should probably skip this article on female bad behavior and instead read my piece on doing a media detox (which I'm three months into myself right now and let me tell you, it didn't even occur to me guys would read this as a Battle of the Sexes thing, because that is so far outside my reality these days).

Anyway, on with it.

 

Female Bad Behavior Pre-Intimacy

Think about the ways women behave badly toward you prior to intimacy.

They may do things like:

• Snub you on your approach
• Be snippy and short when you walk up
• Cut things short and excuse themselves
• Stick around but behave increasingly rude

Most men take the message "she does not like me" from behavior like this. And that's an understandable deduction to make.

However, let's take a look at the emotion underlying that:

• She snubs you on approach because she's afraid of something. It might be what people will think if she's seen talking to a strange man. It might be that you could have bad intentions and mean her harm. It might be that you're one of those people who sees someone, approaches, then gloms on, and can't be shaken once the conversation's begun. Her snub is a way to avoid whatever it is she fears.

• She's snippy and short because she's afraid of something. All the reasons from the last bullet apply here. Also, once you're talking, she may fear you won't like her; she's snippy to protect herself from the feeling of rejection in case you decide that actually you don't want to talk to her.

• She cuts things short and excuses herself because she's afraid of something. The reasons from the prior two bullets apply here. Also, if it's not a particularly engaging interaction (i.e., you've not reached the hook point), she may start to fear what'll happen if the two of you don't click: will it drag on and on? Will she have to reject you harshly to get away? Will you get angry or grow needy?

• She gets increasingly rude because she's afraid of something. All the prior reasons apply. Also, if it's been going on but the two of you aren't clicking, she'll become increasingly afraid you are a guy who can't read social signals and doesn't realize it isn't clicking. She doesn't want to be stuck in an unpleasant conversation with a guy who doesn't know what's going on. She becomes increasingly rude in order to make it increasingly obvious she is uncomfortable (so you will hopefully pick up on the sign and change course).

Female bad behavior is defensive behavior, 19 times out of 20. It's almost never offensive.

Yes, occasionally you may run into a girl who's just a nasty, petty person. There are women out there like that. Women who either are in a really bad mood and just want to hurt someone... or women who are sociopaths and always up for hurting someone. However, it's actually quite rare.

Humans are social animals. Being nasty to each other is not an adaptive behavior. You won't see it much -- at least, not for offensive reasons.

When women are rude to you on approach, or during a conversation, or on a date, or in the middle of a pull, it is due to defensive reasons: they're frightened about something, worried, or unsure.

 

Female Bad Behavior Just Before or After Intimacy

Women can behave badly as you get close to intimacy (or right after it). Bad female behavior as you near intimacy includes:

• Suddenly cutting short a good interaction and leaving
• Becoming suddenly snippy, hard-to-please, and rude
• Throwing up heaps of sudden excuses and resistance
• Going cold or accusing you of things post-intimacy

If you've pulled enough girls, you're familiar with all these scenarios.

What causes them? Again, defensiveness.

You get phenomena like:

• Anti-slut defense: where a girl suddenly realizes you (or others) might see her as a slut, and decides she needs to shut the escalation down to avoid that possibility. She fears being judged

• Female state control: where a girl suddenly realizes she is about to make what is potentially a bad decision with you, a man who doesn't meet her on-paper requirements, and endeavors to pull herself out of the emotional state leading to that. She fears making a bad move

• Last minute resistance: where a girl halts the progress toward intimacy in the midst of the final inning, for a variety of potential reasons. Her reasons might be a form of ASD or FSC, or they might be something else entirely (e.g., she fears you'll leave her after you get sex; she fears her boyfriend might find out and dump her; etc.)

All these, like the earlier behaviors, are based around defensiveness, uncertainty, and fear.

 

Female Bad Behavior in Romantic Relationships

How about those irksome drama-causing wenches you find yourself tearing your hair out over in relationships?

Surely it is just because they are diabolical shrews, set on ripping the masculinity out of you and making themselves Queen of the Relationship?

Nope; believe it or not, the vast majority of the time, this behavior's defensive too.

Take a look at female bad behavior in relationships:

• Freaking out over something minor (causing drama)
• Accusing you of things you may or may not be guilty of
• Plunging into sudden bad moods or growing cold/withdrawn
• Cancelling on you, flaking on you, or otherwise vanishing
• Extreme stuff like dumping you or cheating on you

These things can lead men to what the seduction community calls betaization (where the man becomes the beta in the relationship, to the woman's alpha). Even if they don't lead to that, they can sure lead to a whole lot of aggravation -- or a potential breakup.

Why do women do them?

Usually, it's out of defensiveness.

The most dramatic women on Earth (and the ones most likely to do all that stuff above, most frequently, and to the greatest extreme) are women with Cluster B personality disorders, and these women are all in constant states of mistrust/fear.

The calmest, most trusting, least dramatic women, on the other hand, are ones who grew up in high-trust homes, with firm-yet-gentle, loving parents, who've had nothing but wonderful relationships, and have tons of trust for you and enough independence themselves they aren't afraid what might happen to them even if worse came to worst in your relationship. Why are these women so undramatic (compared to others)?

Because they have the lowest amount of defensiveness.

The more fearful and defensive and mistrusting a woman is, the more she will behave badly in her relationships.

The more confident and relaxed and trusting she is, the better she will behave in her relationships.

 

Thinking About Female Defensiveness

If this was like most Girls Chase articles, I'd have a how-to section here where I list out a bunch of bullets about how to deal with female defensiveness.

But this whole site's about that. If you think of any kind of resistance, unwillingness, or other bad behavior by women as usually stemming from defensiveness, a large fraction of the site's devoted to it.

Instead, I just wanted to give you a different -- superior, in my opinion -- tool for how you think about bad behavior you see in women:

They aren't doing it because they're mean or petty. They're doing it because they're uncertain, skittish, or afraid.

Different women have different degrees of skittishness and defensiveness. And they are skittish and defensive about different things.

Realizing that a woman's bad behavior is usually due to fear or uncertainty, you are able to alter your approach:

Rather than feeling like you need to 'win' or 'overcome' women, you realize that a big part of seduction is actually setting them at ease. You must build trust with them, set aside their fears and uncertainties, and in so doing, you seduce them.

At ease that:

• You won't be a social burden
• They'll enjoy talking with you
• You'll read their cues and respond
• You won't injure their reputations
• You won't judge them for getting loose
• You won't change once you get what you want
• You won't ditch them or use them
• They won't regret anything they do with you
• You won't hurt them when their guards are down
• You won't do anything negative unexpectedly

If you can reassure a woman of all these things, she'll go to bed with you.

Then once she's gone to bed with you, she'll enter a relationship with you, and remain in it.

Men who are failing at some point in the seduction or relationship process are failing at one or more of these reassurances, causing women to distrust them and react defensively.

To easily troubleshoot, remember: when a woman is behaving badly, it is nearly always because she has some fear or worry you are failing to set at ease.

The better you get at setting all women's potential fears at ease, the smoother a path you'll have at accomplishing anything you want in hooking up and romance.

Chase Amante