Relationship 101

Women have a thirst for the untameable man. That’s why the rugged, hard-living, macho guy who’s a bit of a loner and whom no one seems to understand is so exciting for women, and why the sensitive, attentive nice guy that society seems to keep wanting to shepherd men into being is so boring.

Just like men don’t want a woman who’s easy too easy to bed, women don’t want a man who’s too easy to wrassle into a relationship. If he’s so easy to get into a relationship, women figure about the quick-to-commit man, he must not have a whole lot of options.

And chances are, they’re probably right. Men with lots of options naturally are difficult to pin down. Getting them to quit the bachelor’s life and give up those freedoms they’re so used to enjoying requires a woman more exceptional than they are accustomed to having, or a tiring of the playboy lifestyle – or perhaps a combination of the two. But sooner or later, most men settle down.

And then things go fine for a while. The lucky girl who convinces that untameable man to be saddled is ecstatic at her prize; she got the guy every other girl couldn’t get. She was the one who was good enough to get him.

Because believe it, just like men tend to take things personally and resent women who won’t sleep with them as judging them unworthy for intimacy, so do women tend to feel slighted by men who won’t have relationships with them, feeling as though they’ve been told they’re not good enough for the man to give up pursuing other women. So when a woman gets a man to settle whom other women failed to, she feels especially accomplished and victorious.

But just like all victories, with time this one fades in importance and exuberance. Eventually, it becomes an accepted fact: “Well, of course we’re together. How else would it be?”

And when the dust settles, and the excitement slips away, we’re left with one chilling scenario:

The man has passed a commitment point.

One of the most enervating, life-sucking situations you can find yourself in is that of the relationship that’s slowly circling the drain. If you’ve had a relationship die a slow death before, you know what I mean – the sad, slow withdraw of good feelings in synchrony with the gradual build up of resentment and frustration and desperation.

The problem with a relationship fading out this way is it can creep up on you so slowly and under-the-radar that you don’t realize it’s happening until the little relationship snowball rolling downhill starts taking out trees, rocks, and ski lodges.

What do you do when she says, “I love you?” Do you run and hide, or say it too?

There are two near-universal responses to a woman saying those three little words, and they’re pretty much both absolutely horrible and flat out wrong from the standpoint of achieving anything good and healthy in a relationship. They are:

• Guy stares at woman speechlessly, face pale and full of dread, with no idea what to say back, feeling trapped and utterly put upon, or

Ever notice how fairytales and about ninety-nine out of a hundred romance tales you see or read are about how two people first got together? Cinderella meets her prince, against all odds, and he manages to find her again after he's lost her, against all odds, and the two of them ride off together in the carriage, into the dusky sunset. Prince Charming defeats the evil dragon to free Sleeping Beauty from her hundred-year slumber. Belle falls for Beast despite his unsavory appearance.

How come we don't start the story with Cinderella five years into her marriage with the prince? Why not pick up a decade after Sleeping Beauty woke up and Prince Charming and she made castle together? Why do we never see Belle and Beast after they've had their first couple of half-human, half-animal offspring?

It's because there's nothing exciting about that. We don't care about two people that've been together for years; that's old news. We want to know about the new and exciting things that are going on: those two people who might get together – who should get together – but who still may not get together.

Back when I was newly focusing on meeting and dating girls as a skill I could develop, I made it a point to let women I was seeing know that I was going out and living a life of fun and parties and adventure travel and general debauchery.

Every man’s least favorite question to get: “Where do you see this going?” I seem to get this question a lot, personally, and after stumbling through it like a blind man a few times, I think I can recommend you a pretty reasonable approach to addressing it.

First, recognize that you’re likely getting this question because:

1. You’re the kind of guy your girl wants to hold onto and keep around, and

Once you’ve begun seeing a girl on a fairly regular basis, or you think you will likely start seeing her soon, you should be doing a lot of what I call passive screening in addition to any other screening you’re doing.

What’s passive screening? It is, quite simply, watching and learning. Keeping an eye on your woman’s actions, learning about her from. This is hands down the most effective way to really learn about your girl – how devoted is she, how much will she work for the relationship, how high or low risk is she.