Don't Tell Women Your Weaknesses

I have seen a certain behavior since I got into the seduction community that seems to be fairly common.

It is a behavior of men seeking to bond with women by opening up about their weaknesses, foibles, and fears. Or else seeking to use women as de facto therapists.

The end result is rarely what the man hopes for: instead, it hardens the woman on the man, turns her against him, and leads to him (the man) getting hurt.

Every time I see a man do this, my reaction is, "Why would you do that?"

And a lot of the time the man will answer with, "I thought she would care about me," or, "I just wanted to feel accepted," or, "I thought it was safe to open up to her."

Or they will say, "I thought women liked vulnerability."

It is true, women do like vulnerability. However, they like strong vulnerability.

They despise weakness.

Women are not cruel by default. But they very often are cruel to men they view as weak. This is an important principle to understand: women are kind to strong men, and cruel to weak men. This is because women adore strong men, and women despise weak men.

Even women with good hearts. Even women who do not want to hurt anyone. If you show weakness (not vulnerability, but weakness) to a woman, she is going to feel the emotion of disgust. She may be self-aware enough to resist this emotion, and recognize an injured soul and tell herself to feel compassion for you, but she is still going to be disgusted nevertheless.

You must not go around showing or flaunting weaknesses to women.

Especially not women you want to sleep with or have any kind of ongoing relationship with.

 

Women Seek Out Genuinely Strong Men

When I was a teenager, after I'd graduated high school and started work, my boss sent me for sales training in another state. I had to drive this big, white beat-up van we used at the shop, and I had to take this guy from another shop along with me. His name was Mike.

I'd never met Mike before, and when I picked him up, the guy was imposing. He was big, loud, and tall, and his muscles were gargantuan. I didn't know much about steroids then but I can tell you now he was an obvious roid-head. This guy's muscles were like boulders and skinny teenage me was, to be honest, rather intimidated.

After a long drive we arrived at our hotel room. And I don't remember if it was the first night or the second night there (I remember it being our first), but at one point Mike broke down sobbing about how women did not want him. It was surreal for me, being alone in a room with this muscle-bound giant, at least 10 years older than me, a clueless teenager, and I'm trying to comfort this guy while at the same time having no idea what to do or say (and also still being quite intimidated).

I told him he should just go to bars, women would love a guy like him with muscles the size of his. He said no, when he went to bars they didn't want him.

Eventually I suggested we hit up a strip joint I'd visited my last time in the state.

Why didn't women want Mike?

Here was a big guy, extremely physically strong, which a lot of guys will tell you is the most important thing for women. "Get muscles, it's the #1 thing girls want!"

He was also, at least superficially, a very ALPHA guy. Loud, imposing, and he'd be rather dominating about trying to get his way any time you wanted to do something other than what he wanted to do.

The problem with Mike was that he was weak.

Despite his muscles (or perhaps because of his steroid use -- roids mess with men's emotions), despite his loud and imposing manner, he was (emotionally) weak.

He broke down and cried in a hotel room with some kid he didn't even know.

He'd respond to not getting his way by getting moody, angry, pouty, and upset.

I don't know how he was with women, as I never got to see him with one (the strip joint refused to let me in the second time around when they discovered I did not have ID). But if I had to guess (and I'd put money on this guess), he showed some other kinds of weakness around women, too.

Here in dating advice world, we like to say that women want strong men.

I think sometimes guys hear that and think, "So if I'm able to lift heavy things with my hands, women will want me." Or, "If I am loud and rude and dominating, women will want me."

Yes, women are attracted to ripped bodies (to an extent). And yes, women absolutely like genuinely dominant men.

But what women are really looking for is strength of character.

Big muscles and a loud voice can be used to mask a weak frame and insecurities -- but women are very good at teasing the truth out.

Yet a strong frame and lack of insecurities can more than make up for a guy being a bit out of shape or not behaving like a dominating caveman. If a man has a genuinely strong frame, and he shows no insecurities, women will ASSUME he has power.

Not every powerful man has muscles and a loud voice. Some powerful men have charisma power. Some powerful men have relationship power, through the people they know and the networks they maintain. Some powerful men have the ability to command (as leaders, rulers, etc.) men with muscles and loud voices to do things for them.

Women test, sniff, and probe to find out whether the man they're with is actually powerful -- or if he is only fake powerful, masking his weaknesses with impressive (yet hollow) displays.

 

She Will Use Your Weakness Against You

This is an important principle of female nature to understand.

So long as a man seems strong to her, and also attainable, a woman will submit herself to him, devote herself to him, listen to him, help him, assist him, and view him with stars in her eyes. If he does something to her she does not like, she might just accept it. Or she might feel lost and hurt, that this strong, powerful man doesn't care enough about her to take better care of her.

However, the moment a man appears weak to her, she will despise him.

If he's approached her somewhere and they are courting/dating, she'll realize she's been wasting her time. She's discover that this man she'd thought might be something else (i.e., the kind of man she'd like to go out with, talk to, sleep with, and possibly have a romance with) actually is not that thing at all, and is instead someone she wants nothing to do with and needs to get away from quick.

If he's in or had a relationship with her and she discovers he's weak, she will feel often at first feel confused, if she'd known him for a long time as someone strong. She'll wonder if something has happened, or if he is in some kind of weird emotional state that is leading him to temporarily not be himself. Because she is not going to believe that this weakness, in a man she has long viewed as STRONG, could ever really be the real him.

If she becomes convinced that, actually, yes, her man really is weak, after perhaps a period of going through denial, it is going to change her entire attitude toward you, and her feeling about the time she has spent with you. She is going to realize that the entire relationship may have been based on a misunderstanding, and that she treated you like a strong man before by accident, because she did not realize you were actually weak.

Much of her emotion toward you can drain away after this realization, and rather than be in love with you, or enraged at you, or any other strong emotion, she is often just going to feel disappointed by (and perhaps disgusted with) you.

Women cannot control this process. All women go through it. You, the man, can control it.

By choosing whether to show a woman weakness or not, YOU CHOOSE whether she treats you as a strong man or a weak one.

Women use weaknesses men show them to control them. They will do things such as:

• Use a man's weaknesses to attack him in arguments
• Use a man's weaknesses to extract concessions from him
• Use a man's weaknesses as rationale to not give him what he wants
• Use a man's weaknesses to justify withdrawing from the relationship

If you've ever showed weakness to a woman, then felt the emotion gradually drain out of the relationship, and she finally ended it by telling you, "I just feel like you need someone else, not me," or, "I'm just not feeling it in this relationship anymore," there is a strong possibility she is breaking up with you because she no longer views you as strong.

When the Manosphere was a thing (is it still a thing? I don't hear about it a whole lot anymore), throngs of embittered men were crowded onto websites complaining about being hurt by women.

I've had women do some nasty stuff to me. But you'll never hear me complain about being hurt by women. A woman has never torn my heart out. It has always been my attitude that if things don't work out with a woman, that is life. Even if it saddens me, I am going to move on. The woman will be fine, and I'll be fine. I have never pinned all my hopes on a woman. I suggest you don't either.

Even when I was hung up on That One Special Girl for years, I still had plenty of other ways I envisioned fixing my life. When I heard about that girl hooking up with other guys, I had to deal with it. When I've had women do bad things to me, I have always told myself, "It was that ONE girl who did it, not all of womankind... don't be bitter."

What is going on with all the Manosphere men who have been so deeply wounded by women?

From what I can tell, the Manosphere was comprised largely of men who bought into the Disney fairy tale romance, and bought into the 'women want sensitive men' mainstream advice, then figured if they opened up about their souls to women and trusted them fully, these women would stay with them forever and really value and appreciate that.

Then at some point (usually after having their hearts clawed out by the wrong woman... or one they'd handed their weaknesses to on a platter), the awful truth that real life is not a Disney movie and the mainstream advice is bunk hit them like a ton of bricks, and they had to deal. They dealt with that by becoming grouchy and bitter and joining the red pill club (red pill, by the way, moved from general cyberspace, to the seduction space, to the men's right space, to, in 2015, the political space. When I addressed it in 2014 it was still largely a men's-issues type club, and was not super politicized yet).

In the Manosphere they had an acronym, NAWALT, "not all women are like that." Manospherians used NAWALT mockingly, to make fun of how when men talk about a woman's bad behavior, women will magically appear in the comment sections to argue that "not all women are like that." But in fact, the Manosphere guys argued, all women ARE like that!

The truth is a bit more complex than either side presents it.

In terms of women despising weakness -- yes, all women are like that.

There is no woman who finds weakness endearing and sexually attractive.

All woman are inclined to use a man's weaknesses against him, whether they intend to or not.

Many women are genuinely good people... who will (in moments of weakness themselves) use a man's weaknesses against him, somewhat reflexively.

It is simply how women are programmed.

At the same time, there is wide variation in women -- women who try to tamp down the urge to use a man's weakness against him, versus women who revel in using it against him.

Some women have more extreme disgust for male weakness; some women are a bit more tolerant.

But no woman LIKES weakness. No woman finds it ATTRACTIVE!

When you show weakness to a woman, you are showing her, "Here is what no woman wants about me."

She is a woman, and she is not going to want that about you either.

She will, whether she wants to or not, also use it against you.

And if you are not prepared for that reality, when it hits, it may just crush your world.

 

Vulnerability vs. Weakness

All that said... you must show VULNERABILITY to women, in order to humanize yourself, to be attainable, and to achieve the strongest degree of attraction and devotion possible.

A woman needs to know you are a human being, and she needs to feel like she knows a deeper side of you than anyone else knows.

Also, if you never show her any flaws at all, she is going to know that's fake (because we ALL have flaws), and she is not going to trust you, because she will feel like you don't trust her enough to show her your true face.

So, you must show vulnerability... yet not weakness.

Confused?

Read these articles -- they clear it up quite nicely (mandatory reading on this subject):

• How to Be Vulnerable, Enchanting, and Alluring to Women: my original article on displaying Byronic character flaws to show vulnerability to women -- without showing weakness

• Why Vulnerability Makes You More Attractive to Women: Colt Williams talks about why never showing flaws/vulnerabilities causes people to stay at a distance from you (and how to correct that)

• Tactics Tuesdays: How to Show Vulnerabilities: Hector Castillo lays out some different attractive vulnerabilities to show a girl, as well as at what point in the courtship to show her them

• If You Want to Seem More Real, Show Some Vulnerability: more nuance from Hector on expressing vulnerability in an attractive way -- plus, a vulnerability formula!

• A Little Vulnerability Is Okay, but How Much Should You Reveal?: when your anxiety kicks up and you start thinking about revealing your deeper wounds... take a step back and breathe, because it may not be the best call, Varoon Rajah lays out

I'm not going to go into the details of what constitutes vulnerability versus what constitutes weakness here, as we've already explained it in-depth in the above articles.

However, you absolutely need to understand this -- so do read those articles.

 

How to React When Women Probe for Weakness

Recently, a friend of mine got back in touch with a past lover of his.

He'd messaged her a few times since they broke it off. This time, however, he got back a lengthy email from her about how much he'd hurt her.

He asked my counsel on how to respond. I told him he'd hurt her, and she was just looking for reassurance that he cared about her.

So he sent her that... and also a lengthy message justifying himself, telling her why he went cold on her at the end, things that she'd done that were red flags to him, and what he feared she might do.

Well, as you might expect (after reading this article, at least), she pulled a complete 180. She went from the hurt girl to being on the attack, lecturing him about what he did wrong, and dangling his fears right over his head.

This charged him up more, and he started getting ready to send an even more emotional response, when we talked again, and I told him, "Wait."

I said for one thing, you told her about your fears.

I said, "I don't know how other guys handle this... maybe there is some other way that other men deal with this differently. But me, personally, I do not ever let a woman know any way she can hurt me. There is just no way she can do anything to seriously damage me, so far as a woman will know."

I continued that of course there are certainly ways women can inconvenience me, and they can screw with my life a bit -- but she is not going to know that.

When a woman asks to know what I'm afraid of, I dismiss it ("I mean, there are things I don't want to have happen, but whatever it is, if it can't be avoided, I'll handle it"). When a woman threatens me, to test and probe if I care about a thing or fear it, I just ignore it.

And you know... when someone is threatening you with a threatening thing, rather than doing the threatening thing, she is telling you she still wants something from you.

Someone who only wants to hurt you and doesn't want anything from you will just go and do whatever it is she wants to do to hurt you. If she's telling you about it, you can still communicate with her. And if you are good at dealing with women, you can fix just about any problem (the solution is always some combination of warmth + strength + vulnerability + sufficient availability).

Now, it may happen on occasion that a woman may actually screw with your life.

It may happen on occasion that a man may screw with your life.

People are people; some of them are bad people, some of them vindictive.

Some are misguided.

Sometimes people will genuinely try to hurt you.

Telling them your weaknesses and what you fear does not protect you in any way. Instead, it makes you MORE vulnerable.

I'm not entirely sure why people engage in this behavior. "I'm going to tell you my fears... now DON'T do this to me, please!" I think it is some form of laying themselves at another individual's mercy: I am at your mercy, now please don't hurt me.

Maybe they don't feel like that is what they're doing. But to me it's what it feels like they're doing. Anytime anyone tells me his fears it's like he is telling them to me in the hopes I will have mercy on him and, now that I know what they are, not do it to him. Maybe some people react to this differently, but I assume there are a lot of women who will react to this the way I react to it too.

I guess this is fine if you are just going to admit that the other party holds power over you, and you are going to let that party hold power over you forever, and do your very best to remain on his good side forever.

However if at some point you plan to assert power again, and that other party doesn't like it -- well, she still has the trump card to use against you now. She knows where you're weak. She knows where to drive the knife in (or threaten to!) to get your compliance.

Women will probe to know your weaknesses. I have had women say things to me like:

• "Have you never had a girl who broke your heart?"
• "How would you feel if I cheated on you?"
• "You're not the type who gets jealous?"
• "What if you found out your girlfriend never loved you?"
• "Are you sure your friends really care about you?"
• "Is what you're doing with your life really that important?"
• "I don't think you're that good-looking."
• "It's a shame you're so poor."
• "Are you sure you went to college? You're not that smart."

These are all attempts to test how you react, to see how strong your convictions are, or how affected you'd be to learn you did not command the kind of affection you thought you did.

(for the judgments among these, it's been my experience women will usually recant, if they see they aren't able to get to you. "I don't think you're that good-looking" --> you shrug it off and ignore it --> later on: "Actually you're quite handsome. I don't know why I said that earlier" --> you shrug again --> she can't get to you with this 'just probing for weakness' stuff)

When women test on these things, you need to have an unflustered response: "never had a heartbreak, no" or "sure, a girl broke my heart when I was young and not very experienced yet. It happens to young people." "I wouldn't be happy if you cheated, but it'd be a sign the relationship wasn't right, and we'd end things and you'd find someone better for you and I'd find someone better for me." "I don't know for sure what's in anybody's head, but if it turned out my friends were all psychopaths and only pretended to like me to get value from me, I guess that'd be weird, but so be it, right?" Etc.

Women will also probe to see how you react to various threats. Threats I have heard from women over the years include:

• "I'll say you raped me!"
• "I could tell people you beat me!"
• "I'll cut your penis off!"
• "I could kick you out of my apartment!"
• "I'll sue you!"
• "I'll report you for XYZ thing!"
• "I'll tell your mother you ABC thing!"
• "I'll call your ex-girlfriend!"

I once had a woman tell me if I ever hit her, she would stab me with a knife (I don't hit women).

When I hear a threat, my usual response is to say, in a very calm-yet-firm voice, "Don't threaten me, please. I dislike threats."

I then go about my business as if the woman never said it. However, I will mentally file it away, and pay attention to whether the same woman makes the same threat again, and if so, how often, and in what circumstances.

People will blurt out random attacks randomly sometimes, but if they say the same thing repeatedly, you know it is something they think about. That makes it more likely it is something they might actually do -- given the right circumstances.

This is the proper response to threats: file it away and monitor it to see if it comes up again (and if so, how many times). Don't react in the moment, because that only feeds into the threat -- and actually makes it more likely she'll do it!

If you show a woman a threat affects you, she is going to latch onto that threat. She will know that, should she ever want to hurt you, she now knows how to do that, because she knows what affects you most.

Almost every person out there, consciously or unconsciously, looks for leverage over those in his life. Some people are much more conscious and better about this than others. Psychopaths are the best at it. But almost everyone does it at least a little bit unconsciously. We file away what we've figured out are the sensitive spots of those around us, never to touch those spots -- unless we're really angry at those people, or really have a vendetta with them.

The thing with women though is they are always getting angry about something some of the time. Even if you have a calm, submissive girlfriend, she still has emotions, and she still is going to have resentment build up from time to time when you do something she doesn't like or don't do something she does like. And when that resentment explodes out, she will go for whatever jugular you've presented her.

If you stay unflustered when women probe for weakness, and you do not give a woman anything to go on (in terms of figuring out where she can hurt you), she is unlikely to try to use that thing to hurt you again in the future.

She has tested there, found you strong, and will move on to searching for a different weakness.

And if she cannot find any weakness, then not only will she be a lot easier to keep attracted and devoted to you (since you won't need to deal with 'weakness disgust'), but she is a lot more likely to deal with you in a calm, measured way when she has conflict with you, rather than try to attack your weakness (which you don't have)... because it's the only way she really sees to get the result she wants.

As for that scenario at the start of this section?

I told my friend to stop emailing (it's not for important conversations), CALL the girl... get her on the phone... and just be totally warm and sympathetic, tell her he realizes now he was cold and he hurt her, and do not talk about the fears thing again.

He protested that maybe he should address the fears thing?

I said no, don't talk about it at all, it's irrelevant. She doesn't care about that, and you shouldn't feed it. She wants to know how you feel about her -- so focus on that, and forget the other thing.

He called her, they had an amazing call from the sound of it, they made their peace, and got to give each other closure.

That is how you deal with upset women. It is not by asking them to have mercy on you with your fears... it is by addressing what they are upset about them, and reassuring them you value them, cherish them, and care.

 

"But How Do I Not Fear These Attacks?"

By having contingencies.

You should always have contingencies.

I talked about contingencies for failed marriages in my piece on avoiding divorce rape.

I've also debated doing an exit strategy / escape hatch article numerous times over the years. However... it is a delicate subject, since it's one I know a lot of people don't think about. If you don't frame it right, it's going to come off paranoid or unrelatable (and I for one don't like publishing anything unless I'm confident I have the framing on it right).

Anyway, without going too deep into it -- there are contingencies for any situation.

There is not really any reason to fear a woman.

A woman could ruin your reputation by smearing you with an accusation. But most men when attacked simply yield their reputations -- they, exhausted by the attack, retreat, and give up. If you can sustain the attack, you can outlast. You can also just yield, retreat, and go rebuild your name somewhere else, doing something else (but I think it's always better to nip stuff in the bud and go hard to squash an accusation early, lest it dog you, should you encounter one).

She could bring the power against the state against you with some kind of legal charge. But you can leverage the state back, get your lawyers, and counter-sue. Or you can go to another state -- there are over 200 countries in the world, after all.

If she cut off your member -- well, hopefully she won't do that, but they're pretty good at reattaching what's been lost, not to mention making new ones out of thigh muscle and thigh skin these days... and they've already started growing them in labs. It would suck, but you'd still have options.

It's good to be cautious with women.

Stay away from crazy chicks.

Women who make repeated threats against you that you think may be sincere, find a way to get those women out of your life (as amicably as possible. But do get them out).

Yet, as a man, you must learn to master your fear.

We have many great articles about that on this site.

Fear is something that is in YOUR mind.

People will use what you fear against you, if they figure out what it is.

If they figure out you do not fear them... and that it is not out of ignorance (i.e., you simply do not realize what they might do to you), but strength (i.e., you know what they could do to you, but have your defenses, contingencies, and plans to deal with it... OR it is just something you do not care about at all)... they won't do this.

The worst people will simply stay away from you if they realize you're not someone they can get leverage over or control with fear. Manipulative, horrible people avoid others who are hard targets. They want people they can control. Those they can't are uninteresting to them, unless they're useful in some other way.

More regular people will forget about trying to hurt you if they cannot see a way to do so. Instead, you force them to deal with you reasonably, since scaring you or injuring you is not an option.

When you see a broken man, sobbing or shaking his fist over the damage to his life a woman has done, it is a tragic thing... just as it is when you see a broken woman, sobbing or shaking her first over the damage to her life a man has done.

But what you must understand is that the damage another person can do to your life is limited to the power you give her over you, and the openings you leave for attack.

Anyone can DO damage to your life.

Anyone willing to sacrifice himself to assassinate someone else CAN do it.

However, most people who want to hurt someone look for the easiest ways to do that with the lowest costs to themselves. And if they don't see an easy way to pull that off... usually they will not do anything -- or they'll come to the negotiating table.

Love women. Adore them. Take joy in them.

But keep your weaknesses to yourself.

And, while you're at it, fix those weaknesses.

Make it so that your woman feels your weaknesses are none.

Then actually correct those fears and weaknesses, so you have mastery over them, instead of them mastery over you.

And if you need to bond with her, and open up to her -- do it about something else.

See a therapist for your weaknesses, fears, and insecurities.

Or tell a male buddy about them.

Or just call your Mom.

Don't burden women you're romantically involved in with your weaknesses and fears.

A woman looks to you to lead her... to give her strength, affection, and security... not to be the sappy romantic comedy guy who trips all over himself, spills out all his emotions, and she realizes she loves him despite his un-sexy foibles and weaknesses.

Instead of all that, be something different.

Be her man.

Chase Amante

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