(3) Journeyman

What happens if you fail to set proper relationship expectations? Well, your partner can have the wrong idea. Here's how to do a reset when things have changed.

On the forum, we have a member who has eased into a relationship with a girl he picked up off of day game. He never set expectations with her, and has insensibly come to treat the relationship as a girlfriend-boyfriend one.

There's just one problem: he wants to keep picking up.

Yet he's conflicted on how to proceed: he doesn't want to cheat on this girl and hurt her, but he also never said he was going to be her boyfriend, either.

So what should he do?

The answer, of course, is expectations.

More specifically, he needs to set some better (and much clearer) ones.

How can one gain more control over how his interactions with women play out? How do you increase your odds of attracting women? Add meaning to your movement.

In my previous article, I described contextual mirroring. In this article, I will give another example of seduction, explaining how it exists as more than just a vague set of concepts and relationships between ideas.

It’s important to know that seduction has an end goal. There is nothing worse than spending time to get good at something only to realize your goal is too vague to improve, and you can’t change your results.

With seduction, it is almost inevitable that most will come to that conclusion. So today, I will reveal two concrete changes that will hopefully shake your world at its foundations. You’ll come away understanding seduction is not only real but excessively powerful, even though you may be unaware of this fact and have never truly understood what you are capable of.

Most guys who learn pickup end up with a girlfriend, often very quickly. But what if you don’t want to settle just yet? These tips will help you avoid getting attached.

Finding that one girl you’d want to be your special unicorn and be with forever and ever is not easy.

I’ve dated hundreds of women in my life, and I still haven’t found “the perfect girl.” There’s no such thing as perfection. Even the most beautiful diamond is just a rock. And the closer you look at it, the more flaws you’ll find.

However, it’s my hope that every one of you finds your dream girl, and you travel to Southern France (or wherever) together and make a dozen babies.

Until then, I believe that every man should date a large variety of women. Otherwise, how will you know when you’ve found one you can tolerate, and even enjoy, for what may be the rest of your mortal life?

Name a woman's behavior to alter it. Most people aren't conscious of what they're doing or why… when you make her conscious, you change her trajectory.

People do all sorts of things without being conscious they're doing them.

They engage in behaviors -- often behaviors they don't themselves feel good about -- driven by emotions they're barely aware of.

You, however, at the very least by reading this site, are a student of human behavior. You're more conscious of the things you do and why... and you are more conscious of what those around you do, and why.

And when you point out to someone what he is doing, and make him conscious of it, often that is going to affect whether and how much he continues to do that thing.

If what he's doing is something negative, that shows a trait like jealousy or insecurity, you pointing it out is going to tend to motivate him to assert control over that behavior.

You can use this 'behavior naming' with women to help nudge them into fixing or quitting bad behavior they engage in around you.

How can one gain more control over how his interactions with women play out? Let’s talk about a less-visible yet hugely impactful factor that will bring concrete changes.

When it comes to seduction, you may be limited in the things you can change regarding your initial impressions with girls. You can smile, act confident, use verbal routines, and improve your fashion and  body language.

However, no matter how much you try to change what you are doing or look like, you remain relatively the same person as where you started.

So the question I’ll address in this article is: are there concrete changes you can make to consistently increase your odds of seducing a girl? If so, how do you learn what to do?

If you have an agreement with a woman, then time passes, and she wants to renegotiate for yet more favorable terms… what do you do?

A woman writes on Reddit about her relationship:

I’ll try to keep this short... my fiancé and I have been together for 5 years now. I knew very early in the relationship I had no intention of taking his last name. After the first year or so of dating when we talked about the future I mentioned I wouldn't want to take his last name because I like my last name. I’m second generation Italian and my last name reflects that. It’s an important aspect of who I am and my fiancé at the time understood. I said I probably would be fine if any kids we had had his last name and we dropped the conversation since it was so early in the relationship.

Fast forward four years we are obviously much closer to actually having kids then when we had that initial conversation. I mentioned today that I’m not sure I want the kids to just have his last name. I explained that it didn’t seem fair for them to be half genetically mine, and for me to carry them for nine months but for their names only to reflect him. I listed some options other people do, hyphenating the names, using one last name as a middle name, making a new combined last name, etc. To be clear this would only be for the kids I’m not asking him to change his name.

He said this wasn’t fair because he had already “compromised” by saying I could keep my name and that I told him the kids could have his last name so I can’t change my mind. I told him I’ve changed my mind as we have matured and the prospect of kids has become more real (which in my mind seems more fair then holding me to an off hand comment several years ago) but he is still extremely upset and not talking to me.

Now, Reddit, as you might expect, being Reddit, is in full support of this woman.

I'm not really interested in whether she should take your name, or the kids should take her name, or you hyphenate last names, or whatever. The whole situation is frankly a little ridiculous.

Regardless, my interest in this seemingly petty affair is this: what do you if you've already established something in a relationship, and then your woman decides to unilaterally change it?

The guy here was obviously upset. But look how he reacted: he just went off and sulked.

This is not the way you deal with someone attempting to renegotiate previously settled terms.

When a woman wants to pull a switcheroo on you, you don't beg, plead, or sulk.

Instead, if you can't shut it down, or talk it out calmly, you pull a switcheroo right back.

Sometimes you want to open up to a girl and tell her your fears and weaknesses. But this behavior itself is a weakness – and you should not indulge it.

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.