Relationships

Something I've noticed that a number of individuals untrained in relationship management theory tend to engage in is arbitrary (that is, seemingly random) punishment and reward inside of relationships. These sort of variable reward and punishment structures inside relationships generally lead to a host of negative outcomes for the person who's subject to arbitrary treatment, including:

• Emotional dependency
• Addiction and attachment
• Wild mood swings
  
• Submission
• Resentment
• Rebellion

Basically, the opposite of what you'd expect to see in a healthy, rewarding, productive relationship.

It's occurred to me that most of the people who use controlling, coercive, and more or less arbitrary relationship management tactics probably are not very familiar with operant conditioning - the system of punishment and reward established by B.F. Skinner for the purposes of behavior modification.

So today, I want to equip you with a very effective means of communicating your likes and dislikes to a romantic partner without ruffling feathers, being seen as an oppressor, or, conversely, a pushover.

I'm going to show you how to use operant conditioning in your relationships.

One of the series I introduced on here a while back - only to ever do two real articles in it - was on girl types... some of the different kinds of girls, that is. We've had some requests to do more articles like these, and I wanted to put together one here that's a primer of the four basic varieties of women you'll run into - and which type is best for you.

What's the use of something like this? Won't you magically happen into a relationship with the woman of your dreams, if you're out there long enough meeting large enough quantities of women?

Personally, I'm more a believer in having a set of logical guidelines, and then running your emotions on top of that, rather than just letting emotions run wild and hoping for the best. Having rules for selecting the right girlfriends (see: "Find the Right Girl;" "Choosing the Right Qualities in a Woman") tends to lead you to superior women as mates. Emotion is what first draws you to them, but logic helps you screen them (and screen out the other women you're emotionally drawn to who don't match your criteria).

Put more simply, especially when it comes to weird, ephemeral topics like dating and mate selection that are taboo to discuss anywhere in polite society, knowing stuff gives you advantages.

And the "stuff" I want to get you knowing today consists of the four basic varieties of women.

On the new forum join bonus post where I asked for suggestions for the limited-time ebook offered to the first group of forum members, a reader weighed in with his preference:

“I'd like some tips and tricks, and knowledge about longer term relationships - for example, how to bring a girl out of that 'brick wall' sulk! I seem to attract fiery and moody, and I would like to know how other people deal with this. Never too old to learn?”

While this didn't make it into the ebook in question, I've been trying to get through each of these and tackle the ones that weren't addressed there on the website here.

If you've been in a relationship that lasted any substantial length of time, you've no doubt encountered what our commenter here is talking about - that sulky, pouting, dreary moody girlfriend situation.

For men in relationships, there are few things more dispiriting than a girlfriend, moody and sulky, skulking around the apartment, acting like somebody stole her bag of cookies, and you have absolutely no idea why. It can make you want to pull your hair out and exclaim, "Out with it already, woman!"

If she'd just TELL YOU what the problem was, by George, then you could address it at least!

Well, if it's any consolation, science is here to tell us we're not crazy, and women really DO do this and feel this a lot more than men.

And I'm here to tell you what to do about it so she knocks this off and starts acting a little more chipper again.

I've fielded a number of comments and questions from guys over the years on how to start a relationship off right with a new girl they've just started seeing. After all, you've used all the material on this site on how to turn yourself into a smooth, edgy, sexy man; and you've learned everything you need to know about how to get girls, you knew what to look for in a girlfriend, and you've found her, met her, and everything went perfectly. You took her to bed as your lover, and now she's yours.

Now what?

Most people treat dating and relationships as some big, mythical, emotionally-driven process these days, devoid of much logical forethought or planning. It's reached a point in Western thought where "giving in to your emotions" has become the ultimate ideal to be striven for and attained; you should seek to "just feel" and "go with your heart."

But while emotion is a very important piece of your actions and decision making as a human, it's only half the story, and, worse for relationships... it's the short term half of the story.

Emotions will have you shortchange your tomorrow for a better today.

What I'm going to tell you to do in THIS article, however, is to take command of yourself, and build a relationship designed to be strong, successful, and rewarding long after the fires of early emotion quit burning so brightly, or even quit burning at all.

This is, you might say, the anti-guide to falling in love: it's the guide not to getting there, but to staying there, and like all good stories it starts at the beginning.

There's a question that I think not enough men ask themselves, and they end up being the worse for it: that is, what to look for in a girlfriend.

I have a habit of being very selective about the people I have around me. The old adage that "you are the average of your five closest friends" is one I put a lot of salt in. Where does this "averaging effect" come from, and how does it play out in real life?

The simplest way of putting it is that successful people believe successful things, and unsuccessful people believe unsuccessful things. Now, that's a very boiled down way of putting it, for you could have a guy who owns a large stake in a Fortune 500 company that's worth billions and think of him as successful, but a guy who owns six gas stations that bring him in $20,000 a month you might also think of as successful, to a different degree.

On a more personal level, you may have a friend who's dead broke, but strongly believes that buying condominiums is the road to riches. No matter how much you point out to that friend that so far his proclamations and prognostications have failed to work out for him, he'll keep harping on it again and again, and pushing you to put all your savings into buying a condo, and you'll either eventually come around to his way of seeing things (whether he's "right" or not), or get so annoyed by it that you exit the friendship.

The people around you influence you strongly for better or for worse. To become exceptional, or to remain the way you are, or to backslide.

And the person with the greatest measure of influence on you of all, with the greatest ability to steer and direct your thoughts and ideas and emotions, is, of course, the one you spend the most time with: your girlfriend.

And if you aren't being selective when selecting the most important, influential person around you, you're doing yourself a major disservice.

All right, I know I said no more relationship stuff for a while so we could recover from that big relationship series binge, but I'm sitting here after missing my flight (I should be somewhere over the Pacific right now), going through some of the past month or so's posts, and I see I also said I'd try to get some posts up regarding earlier comments, and... well...

Back in early August, Anonymous commented on the post on how to prevent cheating, saying:

“Could you write about what you mentioned, the whole making a girl feel TOO secure?”

Okay - here's one more on relationships for now. Just think of it as an expansion pack to the relationship series!

Having a girl start feeling too secure with you is a BIG problem in any kind of relationship. Big.

It's the reason why girls start treating guys disrespectfully 9 times out of 10.

And, it's the reason why a girl is bored in her relationship 10 times out of 10.

That's right - not just most of the time on that last. But, EVERY time!

But wait, you say - Walt Disney taught me to make women feel safe and secure! Isn't that what they want?

Actually... no. Everyone takes away the message of, "Protect her and make her feel safe!" from the movies most of the time... and they get it all wrong.

Because there's something else happening in those movies too - another reason why girls swoon for Prince Charming, and it isn't his trust fund.

But everybody misses that part... and everybody ends up with his own bored girl as a result.

Well, here's how to get yourself back in line with what women actually want.

Well, that time has come - time to wrap up our relationship series.

This has been a long collection of articles about the topic of relationships we’ve put out over the last several weeks… and if you asked me to, I could easily write another one just as long. Relationships are simply an incredibly complex topic, with a million little counterintuitive nuances.

Every time you think you’ve got them down… you don’t.

On the one hand, many of the rules we learn for dating go out the window… the game changes completely once you get into a monogamous, committed relationship with a girl.

On the other hand, you still can’t suddenly be a pushover, so a lot of the inner game advice still applies… and where and how to apply everything and in the right context is certainly an art and a science unto itself.

A lot of readers had written in with questions about relationships… and in my experience, this is what a large portion of our students ultimately want to get out of this game… sure, it’s nice to have a lot of choice in beautiful women, and sure, it’s nice to at least have the ability to live a playboy lifestyle for a while.

But when it comes down to it, most guys don’t really want to live life as far out as Chase or myself. The two of us have taken dating to the extreme, which is why we’re now in a position to teach just about anybody about almost any situation – after a decade of obsessing over this skill the way an Agassi would obsess over the game of tennis, there aren’t many situations we haven’t experienced yet. You might not want to be this obsessive… most people don’t.