Part 12 (1/2)

If You Want Him to Commit.

In the first part of this book, we discussed the importance of your being a woman of high value. Extraordinary attracts extraordinary, we said.

It also keeps extraordinary.

A high-value woman who is also able to embody the traits a guy seeks in a partner-validates him s.e.xually, recognizes his uniqueness, is a loyal teammate, and nurtures and supports him while permitting him to provide and protect-doesn't need to make a case for her desirability. Any guy worth having will realize you are a woman like no other, and he'll sell himself on the idea of commitment. As we discussed earlier, a guy must come around to this decision on his own.

What goes on inside a guy's mind when he desires a relations.h.i.+p? First, he needs to feel that life with you is going to get better and better the more he puts into it. Every stage of commitment feels better, richer, and more satisfying than the last phase, because at every step along the way he's earning your investment in him. He believes that the more time and energy he invests in the relations.h.i.+p, the better things are going to get. He comes to a.s.sociate more pleasure with connection and commitment, because the more he commits, the better things get both emotionally and s.e.xually, and the more available you become to him.

In other words, it should be he who is wondering whether you want a relations.h.i.+p with him. Attraction is about keeping him a little off balance. He wants to know you're into him, but he wants to be guessing about whether you want a relations.h.i.+p with him or not. Let him be guessing whether you're seeing other people. He shouldn't know everything up front.

A guy might be in the market for a relations.h.i.+p, but he might not have realized it yet. He's probably not walking around thinking, Yes, that's it, my life would be so much better if I were in a relations.h.i.+p! But then he finds himself hooked on a woman he's been seeing, one he suddenly views as irreplaceable. He realizes that he couldn't have as much fun or as many great experiences with any other woman.

This is why maintaining your fun, exciting lifestyle means everything. And why, moving forward as a couple, it's important to explore new things together. The more you experience together, the more you a.s.sociate the best adventures of life with one another. It bears mentioning again that we have come full circle. The very qualities that attracted the guy to you in the first place will be the same qualities that get him to commit. It's only a matter of depth.

Don't Skimp on Your Own Value.

When you first began dating, your guy was unsure where he stood with you. During this time, you were a.s.sessing him to see whether he was worthy of a relations.h.i.+p with you. You were encouraging and playful, flirty and fun, all while getting to know him and learning about his values and standards for those values; at the same time, you were also conveying to him that you weren't desperate to snag a guy, to get into a relations.h.i.+p with just anyone. He may have felt frustrated that things didn't move along quicker, that you weren't willing to sleep with him on the first or second (or tenth) date, but he was impressed that you didn't need to rely on being part of a couple to feel emotionally validated. You were happy with your life and with who you are, and that was enormously attractive to him. He was eager to feel that there was room for him, that he could be part of your fun and varied lifestyle.

Being high value isn't a short-term game we play to attract a guy. The principles for being a high-value woman are relevant in the first ten minutes, or on the tenth date, or after ten years of a relations.h.i.+p.

Your Time Is Still Your Own.

It's a common story. A woman is really into a man and she starts giving away too much too soon. She puts herself at his beck and call, dropping friends and work commitments to make him her top priority. We addressed this in the previous section when we talked about premature obligation, but the tenets hold true for this stage of your relations.h.i.+p as well. You don't ever want to put your calendar in his hands and say, ”Now that we're dating, here's my schedule. When do you want me?”

In any committed relations.h.i.+p your man will eventually become one of the top priorities in your life, if not the very top. But this position has to be earned. If you hand him your schedule too early, if you put all of your plans on hold and make yourself instantly available to him regardless of what else is going on in your life, it won't endear him to you. Rather, it will compromise the long-term potential of your relations.h.i.+p. I can't say this enough times: a guy should receive the amount of time and attention he earns.

I remember once sending a text to a girl I'd been seeing, asking whether she was free to go out that evening. She sent back this message: ”That would be great. But I'm fully booked in the evenings this week, big piece of work due so I have a date with my desk. How about we do lunch instead?”

I liked this message because it established the principles we have talked about here. On one hand she expressed a desire to see me. On the other, she made it clear that because I was relatively new to her life I wasn't as important as her work at this stage, so I'd have to wait my turn. She expressed her high value by showing that she wasn't compromising on important things just because a guy asked her out, and so she became that much more attractive to me.

When you realize a guy you like feels the same about you, clinging to his attraction for dear life in the hope of maintaining it never works. It doesn't make him more attracted and more interested in committing to you, but less. Bending over backward to be available to him merely shows him that you're not as high value as he once imagined. Indeed, the more you mold your personality to become what he says he likes, the less respect he has for you over time. Remember that amazing, high-value woman he gathered up his courage to ask on that first date? That's the woman he still wants.

Here's an image that some of the women I've coached have found helpful: Think of your life as a train that's pulling in for a short stop at the station. It stops to pick up new pa.s.sengers, but the many exciting destinations ahead require the train to keep moving; it can't afford to stop for long.

Your guy is standing on the platform as the train pulls in. He has plenty of time to climb aboard. He already has the itinerary; he knows where the train is going, what route it's going to take, and where it will stop along the way.

He also knows that the train will be leaving the platform shortly. It will not wait around for him to get on board. He'll have a great journey if he decides to climb aboard, but the itinerary hasn't been designed with him in mind. The decision to come along or not is his, but the train isn't going to sit in the station, waiting for him to make it.

If he decides to stay put, fine, but he needs to stand back behind the yellow line, because this train is leaving the station and may not come back around again. All aboard!

Tend to Your Lifestyle.

As close and connected as you may feel to your new guy, he should never have the sense that he's going about his business while you're sitting at home waiting for him to call. This is why tending to your lifestyle is so important to keeping a guy long term. The same lifestyle you were building for your own pleasure should remain as valuable to you as it was before he came along. And you should continue to build it. Even though you may now define yourself as part of a couple, you still need to keep giving him little glimpses into how fun and exciting life can be with you.

Let's return for a moment to the train metaphor. You're going to give him a chance to get on board if he wants to, but he's going to have to be quick about it, because you have places to go. If, on the other hand, you don't have anywhere else to be, and you just stop at his platform and say, ”Okay, take your time. I'll just be waiting here whenever you're in the mood to hop on the train,” a guy immediately feels a lack of urgency. He knows that whatever he does, no matter how long he keeps you waiting, you're not going to leave without him, so he has no incentive to get on board now. If he knows you'll be there all day and all week, he can put off his decision indefinitely.

Maintain Your Standards.

Although it's tempting to compromise your standards in the early months of dating in the belief that being agreeable and frictionless will keep the connection moving forward, it's crucial to stick to your guns. Uphold the same standards you displayed when you first met. Men adhere to the parameters women set for them, and a woman with standards gives a guy something to live up to.

This never changes, no matter how long you are together.

What gets confusing for guys is the degree to which you lower your standards at the beginning of a relations.h.i.+p, only to raise them a few months later. For example, if his continual texting while you're out on a date annoys you, you might refrain from telling him you don't like it because you don't want to seem disagreeable or demanding, for fear of losing him. But this sets you up for disaster later on. If, six months down the road, you try to bring up the fact that it annoys you, he's going to wonder why you're suddenly mad about it if you never said so before. Continuing to live by your standards shows your guy that he isn't going to win you over just because you've been dating for a few months. It gives him the sense that until you're committed to him-and in some ways, ever after-you're still scoping him out, which gives him the chance to position himself as someone worthy of being important to you.

I'm not advocating game playing; this is about valuing yourself enough to know that you're ent.i.tled to a certain quality of person with whom to share your life. True power is knowing in the deepest part of yourself that you always have the ability to walk away. If he's wrong for you, you know there are thousands more guys out there.

Don't give him all the benefits of a relations.h.i.+p before he has committed to one When it comes to love, men and women tend to run on different timetables. Three months into the relations.h.i.+p she's starting to wonder whether they might one day get engaged, while he's still thinking they're just hanging out. She chose him weeks earlier, and he's starting to think the time has come for him to think about choosing. This is why it's important to let things develop organically. You may be moving toward a relations.h.i.+p with your guy, but if you're not in one yet, don't jump the gun and rush into relations.h.i.+p mode. In the same way that the number of dates doesn't determine when you decide to have s.e.x with someone, there's no time limit after which your time together accrues and you're suddenly in a Relations.h.i.+p. Even if it's going extremely well, one has to allow it to unfold naturally. Never simply a.s.sume you're exclusive.

Rus.h.i.+ng the relations.h.i.+p is counterproductive for several reasons. The guy may panic because he feels things are moving too quickly. He won't appreciate what he's got because he hasn't done anything to get it and will also have no incentive to invest more, because why should he?

Recall the principle of reciprocity discussed in chapter 6: give first, expect second. Invest first, then see how he responds. A guy should only receive based on the amount that he invests. And you should always act based on how much he invests, not on how much you like him.

If you overinvest, giving your guy all the benefits of a relations.h.i.+p immediately-arranging your schedule around his, giving yourself emotionally to him regardless of whether he shows the same affection and openness toward you-then he isn't going to appreciate it, or you. Men only appreciate what they've earned.

This concept is not only applicable to men. Look at it from another angle: Suppose a guy bought you a car after one date. Nice as that might sound, if it actually happened you wouldn't feel impressed and appreciative; you'd feel weird and suspicious that he was trying to buy your affection. Even if you loved it, you'd reject the gift as inappropriate. You may have had a great time on your date, but you hardly know the guy.

When a guy gets all your time, devotion, and s.e.xual attention before he's ready, it feels awkward, not wonderful. He may have been hoping to one day be a big part of your life, but he needs to feel like he's earned it; otherwise he's going to reject it. We've mentioned this before, but it's worth repeating here. It's another facet of a guy's basic insecurity: he needs to feel as if only he could have won you. He doesn't want to feel as if just any guy who took you out for enough cheeseburgers and movies could have landed you.

How can you tell if he's investing in you and your relations.h.i.+p? Ask yourself: Is he setting aside time for you? Does he make an effort to bring you into his daily life on a regular basis? Is he confiding in you? Does he enjoy doing simple workaday things together, or is he just interested in getting together at 10 p.m.? He may not be racing to introduce you to his mother the moment you become an item, but he should be showing increasing amounts of investment by bringing you into his life more and more. These are the things you should be looking for, and adjust your investment accordingly.

I'm not saying you shouldn't be affectionate. I'm also not suggesting that you should bust his chops for the aforementioned 10 p.m. phone call.

Let's talk about that phone call for a moment. The longer you're with someone, the less like a booty call it becomes and the more like something we don't have a name for. Maybe the French do. It's a gray area. You're in a kind-of-committed relations.h.i.+p with this guy, so don't you owe it to him to make an exception and tell him to come on over?

Well, no, actually. He knows that it's too late to be calling, but he's hoping you might like him so much you're willing to overinvest and say yes. Maybe you'll say yes because you're afraid that saying no will cause him to lose interest, or to call someone else in his phonebook. Your response is going to give him information about how much he can get without having to return the investment.

In the immediate moment it might seem hot and s.e.xy, but the next morning a subtle s.h.i.+ft may have occurred in your dynamic: now he's seen that you are willing to compromise your standards just because you like him. And if he hasn't already committed to any kind of relations.h.i.+p, you've now just sent the message that it doesn't matter whether he does, because he's still going to get all the benefits of being in a relations.h.i.+p without having to actually be in one.

If you are seeing a guy and you get one of those late-night phone calls, as you most certainly will, you don't have to reject him in a serious way.

Tell him you're already in your PJs, or that it's too short notice for you and you've got plans to be asleep at the moment. This lightness of tone shows that you may not be interested, but you're not angry. You're not punis.h.i.+ng him for asking, only showing him that you can't be cajoled into giving him his way that easily.

a.s.sess and invest on what you see, not what you hope for Another reason we sometimes overinvest is because we're in love with someone's potential. If I was forced to choose one dating scenario that never leads to happiness, it's investing in a guy who's a fixer-upper, who isn't great relations.h.i.+p material now but might be sometime in the unforeseeable future.

An acquaintance of mine met a guy with whom she fell head over heels. On their first date he talked with great pa.s.sion about wanting to spend the next five years traveling around the world, after which he might think about settling down. My friend didn't think he was going to be able to get the money together to take that sort of extended trip, but she began overinvesting like mad, and things fell apart quickly. Her mistake was in not believing him. He might not have been going around the block, but he also wasn't giving her a single sign that he was interested in investing in a relations.h.i.+p with her. This is what happens when we fall for someone's potential instead of the person in front of us.

PUTTING YOUR FOOT DOWN.

I show you why you shouldn't stand for shoddy behavior and how to communicate your demands in a way that remains high value.

Go to /standards.

Access code: gtgbook.