Sneaky Dating Tricks

I’m blessed to have a few close female friends in my life who have AMAZING guy game. Seriously, a few of these girls should teach classes. So there are a few sneaky little tricks I see them doing again and again, tricks which have certainly gotten the best of me in the past, for which you just have to watch out the with beautiful ones…
The highly desirable girls who have lots of options tend to manage their male relationships as such:

• There could be one guy gets 50-80% of their mental and emotional energy. He could be an exciting new beau, a serious boyfriend, or an ex who she can’t let go of.
• She has a few guy friends who get 20-50% of her mental and emotional energy.
• If she’s single, she has a few orbiters and prospects who get 20-50% of her mental energy. She keeps them around for dinner, sex or simply to keep her from getting bored when she feels lonely or wants a text buddy.

We look at this list, and maybe its a little unfair because clearly its a full social schedule, and most guys can’t have it. Their lives aren’t built for it and they lack either the resources or the skills to maintain it. But whatever… attractive women can have it, so why not?
Keeping a man in orbit means keeping his hopes alive that something will develop between the two of them – maybe sex, maybe a relationship. In other words, it means managing a man’s feelings so that he will jump when she tells him to. To her, it usually feels like fun and games. To him, the feelings can be anywhere on the spectrum, from “mildly interested” to crush to obsession.  And his feelings usually depend on how emotionally mature he is, how many options he has, and how much experience he has in dealing with women.
There are two or three things that women do if they want to keep a man in orbit, and to engender feelings that create crushes and obsessions. We’ll get to those momentarily. But let’s stop for a moment and think about how his feelings for her develop. And before we go any further, and before I begin to sound too much like a curmudgeonly, jaded misanthrope, I should say that I absolutely believe in love, romance, and holding hands. Just, you know, with the right girl.
So back to crushes, obsessions, and the pain of a tortured romance: a man builds up a story in his own mind that isn’t matched by reality. He tells himself how perfect he and a girl could be together, but he doesn’t really know her yet. He tells himself how they have so much in common, but he’s overlooked all of their differences. He finds a million reasons why it “makes sense” for them to be together, but they’re all reasons that have little or no significance to her.
A few weekends ago, I was sitting next to a young guy in a bar. He pointed over to a girl nearby, who was clearly into some other guy who was flirting with her. My new acquaintance told me how this girl – a friend he’d come into town to visit that weekend – was his soulmate. Shortly after he told me this, she started kissing the other guy in plain view. “Oh, she’s not really serious about him,” my new friend told me, sad but resolute. So oblivious to reality was he that the story he’d created in his head was stronger than the situation unraveling right in front of him.
Some men develop feelings and obsessions based on, well, little to nothing. They think the girl is hot, or they just like the idea of being with her. So that happens, for sure. But women are smart, and sometimes they do things to create and stoke those feelings. As one of my girl friends put it, “I want a guy to feel like he might have a chance with me, even if I know that he probably doesn’t, because I might change my mind later.” So without further ado, here are three tricks of the trade that, whether she’s doing them consciously or unconsciously, will get ya if you don’t see them coming.
The Neediness Card: You’ll hear all sorts of stories – about how she’s been hurt, about how lonely she is, about her unfulfilled sex life, about something she wants to do with which you can help…and they’re all meant to trigger that desire in a man to provide for and take care of a woman. Some women do it subtly, others are more direct: I know (but am not friends with) a girl who told a guy with whom she was living that her mom had died and that she needed to go to the funeral. She went to see her other boyfriend instead. 99% of girls aren’t this crazy, but the neediness card accounts for a lot of second-guessing that we as men do. “Maybe I should call her again, maybe if she sees that I really like her she’ll feel comfortable turning to me.”
Making Future Plans: When she spends time with a guy, she talks about all the things she’d like to do with him. Girls with good game like to suggest a lot of plans quickly, from jogging dates to how quickly they want to see him again to cultural experiences they would enjoy together. And girls with really good game will make those plans match up to interests and hobbies of the guy’s. As a man, its hard not to fall for it. “Wow, this girl LIKES me! And I didn’t even have to work too hard for it.” It can come subtly, as in “Yeah, there’s this play I’ve been wanting to check out,” or it can be more direct, like “So would you want to go see this play next week?” And hey, sometimes its genuine. But other times it is very calculated. You don’t know until you start to get a better picture of the girl.
The Apologetic Flake: I have seen this play out several times, and I have a good friend who is just masterful at this and who brought it into sharp focus. She’s an attractive girl and she works on a trading desk, so she’s legitimately busy and has painfully early mornings. From time to time, she just doesn’t feel like going on the date she has scheduled. The guy isn’t that interesting to her, or another social event popped up, whatever… So she’ll flake at the last minute, but she’ll offer her profuse apologies.  Sometimes these are interlaced with statements meant to inspire sympathy (“I slept like 2 hours last night, I’m barely functioning, I hate my job”), but in almost all cases, she attempts to lock the guy into rescheduling right there on the phone by telling him how excited she is to see him and how “seriously,” she can’t wait to hang out because they’re going to have such a good time.
Are there other tricks?  Probably.  And look –  you just never know about a person until you really, really know them. I’ve had relationships which started out drama-free and became full of it within a few weeks, and other relationships which started turbulently but settled into something that flowed very naturally.
What about you?  Have you ever experienced any of the above? Are there other tricks to which you’ve fallen victim or, er… subject?