Posted by Savoy on Saturday, November 6, 2010
I was talking on The Lounge the other day with Randall, a Love Systems bootcamp graduate. He’s doing great now, and it reminded me of a Q&A I did in the Love Systems’
insider (LSi) a little while ago. He said it helped him a lot, so I’m taking a fresh look at it here.
Dear Savoy,
I was at the Love Systems Bootcamp in April withBraddock and The Don. I hesitated for a while because it’s not cheap, but oh my God was it worth it and I’m kicking myself for not learning Love Systems a couple years ago. I didn’t know it was possible, and now those illusions are shattered now and with what I learned, I’m seriously making up for lost time :-]
One of the women I met on my bootcamp has flown to visit me a few times (at her own expense) and I saw her when I back in Los Angeles on business. I told “Kristine” early on that I’m not looking for a committed relationship. She said she understood, but the last couple weeks she’s gotten more possessive. She asks about my female friends and is annoyed if I don’t return her calls until the next day.
I feel CRAZY writing this because ‘Kristine” is model-quality hot and a really cool girl. She’s definitely a few leagues above anyone else I dated, let alone slept with, before my bootcamp. The night we met, many other guys were hitting on her and following her around, so when she gave me her number and was excited to hear from me the next day, I thought I’d won the lottery.Now I’m also winning the lottery a lot in my home city and I don’t want to be rushed into a relationship. What should I do?
-Randall S., Kansas City, MO Dear Randall,
Here’s the first problem – you’re looking at a relationship like a business contract.I.e., you and her agree on how it’s going to be, and it stays that way unless you both agree to change it. That’s not how most women see men and relationships.
I learned this the hard way.
In college, before Love Systems, I started dating someone just before the end of the school year. She was about to graduate and had already been accepted to law school in a college about 400 miles away. I had another year to go. Because it was a new relationship and was
118 P
ART7
going to be long-distance, we agreed that it would be okay to see other people as long as we told each other when it happened.
A few months later, I somehow ended up hooking up with my friend’s new roommate.
Hotter than any girl I’d hooked up before I started with Love Systems and started picking up seriously hot women. Thinking I was being a good boyfriend and playing by the rules, I called my girlfriend a bit later and told her.
She was REALLY pissed off.
“I thought we were passed that”
Let me be clear. The rules never changed. We had that conversation about the open relationship, agreed to it, and then never discussed it again. So the same rules stay in force, right?
Not to her and not to most women in that situation. Our relationship had become pretty stable – we talked every day, saw each other most weekends, planned stuff together. So it felt like a serious relationship. In her experience, serious relationships were monogamous ones.
Neither of us had been hooking up with other people (or we would have told each other about it), so to her, the relationship had evolved and now we were monogamous.
It didn’t hurt that a monogamous relationship was what she naturally wanted anyway…
So what’s going on here?
If you’re a legal guy or have watched enough courtroom dramas on TV, you can think of how women see relationships as being “common law” instead of “civil law”. In common law, rules change based on precedent. The exact same law may have the exact same wording as it did 20 years ago, but if a judge interprets those words differently than judges did 20 years ago, the law has changed. In civil law, the exact same law means the exact same thing as it always did until someone rewrites it.
Most women take a “common law” approach to relationships. To avoid “expectations drift”, you need to act in a way that she perceives as “this is how a guy in an open relationship would act” and/or explicitly review the terms of your relationship. The more she wants the relationship to change, the easier it will be for her to convince herself that it has.
I go over this stuff a lot in the Relationship Management DVDs – the six major types of relationship (including friends with benefits), how to get into each other, how change relationship types, manage expectations, tell what girls will cheat and when they’ll do it, and so on. That’s hours of material, so I’ll be brief with a couple of things to get you started on your specific question:
• Do not see her more than once a week or once a month if long-distance. Important.
• Make occasional comments to subtly remind her that you still have an active social life. Don’t embarrass her by talking about dates or other women, but tell non-romantic stories about what happened ‘when I was out last night’ or ‘at my friend’s party on Friday’.
• Avoid routine. Don’t talk to her every day on your drive home for work, or if she lives in your town see her every Saturday night for example.
119
R
ELATIONSHIPS• Realize that if she really wants an exclusive relationship and you don’t give it to her, she may well find someone who does. That’s OK – Love Systems is not about building a harem with every woman you meet, and if you don’t want what she wants, that’s OK.
But be aware.