Why Men Should Move Slowly into Relationships
by 
Eric Disco
The reluctant groom may be more than just a macho stereotype; it may be an in-built evolutionary mechanism that reflects the differences between male and female mating strategies.
In How to Get Her to be Your Girlfriend, I talk about why it’s advantageous for a man to not be so straightforward with a woman about his intention to make her his girlfriend.
If the ‘relationship’ is moving along at a brisk pace, it’s in his interest to get her to ask him to be exclusive rather than the other way around.
This advice does not necessarily pertain equally to men and women. It’s not just advice to try and gain the upper hand in the relationship.
This may be evolutionary by design.
At Overcoming Bias, Robin Hanson explains brilliantly Why Men are Bad at Feelings.
From an evolutionary perspective, when ‘deciding’ to have sex (as in an evolutionary impulse, not a logical decision), women have very different investment considerations than men.
Firstly, women invest nine months physically during pregnancy, and then usually carry the brunt of the child-rearing after birth.
Since cooperation between men and women in child-rearing was evolutionarily advantageous, pair-bonding developed and men would provide support for the upbringing of children. To facilitate this, evolution created feelings of attachment.
Hanson writes:
Such bonds can break, however. And because they are asymmetric, their betrayal is also asymmetric.
Women betray bonds more by temporarily having fertile sex with other men, while men betray bonds more by directing resources more permanently to other women.
So when farmer husbands and wives watch for signs of betrayal, they watch for different things. Husbands watch wives more for signs of a temporary inclination toward short-term mating with other men, while wives watch husbands more for signs of an inclination to shift toward a long-term resource-giving bond with other women. (Of course they both watch for both sorts of inclinations; the issue is emphasis.)
This asymmetric watching for signs of betrayal produces asymmetric pressures on appearances. While a man can be more straight-forward and honest with himself and others about his inclinations toward short-term sex, he should be more careful with the signs he shows about his inclinations toward long term attachments with women.
Similarly, while a woman can be more straight-forward and honest with herself and others about her inclinations toward long-term attachments with men, she should be more careful with the signs she shows about her inclinations toward short term sex with men.
We can see why men are more opaque with their feelings and women are more opaque with their sexual inclinations.
But here’s the rub: not only are they opaque to others, but their feelings are opaque toward themselves.
For evolution to work flawlessly and in its own best interest, those signals are not only hidden from the opposite sex, those inclinations are hidden from ourselves.
Men and women may have evolved, either genetically or culturally, to adapt to these pressures on their appearances. If so, then we should expect men to be more self-aware, transparent, and simple regarding their feelings about short-term sexual attractions, while women have more complex, layered, and opaque feelings on this subject.
In contrast, women should be more self-aware, transparent, and simple regarding their feelings about long-term pair-bonding, while men have more complex, layered, and opaque feelings on this subject. By being more opaque on sensitive subjects, we can keep ourselves from giving off clear signals of an inclination to betray.
Standard crude stereotypes of gender differences roughly fit these predictions! That is, when the subject is one’s immediate lust and sexual attraction to others, by reputation men are more straight-forward and transparent, while women are more complex and opaque, even to themselves. But when the subject is one’s inclination toward and feelings about long-term attachments, by reputation women are more self-aware and men are more complex and opaque, even to themselves.
So let’s sum up. Why don’t men express their “feelings”? (At least about “love” — they easily express “feelings” about sex.) And why don’t women know when they are “horny”? Perhaps because such knowledge is dangerous — if you know it, then others may learn what you know from you. Which might destroy your marriage. So our feelings may be most opaque to us when we need them to be opaque to others.
While gushing, over-emotional displays can certainly be unattractive in both genders, we can see in long-term relationship building, that a guy being overly emotional at the beginning is more likely to be a problem than a girl being overly emotional.
In other words, things like gift-giving and sentimentality are more risky for men at the beginning of a relationship. And in fact explicitly pushing for a relationship and asking for one is much riskier for a guy.
Likewise, pushing for sex at the beginning of a relationship is much riskier for a girl. Rather than sex on the first date, giving in to sex after a few dates makes it much more likely he’ll want a relationship.
A slower, giving-in to the relationship is more beneficial for the guy, just like like a slower sexual surrender is more beneficial to the girl.
Also see, Why You Should Start All Relationships as Casual for a first-hand, woman’s perspective of what happens when a guy moves too fast into relationship territory.
Posted in Relationships, Sex and Escalation | 
6 Comments »
For a better idea of the evolutionary perspective, check out Sex at Dawn. There may be lots of things in there that will change your ideas about our instincts where sexual relations are concerned. These quotes by Hanson are talking more about cultural pressures that have been placed on people rather than hardwired evolutionary instincts. I can’t argue with the slower pace that you recommend, but I think you would get a lot out of reading an alternate view to the narrative of how our sexuality evolved.
I’m not sure about what to do..
Two days ago, I went on a first date with this beautiful girl I met on a social network site. We had been texting regularly for about a month or two.
The date went very well, and I hooked up with her. We were making eachother laugh all the time and I want to keep seeing this girl because I like her.
After we kissed for the first time, I impulsively said that I was going to this party in octobre. Without me asking she then immediately said that she could sleep with her niece who lives closer by so we could go together.
After reading this post I first decided that I would be casual about it and just let the relationship build up without me ever asking if she wants to be exclusive. Then I talked to two of my friends – who have a very decent experience with girls – about it, but they didn’t agree with this post. They gave me the advice to try and make her my girlfriend on the second date (seeing as we kissed plenty on the first date). They told me I should ask her opinion: “Do you see what we have going on as a relationship?”. If she says yes then it’ll be official, if she says no then I know I should be carefull not to waste a lot of time on her.
The reasons for this are:
- She could be waiting for me to ask her opinion and if I don’t do it soon she’ll think I’m not interested enough.
- Until she is in a relationship, she won’t be faithfull.
- If we keep seeing eachother like this, what are we going to answer if someone (a friend maybe) asks us if we are a couple?
I kind of agree, but only because their way of asking her opinion is not at all pushy.
So what do you think about this? Do you think maybe I should be more indirect about it, and how?
Keep in mind that I’m 19 and I’m dealing with a 17 year old girl (with some experience).
Mathias,
Different people have different expectations. If I had gone on two dates with a 20-something-year-old in NYC, and asked her to be my girlfriend after two dates, she would probably freak out. A 19-year-old doing this with a 17-year-old may be a bit different. This is something a younger girl might not find weird. A 17-year-old in high school may have very different expectations than a 27-year-old. (Although once out of high school, those expectations don’t change that much. A 37-year-old wouldn’t be that much different than a 22-year-old in terms of dating expectations.)
However, you want to consider the emotional component of what you’re doing here. You are pushing for a relationship with this girl by explicitly telling her you want a relationship. You are asking her explicitly how she feels about you. You are usually better off making it seem like you grudgingly accepted her offer to be her boyfriend.
Let me give you an analogy. Let’s say you meet a girl (not having spoken to her for a few months) and you go out on a first date. 15 minutes into the first date, she fucks you in the bathroom. Most guys would be happy about this. Score! High five! And many guys would gladly go for this. But how then does that make you feel about her. You start to wonder. Why was it so easy? Is she a slut? Does she do this with all guys?
Instead, let’s say you push her to get sexual with you and she holds off. She only makes out with you on the first date. The second date she lets you do a little more. And then the third date, she finally has sex with you. You’re apt to FEEL a lot differently toward her and the possibility of a relationship.
The same goes for this girl. You’ve only been out twice with her. You’re demonstrating a lot of interest by texting her every day. The best way to make her FEEL like wanting to be your girlfriend is to hang out with her more often, get her to open up to you, and to continue to CHALLENGE her. You want to have fun with her, bust on her a little bit here and there and make her feel like she’s working for your interest. Ideally, instead of you worrying about her hooking up with other guys, she’ll be worried about you hooking up with other girls and will feel compelled to ask you to be exclusive.
What I’m saying here is that you want to focus on how she FEELS rather than getting a verbal commitment from her. A verbal commitment is not the end-all-be-all. She may lose interest in you. She may get bored with you. She may cheat on you. She may dump you and break your heart.
Focus on understanding how she feels and how she’s acting toward you. Is she focused on you when you’re together? Does she take initiative to invite you out, to text you and to call you? Does she plan things for you and make you little gifts? This is a much better indicator of whether she’s seeing other guys.
My advice, if you’re afraid that she thinks you don’t appreciate her, is to connect with her more. Tell her, “I like hanging out with you.” Or better yet, find things about her that you can tell her you like. But it sounds like this girl is already into you though, so I would be careful not to shower her with too many compliments. Let her come to you.
Eric
Thank you, I believe this is some good advice.
So in short; what you’re saying is I should keep on doing what I was already doing to get this far. I should keep being a challenge, but at the same time letting her know that I do appreciate her. Doing that should make her feel like wanting a relationship, right?
Can you suggests a few things that I could tell her -when the moment is right- that will help trigger her to ask me if I want a relationship?
I should clear out that we had our first date last wednesday and the second date is yet to come though.
OK, got a little problem and this post kinda hits the head of it. I’ve been dating this girl for about 4 months. It started out hot and heavy, seeing each other quite a bit (3-5 times a week) and pretty quickly and naturally progressed to something serious. I knew she was into me… and I was into her. She occasionally talked about how great things were, etc, and talked about how she didn’t think she would find anyone so fast that was actually relationship worthy. All was good and it progressed well… for awhile.
See, the problem is, despite what I said above she is generally a pretty non-expressive woman and rarely talks about her feelings or what/where she sees the relationship going unless kinda “prompted”. We agreed to become exclusive not too long after we started dating and I was cool with that… it’s actually what I wanted. What happened afterwards though was a bit of a surprise to me.
After about 2 months of being together she went out of town for 10 days to visit family. Before she left we talked regularly and fairly frequently but once she left I quickly began to get the “outta sight, outta mind” feeling cuz I wouldn’t hear from her hardly at all. I said something about it a few days in and she said she’d try to do better but that didn’t happen. Right before she came back I kinda got pissed and it started an arguement where she revealed “I don’t know, I just don’t think we have to be in touch all the time”. Kind of a left turn from where we were before she left. When she came back we had a sit down and I told her how I felt (yeah, I know, bad move) and that I had expected more. Long and short is that she said she didn’t feel like not calling or talking for a few days was a big deal and even said it wouldn’t be a big deal if we saw each other LESS now that she was back.
Soon after she got back I found something I didn’t expect… she left her phone open next to me one day as she left and I decided to pull a prank and post a funny status update on her facebook. I opened it and it opened to messages and the first thing I saw was a message from her sister that started “So, how are things with Mr. “too much love” going…”. Yeah, I was intrigued so I clicked it. In the history I looked back and apparently the conversation started with her giving her sister the rundown on me and saying that I was a great guy, she loved spending time with me, she wanted her to meet me, blah blah, etc, etc. Then came something that kinda surprised the shit out of me. She said “He’s great and all but I’m still running hot and cold with him. It’s just there are little annoyances like he doesn’t eat lettuce and he drinks too much diet soda instead of water and I know that shouldn’t bother me but it does and it concerns me because with Ryan (her most recent ex she broke up with) there were no things like that. I know I’m a freak for worrying about it but it does concern me that I already have things like this”. Her sister basically told her she was being an idiot and if I made her happy to get over it so that was all good but what concerned me was the timing… the initial email was written 4 weeks into our relationship… right when she was gushing and telling me how happy she was and how much she wanted things to progress!
“WTF is going on here” is all that I thought. She TOLD me that she cared, wanted to be with me, loved me, etc, but her actions were showing something different. Over the next few weeks after she got back I kinda got a little gunshy… a bit afraid to say anything if something bothered me or upset me… I knew I had lost the upperhand but didn’t know how to get it back. Show her I care, want her, and can be OK with her non-expressive nature was what I thought (yeah, I know… bad move again). This past weekend she took me on a trip to Portland and the whole time she kept remarking how she wanted me to have a good time but at the same time she didn’t look like she was having a very good time. I pointed it out and she denied at first and then admitted that she was just “having one of those days” and kinda didn’t want to be around anyone that day (not “me” per se… anyone). I told her that was kinda hard since we were on vacation and she apologized profusely and said she was going to try to do better from now on.
My problem is this… in the past little things have bothered me and we’ve had arguements about whatever it was and the end result was her telling me that she’s A) not very expressive, B) like being with me and spending time with me but does NOT like talking on the phone or feeling like she has to keep in touch all the time, C) not sure she can give me what I need, and D) very into me and doesn’t want to lose the relationship but sometimes she feels like she should care “more than she does. She has basically cooled off since the first 6 weeks (and before she left outta town) and now says she is content “seeing where this goes” rather than talking about this like there IS a future like she used to. She genuinely cares a lot about me but questions whether she can give me enough. I know she really wants this but I think she is kinda feeling like the relationship has “lost it’s luster” and after finding this site and reading a bit, I know why.
I fucked it all up… I made just about every mistake I could and the whole time I thought I was giving her what she wanted and needed. I realize now that we probably even moved into it too fast. Funny thing is that the other night we were talking about relationship progression cuz she thought it would just take time to build something and I said “that’s funny cuz I’ve always, with everyone I know, heard of the 3 month honeymoon period. For the first 3 months you’re hot and heavy, hanging out all the time, and then after 3 months it cools down and you start to see the real person. Just about every relationship I’ve heard of has been like this”. She replied “well, I’ve never really had that or even heard of that. Every relationship I’ve know has start out slow and built and built… til one day weeks or months down the line it becomes something more”. Holy shit.
As I read this site something hit me… I’d fucked it all up about how I approached it. I went to fast. I told her I cared too much. I told her and made her feel like I’d do whatever it took to make it work “cuz she was worth it”. I pushed for more contact. I let her know that she was the most important thing. I let her be dominant. I let her know EVERYTHING that bothered me and over expounded on it til not only beat the dead horse… I massacred it. I never pulled away when she did something I didn’t like… I pushed harder. I realized that I had done just about everything wrong that I could possibly do and as I read all the articles I found myself being “that guy” that you talked about in just about every one of them. I even fit, almost to a tee, the description that your female friend mentioned in the “Why you should start all relationships casual” post. It’s shocking cuz I thought I was EXACTLY the type of guy any sane woman would want but now I see I flat out hit all the red flags… but she’s still with me. My thought is this… she’s still with me cuz she really DOES want a relationship with me but all these red flags are starting to make her doubt if it’s possible.
Here’s the funny part about this… she acts almost exactly like SHE has read this site. She plays the part of what you say the guy should act like on here pretty well… only thing is she’s not “playing” that part, that’s just who she is. She’s aloof, she’s distant, she’s awesome when she’s around but absent when she’s not, she’s very much all of it but it’s without game… that’s just who she is.
So here’s the question of point for this long ass diatribe… what do I do? Yeah, I see I should have acted completely different and now I know what I “should have” done, but is it too late to still do it? I obviously can’t start over from scratch with her but can I start implementing some things to pull this away from the edge? Like I said, I know she still wants to be with me, even after all this shit, and I do want to be with her. I’m not interested in taking big steps back in this relationship and making more casual and kinda “starting over from the beginning” with the whole seeing other people, aloofness, etc. I know we’ve already gone to far to go back to that now. What I do think can happen though is that I can implement some of the strategies here and get things back on track the way they “should have been” from the beginning. What I don’t know is how. I know I need to pull away a bit… be more absent, show her she’s NOT the only thing in my life, show her I am willing to bail if shit gets to deep, show her I am in control. I know it can’t be all of a sudden though or it will get the “WTF is wrong with you… why are you acting so weird” comment… or maybe that’s exactly what I should do? If I do, I have no idea how to reply to that comment. I have decided I am going to do all of it and started trying to implement the distance thing yesterday. Usually when she texts I answer pretty quickly but when I text her it can be 20 minutes or sometimes an hour before she replies… that always bugged me. Well, I started one trick mentioned here in that however long it took her to reply, I doubled it. I also waited til she texted to say goodnight and never responded (something I have NEVER done before). I’m going to also make myself more unavailable and just pull away a bit but that will take time obviously. Funny part is, even in one day, it worked. She’s already immediately replying to my texts when I do eventually reply and I went to the library at the university where shenear works to study (cuz my normal one I go to is closed today) and checked in on FB but didn’t tell her I was up here and it wasn’t 10 min before she texted me and asked if I was up here and would like to meet for coffee. Yes, baby steps, but it does appear to work. My problem though is… can you REALLY change gears like this with someone once you have completely established a pattern and they know how you are or will it always look like you are playing a game and it’s not natural. Much easier to fool someone who doesn’t know you, but can you really “change” midstream like this and make it work?? I have my doubts but I know that continuing down the path I was going meant certain failure and this is pretty much my only chance to even possibly make this work. In theory it “should” work but theories get holes punched in em all the time so fuck me if I know the answer. What do you think??? There’s WAY more detail to this that would provide more clarity but I think this mininovel is enough to give you the info you need…
“Or better yet, find things about her that you can tell her you like.”
Can this be considered qualification? What if you were to find things that are really unique about her (non-physical) that no man has ever noticed about her before.
In my opinion this is HUGE its not only charming but this also shows you really care about her and paying attention to details will totally give you an advantage over anyother guys.
Would this be a “bullseye”? What would be the “power” of this?