“I feel terrible,” my client tells me.

“I’ve been doing my affirmations, and they’re helping. But I can’t stop thinking about her.”

And then he admits to me: he’s been in contact with his nemesis again.

He was seeing her briefly.

But she told him that she wants to be ‘friends with benefits’ and then that she needs space.

Now he can’t get her to meet up with him.

He relays to me the interactions he’s had with her in the last two weeks.

It’s really true what they say: Love is blind.

My client has a lot of experience with women. He meets women every week. But because he’s so into this girl, he can’t see how needy he’s being.

I see guys doing this kind of stuff all the time:

• They ask a question over text. She doesn’t respond. So he sends another text the next day just to make sure everything is okay.

• Read the rest of this entry »

When you start seeing a woman, there can be a tendency to do one of two problematic things:

First, based on the fact that she’s into you, you can get too comfortable.

She’s expressing interest. Girls are good at that.

All the interest she is showing you starts to make you feel smug and think that you have this girl.

It feels like she’s not going anywhere.

They’re good at making it seem like you are her only interest, whether or not this is actually the case.

Unless it’s exclusive–and even then sometimes–I can tell you it’s usually not the case. She has other interests.

If you spend any amount of time around gorgeous women, one thing becomes apparent. Read the rest of this entry »

A few years ago I started seeing a girl. I was into things with her, but she was much more into things with me.

She played it cool, still taking initiative with me, still inviting me out for things. We even went on a small vacation together.

She implied that she wanted to be exclusive with me, to be my girlfriend, but I wasn’t quite feeling it at the time.

A large part of that was because I was dating other women.

She did her best to make me slightly jealous. She would talk about how other guys hit on her, etc. But it didn’t really affect me too much.

Then, at one point, she disappeared.

Read the rest of this entry »

My first relationship with a woman was a mess. I succeeded in making us both very, very unhappy.

I made us unhappy because I was such a wussy.

This girl was madly in love with me. And she acted that way around me.

When you are with a girl who is madly in love with you, it’s easy to feel secure, act aloof, and make her come to you.

These are all great dominant traits to exhibit in a relationship.

So one might think the fact that she was in love with me made me the dominant one in the relationship.

If you thought that, you would be wrong.

Just because a girl is more into you than you are into her, does not make you dominant in the relationship. It helps, but it’s not the end of the story.

Here’s where this can go wrong. Read the rest of this entry »

RK, a reader of ApproachAnxiety.com, asks:

Could you give some pointers about how to behave when she admits she’s dating someone else but obviously has an attraction for you. I’m regrettably facing this right now and don’t know if I should play along or show my irritation.

Regardless of what she tells you, you want to assume that there are other people in the equation and proceed as such. If she’s an attractive girl, there will always be some flotsam and jetsam in the vicinity, no matter how much she is into you.

A verbal commitment or even marriage is no way to guarantee that she will not hook up with other guys or–more importantly–that she will not lose attraction for you. You must continue to keep her interested at all times.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

A friend sent me a clip of a great episode of MTV’s reality show, True Life.

The episode is called I Can’t Leave My Boyfriend. Watch it here.

The show focuses on two women who can’t leave their astoundingly worthless boyfriends.

My favorite part is the relatively hot, 20-year-old blonde named Grace.

She’s with a 40-year-old, pudgy goth dude who wears a top hat, goes by the name “Hangman,” and refuses to leave the apartment.

They order from the same Chinese food place night after night.

After she threatens to leave, he finally agrees to take her out on a date.

And where does he take her?

To the same Chinese restaurant they order from every single night.

“He’s so good-looking,” she gushes over him. “He’s like a level 10 good-looking.” Read the rest of this entry »

I would be lying if I said that most of the time, my primary intention in going out and meeting women is to find a wonderful relationship rather than the raw desire to have sex.

But as I talked about in my last post, once you get a taste of that sweet, sweet nectar called love, even sexual gratification starts to pale in comparison.

The day after a date with a girl you really like is completely different than the day after a date with a girl you merely want to fuck.

We all want to meet someone we really like. But sometimes, when you meet someone you like, you are left off-balance.

Even with all the experience in the world, things feel different with this girl than the rest, and we manage to fuck it up. Read the rest of this entry »

Love.

There’s no feeling like it in the world.

When you’re into a girl, everything in your life seems different. Colors seem more vivid.

Everything you do has a different purpose. Life seems more worth living.

It’s not surprising that Stanford researchers found that the feeling of being in love is extremely addictive.

The effects on the brain are almost indistinguishable from the most potent drugs like cocaine or heroin.

And if a girl is not giving you what you want, your life turns into a downward spiral, just like drug withdrawal.

You think about her a million times a day. You want her, at least emotionally, more than anything you can remember. Read the rest of this entry »

Approach Anxiety.

A raw, visceral fear that has nothing to do with any logic.

There was just something preventing me from walking up to a woman I didn’t know and talking to her.

I hated it. It didn’t make any sense.

But this inhibition was part of something larger, something that bothered me as much as the fact that I couldn’t walk up to a beautiful woman and talk toher.

There were times when I’d meet a great woman through a friend or some other social circle.

And it was always the same story.

Kelly was a struggling actress. Her short, bob haircut fit well with her teasing personality.

“Will you marry me?” she said. Everyone at the table was giggling.

Read the rest of this entry »