work, don’t push your way into the bathroom to watch him. Don’t look in his car’s glove compartment as though there’s something suspicious in there. Don’t appear to eavesdrop on his phone conversations. Don’t try to take over his kitchen or leave girlie things in his bathroom as though you’re marking your turf. Don’t ask him to spend all his time with you, and don’t say, “I miss you” when he hasn’t seen you in two hours. If you do these things,
you are subtly doing the chasing
.
Don’t say things like, “Tuck in your shirt,” “Go wash your hands,” or “Go brush your hair.” Don’t ask him if he’s hungry three times in a row, and don’t wait on him hand and foot—unless he has a cold. (One little sniffle and you can treat it like a terminal illness.)
Don’t plan all of your weekends together so he has to ask permission to go fishing. Let him catch a couple of fish. Otherwise, he’ll start to break dates. Why? Because he’s acting like a rebellious teenager who’s been given a curfew by mama. He’ll do it deliberately so you don’t get used to
dictating
how his time is spent.
When you treat your time together as something he
has
to do, you’ve taken something that was a pleasure and made it a chore. If you are nice, but you give of yourself with strings attached, the demand for reciprocity will send him several steps backward. Whenever you make him feel as though he
has to
see you, it will feel like work. When it’s
not
an obligation to see you, the very same thing will feel like pleasure.
ATTRACTION PRINCIPLE #15
Whenever a woman requires too many things from a man, he’ll resent it. Let him give what he wants to give freely; then observe who he is.
Men like things that are difficult. They like to drive stick-shift automobiles. They like to jump out of airplanes, and they like to climb mountains. They like to do the impossible. Therefore, when he has to go out of his way to see you, he is actually happier. It will not feel like work to him.
This theory applies to anything—a phone call, time together, sex, or whether he checks in at the end of the day. If you always make him feel he has plenty of space to do his own thing, he’ll always feel that lust. You’ll be like a lover not like his mother. He’ll perceive you as a privilege rather than an obligation, and he’ll come your way.
The No Cage Rule
The minute a man feels vulnerable, he fears being devastated emotionally. When he meets a nice girl, she could potentially represent “forever.” Heaven forbid she lets the word
relationship
trip off her tongue a couple of times? Call 911. He immediately thinks she wants to latch onto him and have babies. Heaven forbid you get excited to see a cute baby? Trauma. He has nightmares and sees it as a sign that he’s in dire need of a backup form of birth control.
Sometimes you hear men say, “I want to leave my options open” or “I don’t want to get tied down.” Or they use catch phrases like
ball and chain
or
henpecked.
My favorite is a hyphenated term that begins with a female body part and is followed by the word
whipped.
ATTRACTION PRINCIPLE #16
A bitch gives a man plenty of space so he doesn’t fear being trapped in a cage. Then…he sets out to trap her in his.
Clearly, men are scared to death of losing control of their freedom. The thought of being stuck with one woman frightens them. If a woman immediately acts as if she
expects
a man to behave like a serious boyfriend without much effort on his part, he’ll get scared and run off. With the nice girl, it only takes a few dates for him to feel trapped. And then “lockdown mode” begins.
W HAT SHE SAYS…
W HAT HE HEARS
“I’d love it if you’d let me know where you are at night. It’s just common courtesy.”
Limited supervised outings followed by check-in time with the warden
“I get upset when you don’t call me when we aren’t together.”
The ringing of the keys that are