How Do You Love Someone You’re “Playing Games” With?
The difference between how you love someone and how playing games and being mysterious makes them love you more.
In this video coaching newsletter, I discuss an email from a viewer who noticed that his girlfriend was losing interest and not seeking his attention and validation like she once was. He decided to pick up my book, How To Be A 3% Man, to read it again and noticed he had gotten away from being the attractive man that she fell in love with.
As soon as he started applying what the book teaches, her interest went back up. He asks why men should play games to make someone love them. I explain the difference between being a focused man with a purpose and playing games to create attraction. My comments are in bold italics like this below in the body of his email.
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I got an email from a guy who had great results with my first book, How To Be A 3% Man. The problem that he’s having is his girlfriend, who is international and sometimes goes back to her home country, recently she just didn’t seem to be displaying as much attraction and interest as she had. She wasn’t as passionate about him, passionately in love with him as she had been.
He went back to the basics, started reading How To Be A 3% Man again, and recognized that he had kind of slacked off. This is the kind of thing that happens to us slowly over time. So, he started applying what the book teaches, and within a matter of days his girlfriend’s interest was going up, she was saying “I love you,” and she was talking about all the naughty things she was going to do to him when she comes back.
He was sitting there thinking, “Why go through this? Why should I ‘play games’ to get somebody to love me?” He does bring up some good points, because the longer you’re in a relationship, the more you’re going to just naturally tend to go along and you become softer.
I was hanging out with a good friend of mine. He’s been with his wife almost 30 years. They have several kids together and the kids are amazing. Back when we were in high school, he was really in good shape. He took good care of himself. And now that we’re all older, he’s become pretty obese and he doesn’t work out, doesn’t exercise, doesn’t take care of himself. And in a lot of ways he’s become soft, because when we were in high school, he fucked all the hot girls.
And now that he’s been with the same woman for almost 30 years, it’s like what’s interesting is we had a bunch of friends coming over because they were coming down to visit. And so, we got on the phone and invited a bunch of our high school friends to come over and have a get together at my place. And his wife was all stressed out because she had so many things going on for Christmas, and she was complaining that he wasn’t doing anything to help her or support her.
And then a few days before, they were all supposed to come down and hang out at my place and have this party, but she decides she doesn’t want to do it, because she’s got too much to do. So instead of helping her and alleviating all of the stress, he’s just like, “Well, I don’t want her to be pissed off at me during Christmas, so I’ll just cancel the plans with everybody.”
I was like, “Oh, great. You know, you can you can call everybody back and tell them that we’re not going to get together and the reasons why.” I broke his balls a little bit, just because we’ve been friends for thirty-five fucking years at this point, and I’m always going to tell them like it is. But at the end of the day, his rationale for not getting together and not keeping his commitments that he made to all of us and all of our friends was, “I don’t want my wife to get mad at me. I don’t want her to be upset with me over the Christmas holidays.”
And so, he told his wife that he canceled everything, and then she wasn’t like, “Oh, that’s great,” she was like, “Well, why would you do that?” So, it’s like she wasn’t excited that he went and canceled his plans, because deep down, he should have kept them. But he also should have been more supportive and helped her with the things that she was saying she needed help with. But instead, he’s like, “Well, I don’t want to cause any conflict, so I’ll just cancel the plans and stay home so she doesn’t get mad at me.”
I personally wouldn’t have done that, but then again, I haven’t been married with the same woman for thirty years. So, it’s easy to say when you’re on the outside looking in. But I do this for a living, and you know, we’re good friends. We always are honest with each other. And I shared my view on things, and at the end of the day, it was more important for him to not have his wife upset with him. That’s his life, that’s his choice. We all have choices to make.
So, what’s interesting is I’ve noticed the same thing. Some of the relationships that I wrote about that I’ve had over the course of my life, same thing. You’re together with somebody for several years, and it’s like you’ve got to kind of choose your battles, pick your fights. My friend’s case was, was it really worth having his wife upset at him the whole week because he went and had a good time? Because she was the one who decided she just had too much to do. And so, she was going to stay behind and we were all going to come down and hang out and have a party with our friends. And then he would have had a good time and told her all about it, and then she would probably be pissed off that she missed out on it.
He could have alleviated all of that if he would have just helped her with the things that she needed, but at the end of the day, nobody’s perfect. We all make mistakes. We all do things. Our friends irritate us, I irritate my friends. It’s like you get to a place in life where you have people in your life that are worth suffering for, in other words. Everybody’s got flaws. Nobody’s perfect, nobody. I mean, if you’ve read my book How To Be A 3% Man, It’s like, I don’t do everything right all the time. It happens. You get emotions involved, especially when you’ve been together with somebody for several years.
As men, this is what we have to deal with — that dichotomy of always seeking peace and ease and delight, but also having to endure friction, whether it’s working out, or doing unpleasant things in business, or a career that we might not feel like it just because things have got to get done. The bill’s have got to get paid, phone calls need to be made, emails need to be sent out. Meetings need to be had, customers need to be taken care of. It’s all part of life. It’s finding that happy medium, that happy balance, if you will.
And so back to my friend. They have a pretty good relationship. They almost never argue about anything. They get along really well, his wife loves the shit out of him and he loves the shit out of her. But obviously, in this particular interest, I gave my opinion on if I was in his shoes what I would have done, or if I was advising a client what I would have told them to do, but it was just easier to go along to get along, if you will. But everything has consequences, and so that was a choice that he made. I don’t agree with it, but he’s his own fucking man, so he can do what he wants.
Viewer’s Email:
Hey Coach,
I’ve been dating this girl for over a year now. She’s international and visits home a lot, so we call during those times. (Don’t worry, when she’s here, she basically lives with me, so the phone isn’t even used for setting dates. I just tell her). But I felt like things weren’t going as smoothly as I’d like them to be, so I refreshed myself on your book and videos and noticed just how much I was slacking.
So, he’s been in a relationship with this woman for a year now, and so obviously things are going well, so why is he going to be picking up the book? You know, “I’ve got this stuff down. I don’t need it. Why do I need to go through the fundamentals? I know this stuff.” But it’s just little by little, things happen over time and we get away from the basics, whether it’s doing the little things or going to the gym and working out. It’s easy just to go “Ehh, I’ll go tomorrow,” and the next thing you know, you haven’t been in three fucking weeks. It happens.
As a man, you’ve just got to get back on the horse. I mean, I’m about to turn fifty one in a few weeks, and I can’t think of any of my closest friends that I grew up with and went to high school with that still exercise, that still take care of themselves. I’m the only one that’s in pretty good shape and looks really good for my age. But it’s a lifelong discipline.
I haven’t always taken the best care of myself throughout my life. But especially as you get older, you recognize how much weight training and cardio has an effect on how you look and your overall mental and emotional health. And it’s just something that you have to do. You don’t beat yourself up when you find yourself slacking. You’ve got to turn things around and just get back in the gym or pick up the phone and call that client or whatever it happens to be that you’ve noticed that you slacked off in.
So obviously, in his case, he recognized that his girlfriend’s not as into him as she was in the beginning.
For the next call, I immediately restored all of your practices. I scheduled a definite time, arrived exactly on time, said nothing about myself and only asked her questions, and ended the call earlier than she wanted.
So, he ends the call earlier than she wanted, so he left her wanting more. And what was different? Well, let’s see. Obviously, if he was focused on asking her questions, it really made her feel like she was heard and understood. So naturally, she’s going to feel more attraction to him, because he’s actually taking the time, he admitted he got away from doing all these little things.
And because this is not something that happens in one day, I mean, you’re looking at the microcosm of his relationship over the course of a year and how he tended to get soft, as you will, and noticed that he needed to do something differently. So that’s creating attraction. But what kind of behaviors naturally lead to this?
Well, if a man’s focused on his mission and purpose and he’s taking care of himself, he’s spending time with his friends and family. I mean, his girlfriend, after all, is out of the country visiting her family. He should be taking this time to do the same thing with his friends. Maybe he’s got friends that he hasn’t spent much time with because he’s been so focused on his relationship. So things like this or maybe getting more focused on his business or his career. Maybe he had gotten kind of soft on that and backed off from that.
So, if you’re busy, if you’re focused, if you’re taking care of all the little details, you’re going to be a busy man. And so he started displaying things that made him more attractive in her eyes. And then notice what he says.
The response was literally incredible, she said she loved me for the first time in a week, said some very sexy things that she was going to do when she was back, (whereas normally I’m the one that’s instigating), and was sad to end the call, asking if she did something to upset me.
So, her attitude is completely different: feminine, submissive, seeking his attention and validation. These are all of the things that naturally happen, especially in the beginning, when he’s just busy and he’s taking care of things that need to be taken care of. But over time, you get kids, you get family, you get a business, the decades roll by. Like in my friend’s case, things are going to happen. The key is, what’s the happy medium? Where is the balance?
The problem is, when I’m playing these games, I start to view my girl as an object or a customer. I have to make her sad and withhold myself from her to make her respect me and my needs?
It’s like, dude, nowhere in the book does it say to do that? That’s just simply not accurate. The reality is that you were displaying a lot of unattractive qualities. And a lot of guys, because we tend to be very egocentric, don’t want to admit that we fucked up. So, they want to point and say, “That’s not me, it’s something else.” In other words, he’s complaining about the fact that his woman is attracted to what she’s attracted to.
So he displays attractive qualities, and what happens? She’s more attracted to him. So, he can be mad, he can be frustrated. It’s like, I didn’t design women to be this way. If you don’t like it, you can talk to the big man upstairs. I’m just telling you how this stuff works and why it works. But the bottom line, if you’re really honest with yourself, you kind of bitched out as a man in some areas. I mean, you admitted it, but it doesn’t sound like, at least according to this paragraph, that you want to take full responsibility. It’s like you want to complain about it like, “This is just playing games.”
Well, maybe this is what you needed. This was a wake up call. This is what the book is supposed to do. So when you’re in a relationship for a year, or two or ten, whatever happens to be, and you recognize that your girl is not as attracted as she was, and she’s not saying “I love you,” and she’s not bringing up sex or sexual innuendo or or instigating it all, you’re supposed to recognize that something is off.
And that’s why you go back to “How To Be A 3% Man” to see what you’re no longer doing that you were doing in the past, and you take corrective action. You don’t bitch about it and complain and whine like a girl. You go, “You know what? I fucked up and I need to correct it.” And so, you take corrective action and you make it happen.
Kinda like a store that tells you “this is the last one” when there’s hundreds in the back. If I found out my girl played these games with me she’d be straight out the door. It feels like a scam.
Well, the reality is, if you look at my website at the email sign up box, it says “for a limited time only” you can get “How To Be A 3% Man” for free and you can get “Mastering Yourself” for free. Well, if I removed “for a limited time only,” I would get 30–40 % less people signing up for the email. That’s human nature. Scarcity creates value.
And this isn’t about playing games, this is about doing what you need to do as a man and taking care of yourself. Because if you don’t take the corrective action, what happens? She eventually loses attraction, becomes ‘confused,’ starts looking around at other guys, starts thinking about whether or not she even wants to be in a relationship with you. Is that is that what you want? You know, that’s life, man. If you don’t like it, don’t date women.
Having sex with someone you love is the most incredible feeling ever, and that’s the reason this is a problem for me. It’s hard to love someone you have to play games with to make them love you.
Well, don’t do games of manipulation. Get your fucking ass back in the gym. Go hang out with your friends. Get more focused on your business or your career like you should be. The point that you should take away from this is, instead of complaining about what’s in my book or why you have to do certain things, admit that you slacked off as a man and you started displaying unattractive behavior, and therefore, your girlfriend became less attracted to you.
Instead of trying to blame her or blame the big man upstairs for making women this way, look inward, dude. You’ve got shit you’re not taking care of, so take care of it, because everything has consequences.
What do you say, Coach?
P.S. Thanks again for all your amazing work, you’ve improved my dating life infinitely. Within a month of finding you, I went from seeing 2 girls my whole life, to seeing 5 girls simultaneously in 1 month. They should teach your work in schools.
Bob
I agree, but bottom line is, they don’t. And I can’t remember who said it, but the the quote goes something along the lines of, “An education will earn you a living. Self education will earn you a fortune.” Most people just simply won’t do these things. They’ll just fumble and float through life and be mediocre in every area of their life that’s important to them.
At least you have the balls to read the book and take corrective action. At the end of the day, it’s up to you to decide to take corrective action, or not. But what’s predictable is if you don’t take corrective action or you don’t maintain it, it’s going to happen again. And this is part of being a man, taking care of the little things week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after decade.
Like my buddy that’s been married almost 30 years, he’s got several kids, he’s got a lot of obligations, a lot of things to take care of, and in a lot of ways, he’s become soft, but also in a lot of other ways, he’s a great husband, a great father, a great friend, and he makes time for the people that matter.
So you can falter him and say, hey, he’s become overweight and he is not taking care of this or that. He made commitments to all of us and friends to get together and then bailed out, because he didn’t want to upset his wife. But it’s like, hey, man, it is what it is. Nobody is fucking perfect. Not me, not him, not you, not anybody who is watching this.
So if you’re having a challenge or a struggle in your life, you can go to my website UnderstandingRelationships.com and book a coaching session with yours truly. And until next time, remember, hang out, have fun and hook up.
“Women are more attracted to men who are focused on their mission and purpose in life than men who are adrift without any real purpose or direction. Seeking attention and validation is feminine energy. Being stoic, driven, intense and passionate about life is masculine energy. Men often become soft, out of shape, compliant, feminine and people pleasers the longer they are in a relationship. This leads to their women losing attraction and interest because they stopped being the masculine men they fell in love with. Strong men are consistent, disciplined and reliable. Even when they catch themselves becoming soft or unfocused, they simply get back on the path to being disciplined and focused. Soft men make excuses for becoming soft and compliant, and oftentimes their women eventually leave or cheat on them.” ~ Coach Corey Wayne
