The Reality Method 2.0

What to Do if your Girlfriend Likes Another Guy

Most women have very distinct patterns that they go through in relationships.

For instance, if things are going south with their current boyfriend, they have a couple of options: some girls start going out more frequently in order to meet more boys that could potentially “replace” their current b/f: others just change their body language and vibe to become more “open” to the guys that are already flocking around them (true for more high-status, high-profile hot women).

If a woman really values the relationship, she will try to “improve” things by talking to her boy, asking what’s wrong, bitching and starting arguments more frequently, and generally trying to arrest the long, slow slide of the relationship.

Most women want to be in relationships and will do everything in their power to save a “good” relationship — especially if they feel they’ve found a “keeper” guy (a good provider, and they happen to feel ready to settle down) or a guy who is alpha enough and smart enough to be consistently inconsistent, and keep a girl on her toes (which gets lots of girls addicted to the relationships).

What they do in order to try to prolong the relationship differs, however.

Some girls will actually start telling you about the guy they may sleep with. They may not literally say, “So there’s this guy I am thinking of sleeping with,” but they will subcommunicate that, in case you’re paying attention. It’s actually quite easy to pick up on.

A lot of chick-advice web sites have features on “How to tell if your man is cheating” or “10 signs he’s checked out” and what have you. This article is going to sound extremely similar to those features (although less superficial) because men and women BOTH do similar things when dissatisfied or afraid in relationships, and typically will make it VERY CLEAR what they’re doing (though often in a subtle way).

For a girl or a guy, any major change is a warning sign. Chicks love saying shit like, “Watch out if he starts bringing you flowers, or dressing better or showering more”. And that stuff has some validity. For guys watching their girlfriends, I would say, Watch out for any major change in her patterns of socialization. Sexual encounters with girls always start at the pure “socialization” level, where they think “Oh he seems fun” and start hanging out with a guy more — and then he gets them alone, and that’s how things happen.

So if your girlfriend starts talking about this cool guy she’s hanging out with, watch out. But don’t imagine that she’ll admit to anything — in fact, she will go to great lengths to say “he’s just a friend” or “I would never sleep with him” and will frequently even GET MAD AT YOU for asking or suggesting otherwise — because you are calling into question her loyalty, for one, and calling her easy, for another. Oftentimes it literally DOES NOT OCCUR to her rational mind that she might end up sleeping with this guy - for many girls it’s a straight case of cognitive dissonance.

So girls respond to relationship threats in one of two basic ways; she will start doing things that either

A) Attempt to pull you back in and “fix” the problems or slow the decline directly;

OR

B) Go out on her own limb looking for revalidation with another guy and/or a challenge to make you jealous (and thereby pull you back in, indirectly).

My experience is that with a non-trivial portion of women, cheating happens because she senses her boy is drifting away, and is trying to pull him back in with B.

Another non-trivial portion, maybe the majority, of cheating happens randomly when women meet guys that attract them and hit all the right switches, and things just happen that the girl will rationalize away later (she might even come tearfully to you begging for forgiveness).

But this post isn’t about cheating per se (see Why Women Cheat for that); it’s about women responding to relationship threats or just naturally developing feelings for other guys (i.e., not you).

When this happens there are a couple ways to deal with it; depending on your own feelings about the relationship.

IF you want the girl to stay with you and be loyal, you’d better act quickly, decisively and with finality. You’ve got to stomp that shit out once and for all and re-wire the relational dynamic so it’s not a threat ever again; otherwise, the constant maintenance will drain all your energy and make the relationship a pain in your ass.

IF you want the girl to stay but don’t care about her loyalty, you will have a much easier time, but must still proceed carefully — and the results you will get depend in large part on what the girl wants (whether she wants monogamy with you or no).

IF you don’t even care about the girl and the relationship, you should probably just dump the poor bitch.

In fact, we will only deal with the first possibility in this post, since there is simply too much to say about the other two. They will get their own subsequent articles.

Keeping your Girlfriend while Stamping Out the Competition
If your girlfriend is “drifting” or showing signs of doing so, and you don’t want her to do that, then something is seriously wrong, buddy - and it is YOUR job to figure out what, and fix it quick.

There are a couple of possibilities:

- Is your girlfriend just the wandering type? Some women seek lots of sex with different partners for validation. Some women are afraid of commitment. If your girl is one of these types, and you haven’t channeled her predilections into a wild sex life, you have an uphill battle.

- Have you changed how you treat your girlfriend lately? Are you getting bored of her, or sick of the relationship? Is the sex boring? Is she getting it less frequently? Are you kissing and cuddling her less, doing fewer PDA (public affection), hand-holding, etc? Did you used to spend money on her but are no longer doing it? All of these would be subcommunications from you that the relationship is trending towards death, and could easily inspire her to start “searching”.

I’m going to differentiate between potential cheating that is caused by something inside the relationship (”internal push“) and potential cheating that is caused by the sheer attractiveness of some other guy or situation on the outside of the relationship (”external pull“).

Internal Push
It’s easiest to troubleshoot your own behavior towards your girlfriend. If it’s your behavior that is causing it, it will be much easier to fix.

Maybe you just need to start trying out more outlandish / experimental things in the bedroom; at a very basic level, for the relationship to be satisfying you need to be providing the basics of good sex. Maybe you need to start seeing her less (because you are “getting busy with work” or what have you), or seeing her more. Maybe you just need a vacation! It’s extremely easy in long-term relationships to get stuck in “ruts” and routines of what you do with your girlfriend. Meet up, go out to dinner, watch a movie, fuck afterwards, fall asleep, wake up, go out to breakfast, do some shopping, go watch another movie, fuck again. If you’ve had any sort of LTRs these patterns should look pretty familiar to you.

Sometimes, your boredom with a woman in a relationship can be alleviated by having her take a more active role in things. Maybe she needs to start dressing differently, cut (or grow out) her hair, experiment with body modification or accessories. Never underestimate the power of a physical appearance change in getting you interested in your girlfriend again.

Insta Date: If you haven’t already done this, I recommend every guy take his girlfriend to a costume-shop or specialty-lingerie shop (you know, the kind that has “themed” outfits, exotic jewelry and accessories, crazy stage makeup and the like). While there have her try on a wig (and some costumes if you can persuade her). Oftentimes it is amazing how badly you will want to sex her just after seeing her in a wig; you are in effect fooling you masculine mid brain into thinking this is a “new” woman.

In fact, a lot of the dress-up and role-playing that I believe most long-term couples get into serves this function; keeping the woman fresh in the man’s animal mind. Additionally, the whole setup plays into every woman’s regressive desire to play “dress up” or “princess”.

So that’s the very first step: mix things up. Try new and different activities, take her to new and exotic locations, get her to change somethings about herself (even temporarily). Do whatever is necessary to inject novelty into the relationship. For a list of suggestions, see my post Fighting Boredom in Relationships. Oftentimes, the effort of going through this will be enough to demonstrate to her how much you care, and she’ll stop dropping hints about other guys (and stop seeing them, too).

That is assuming, of course, that the problem is lack of customary attention from you in the first place.

If your girlfriend is legitimately interested in another guy because of value he has (rather than value you are not providing) then your path is going to be much harder.

External Pull
In this scenario, the first move I would make is move closer. If she starts talking about another guy, get interested. Engage in the conversation. Ask intelligent and intimate questions.

(If she never mentions any guys, but you suspect anyway, don’t get all psycho jealous — instead, follow the advice above, but with regards to her social life. Invite yourself to parties she’s going to and ask to be introduced to her friends. Be nosy. If she shows significant resistance to your new interest in her, she’s probably already fucking some guy, and you can be fairly confident confronting her about it).

Next, ask to meet with the guy. Not alone; that sets up a dog-versus-dog dynamic. You want to meet him in a social setting, like a party, or at the very least, with her present (although even that is not ideal, since it reinforces a competition mindset to everyone involved).

You want to meet the guy in a social setting, evaluate him, see how he handles socialization with a variety of people, and most importantly, how he reacts to you and how he interacts with your girlfriend.

Most Important: You have to go into this meet with an open mind and no pre-judgments. If you go into it angry, anxious, and incensed at the idea of some douche-bag trying to run up on YOUR GIRLFRIEND, the table is set for drama. (Although if you have those feelings, even initially, it is a strong sign that you like your girl and want to keep her around, and monogamous, for the longer term).

So: be open-minded, calm, and evaluative. You are just going to socialize and evaluate. You do NOT want to get into the “I’m gonna fuckin’ beat the shit out of this guy” mindset, EVEN if your first emotional response is along those lines. You want to AVOID a cock fight set up by your girlfriend. I have been in such cock-fights, and believe me, it is not pretty (or fun), even if you “win”.

Not only are they not fun, but they hand all the power over to your girlfriend, and reduce you and the other guy to “pawns” fighting over her affections. Which is just absurd, as you will recognize if you’ve spent any time reading this site.

Meeting a Guy Your Girlfriend Likes
You have to understand: this guy may have been set-up by your girlfriend. She might be tooling him to use as a jealousy plot against you (mentioned above) or just as a distress call for your relationship (which she wants to save). The guy may not even be aware this girl has a boyfriend. He may have approached her (or BEEN approached by her) in good faith, and be completely in the dark to the psychodynamics of your relationship.

In fact, I guarantee he is, and you’d better act on the assumption he is, unless you want the situation to get very dramatic and very ugly very fast.

Remember the Cardinal Rule: bros before hos. Let me say that again: BROS (men) before HOS (women).

As men in modern society, we owe a much greater debt to each other than the generally less-loyal women we get in relationships with; because we know we can rely on each other when we could not rely on a woman. Also, fighting other guys over women is one of the great pitfalls of modern society, and a direct cause of a hell of a lot of suffering, pain and malaise (for both men and women).

So meet the guy. Shake his hand. Look him in the eye. Ask him how’s it going. Treat him with the respect you’d offer any random guy you’d been introduced to; he is innocent, and deserves to be afforded the benefit of the doubt until he proves his douche-baggery.

In fact, you and he already have something important in common - taste in women (since he has probably enjoyed hanging around your girlfriend and is possibly attracted to her). And if the situation were reversed, you’d want a fair shake, wouldn’t you? So give him one.

The goal of this meet and interaction is to ascertain whether this guy is a talentless skeeze who just wants to pump and dump your girlfriend, and therefore needs to be blown out, or a genuine guy who was just sucked into a drama vortex that has nothing to do with him, but everything to do with your relationship.

You will be better able to ascertain this than your girlfriend, since she doesn’t have the insight into the male mind that you do. Note: this is also why a decent father will insist on meeting his daughter’s boyfriends.

It shouldn’t take long. Some guys are slick, others are good at manipulating those around them, but unless you’re completely and totally retarded in social terms, you will be able to judge the guy pretty accurately. Manipulative guys that are TRULY adept at shaping perceptions, to the point that they could pull the wool over your eyes, are rare; it’s much more likely that you’re facing an average guy (though perhaps a bit of a douchebag or buffoon).

Key things to look for: is he respectful of you, does he look you in the eye and acknowledge what you have to say, does he listen well? Does he understand the nature of your relationship with your girlfriend? If not, you need to make it clear, in no uncertain terms, and then carefully watch his reaction. Even if your girlfriend told YOU that she told him, don’t take her word for it in this matter: she may not have gotten the point across 100%.

A quality guy — a cool guy that you would probably hang with, if the circumstances were different — will politely step back if/when he finds out that there is an existing monogamous relationship that he threatens to interrupt; particularly when faced with the “other guy” right there, large as life. That’s the chivalrous thing to do — most guys that I’ve ever met have at least that level of modesty and decency (and aversion to confrontation).

Unless he thinks he is cooler than you.

If a guy who wants your girlfriend perceives that you are lower on the social value ladder than he is — he may not let the issue go so easily.

Of course, if he is truly higher on the SV ladder than you, it begs the question of why he also needs your girlfriend, who — if you and her are roughly matched in terms of social value — ought to be beneath his social level anyway, further begging the question of why he’s poaching *down* the ladder (rather than up it, or at parity).

In any case, if the guy will not back down, and instead seems to be spoiling for an all-out war for your girlfriend’s affections, he is either

A) A tumbling, tumbling dickweed,
Or,
B) A hardcore player.

In the second case, you shouldn’t worry about it, because he’s probably already fucked your girlfriend anyway.

In the first case, you are probably in for a bit of a battle. The tactics and strategies to use in this battle are better left to more thorough explanation in another post. It’s enough to say that such a battle will require balls, consistency, and good timing.

For now, let’s assume the guy is a decent guy, and backs down. In the best case, he even befriends you and permanently stays out of your relationship — though watch out for guys who might befriend you because they’ve already fucked your girlfriend (does happen) or guys who befriend because they think it will give them a better shot at breaking up your relationship and getting your girl.

If the guy is cool, and just walks away entirely from the idea of ever being with your g/f, all the better. Those guys are rare, though — most guys will waffle somewhere between wanting to avoid direct confrontation and totally giving up; they will harbor secret hopes, but behave in a totally socially-acceptable and make-nice fashion in the short term in order to improve their “odds”.

In either case, if the guy backs down even for the short-term, whatever his long-term goals, several wonderful things result from this:

1. Your relative value in your girlfriend’s eyes has gone up
2. Your relationship has been strengthened
3. You have avoided a protracted cock fight

Now, everything is peaches and cream.

Congratulations, you have handled a sticky situation without getting involved in a ridiculous and unproductive male pissing-match, and at the same time cementing your girlfriend’s attraction to you.

But more work remains to be done. Having successfully confronted your competition, you must now return your attention to your girlfriend, and say to her, while using gentle language, but in otherwise uncertain terms, “DON’T YOU EVER DO THAT AGAIN.”

But that, my friends, is a subject that deserves it’s own article — this one is already over-long. Hopefully its helpfulness is commensurate with its length. If so, consider dropping me a link from your own blog, or sharing this article on a favorite forum.

In the meantime: confront your girlfriend’s male friends with courage!