If Your Girl is Bored, Change These 6 Things

All right, I know I said no more relationship stuff for a while so we could recover from that big relationship series binge, but I'm sitting here after missing my flight (I should be somewhere over the Pacific right now), going through some of the past month or so's posts, and I see I also said I'd try to get some posts up regarding earlier comments, and... well...

Back in early August, Anonymous commented on the post on how to prevent cheating, saying:

“Could you write about what you mentioned, the whole making a girl feel TOO secure?”

Okay - here's one more on relationships for now. Just think of it as an expansion pack to the relationship series!

Having a girl start feeling too secure with you is a BIG problem in any kind of relationship. Big.

It's the reason why girls start treating guys disrespectfully 9 times out of 10.

And, it's the reason why a girl is bored in her relationship 10 times out of 10.

That's right - not just most of the time on that last. But, EVERY time!

But wait, you say - Walt Disney taught me to make women feel safe and secure! Isn't that what they want?

Actually... no. Everyone takes away the message of, "Protect her and make her feel safe!" from the movies most of the time... and they get it all wrong.

Because there's something else happening in those movies too - another reason why girls swoon for Prince Charming, and it isn't his trust fund.

But everybody misses that part... and everybody ends up with his own bored girl as a result.

Well, here's how to get yourself back in line with what women actually want.

Once Upon a Time

If you've ever spent time suffering as a nice guy, you've doubtless heard women bemoaning their poor fortune at always ending up with bad boys instead of knights in shining armor.

The same idea strikes every single nice guy who's ever lived: "I will save HER!"

And off into the sunset he rides, trying to sweep her off her feet... as boring-ly as he possibly can.

You don't hear Prince Charming tell Cinderella in a timid voice, "Cindy, I really like you."

You don't see Simba blushing and pawing at the dirt and bashfully confessing to Nala that he's had a crush on her since they were lion cubs.

You don't catch Prince Phillip texting Sleeping Beauty that it'd be really nice if they could grab an ice cream sometime.

No!

These guys in Disney stories DO give security to women... but they don't do it like a pushover nice guy.

They're doing something else.

But before we explore what THAT is, I want to talk about security in general: what is it, why is it important, and why don't you just ditch it altogether if there's a risk of ending up in a situation where a girl is bored with you because of it?

Security in a Healthy Relationship

Sometime back, I formulated a model of relationships to be a sister model to the VAC (Value-Attainability-Compliance) model of attraction put forth by Sebastian Drake and Vin DiCarlo in the mid-2000s. My relationship model I called GISS, one letter standing for each of the four components, and it picked up in relationships where VAC broke down; anyway, the final component of GISS was one called "Security."

And too much of this thing called security can lead to girls being really, really, bored.

Shoot-yourself-in-the-head-bored, even.

But what is it, and why's it have that effect?

(note on GISS and security: the GISS model is something different from the four pillars of relationships Ricardus talks about in "How to Build a Relationship;" his focus there is more on the emotional and mental side of things, while the focus of GISS is more on the technical and mechanical components of a relationship)

"Security," as I'm defining it for our purposes here, is how certain or uncertain a woman feels about the stability of her relationship.

In other words, if she thinks you MIGHT JUST:

• Cheat on her
• Dump her
• Hurt her
• Do bad things to her
  

... on a moment's notice, security is very low.

Conversely, if she thinks you would NEVER do any of those things, then security is very high.

I've come to believe that a balanced amount of security is an unbreakable necessary component of relationships, and that the more out of balance it is, the more it leads to extreme (and bad) scenarios:

1. When security is too LOW, a girl is neurotic and crazy and on edge.

2. When security is too HIGH, a girl is bored and uninterested and unengaged.

Now, here's the thing about security:

It's on a pendulum, and when one person's security goes up, the other goes DOWN.

In fact, you could very easily make the argument that security is the component of relationships that underlies the book The Passion Trap, which Ricardus mentions so often here.

This is because the more secure one person feels, the less secure he or she begins acting toward the partner.

The most clingy girlfriends I've ever had were the ones who thought they were going to lose me at any moment.

So what's it mean if a girl is bored with you then?

Well, if it isn't already obvious... it means she feels like you're TOO SECURE.

Why Sleeping Beauty Jolted Awake

... it wasn't because Prince Phillip brought her roses.

Rather, it was because he came dashing to her rescue, hacking his way through the brambles, climbing the mountain, and slaying the evil sorceress / dragon.

Sure, she felt like, "Here's a guy who can really keep me safe."

But she ALSO felt like, "Here's a guy who's a real MAN."

That's the part the nice guys keep leaving out.

If a woman's got to choose, she'll choose a man who's a man but won't make her safe over a man who can make her safe but isn't a man (so far as she's concerned).

And most guys, they're only good at one or the other.

They're nice guys (safe but not manly) or jerks (manly but not safe).

Prince Phillip, on the other hand, is BOTH.

Jerks (manly, unsafe men) give women that jolt of adrenaline that comes from being around a real man, but push women into neurosis with their lack of safety. Girls break up with jerks in fits of anger, vengeance, and mild insanity, trying to "get back" at them or show them they don't need them.

The consequences of being too low in security for too long.

Nice guys (safe, unmanly men), though, give women that warm fuzzy feeling of safety and reliability that comes from being around a guy who'll never leave them, but push women into boredom with their lack of grizzled manliness. Girls break up with nice guys in fits of boredom, indifference, and mild disgust, trying to "feel alive" again or "find themselves" or figure out what is they want - because they know it isn't the nice guys.

Where the heroes in Disney films rate - and indeed, the lead male role in most (female-targeted) romantic comedies - is as balanced: there's enough security that a girl feels kind of safe, but not so much that a girl is bored.

And, the guy's exciting. He's strong, he's powerful, he's attractive to women. He's everything a girl could want.

And he's what women have been trained by TV and the movies to want... ever since they learned how to pick up the remote control.

What that means for you is, if you've been focused primarily on providing more and more security in a relationship for your girl, and not on giving her the jolts of insecurity and danger and excitement that a powerful man provides, you've been getting it all wrong.

If Your Girl is Bored, Change These

Bored girl on your hands? Never fear - you're not a lost cause yet.

After all - this site is here.

Because while she may be shaking her head now, wondering how she ended up with such a boring, overly-secure guy, remember that this is essentially the dynamic from that book The Passion Trap - and it can flip, surprisingly easy.

The first thing you need to focus on if you start running into the scenario where you've got too much security going on is mixing things up a little - you know: introduce a little uncertainty and excitement into the recipe you've been running off of.

Now, disclaimer: this is the part of the post where we start talking about introducing actual strategy into your relationship. A lot of people get upset about this, because they think they should just follow your emotions. But as you've seen both Ricardus and I mention on here time and again, that strategy only works when your emotions are right.

And you wouldn't be in a too-high-security position if they were.

That out of the way though, here are the 6 things you need to do if you want to move from nice, safe guy to Prince Phillip and get your Sleeping Beauty to jolt herself back to alertness (and attraction to you):

1. Kill the promises. Safe guys live on the backs of their promises. "I'll never leave you." "I'll love you forever." "I'll always be there for you." Every time you make a promise, you communicate that you're scrambling to please - and you become ever more secure (unless you start violating those promises, which lands you at the opposite end of the spectrum, also not good), and ever more boring.

2. Add some uncertainty. The opposite of a promise, admitting uncertainty is both a breath of fresh air ("Wow! He's NOT telling me what I want to hear just for the sake of keeping me happy!" she thinks) while at the same time communicating that you're a man who might actually not be there forever... unlike all the other men, who promise until their breaths run out. "Nothing in life is certain," you can tell her, "and I don't know if I'll always be able to give you what I can now. But I can tell you I'll try my hardest to always be honest with you."

3. Throw in a pinch of intrigue. What happens when most people first meet, start dating, or get into a relationship? Why... if you're like MOST guys, you go whole hog and tell the girl everything she could ever possibly want to know about you and more! And at that point... all the romance has gone out of you.

   My recommendation? Always keep a little back, a little more for her to discover, and always be working on SOMETHING she doesn't fully know about. Why? So you can share it with her later. Just think how she'll feel if she discovers something - even something little - that's neat and interesting about you 6 months into dating you that she didn't know before. And then she learns something ELSE a year in. And something further two years after that. She'll come to see you as a bottomless well of hidden and fascinating secrets - and you'll never cease to interest her.

4. NEVER mock your own prowess as a man. I've heard a few friends joke about this with their girlfriends: "Be careful, I might just go get another girl tonight!" By talking about this in a jokey way, these guys singlehandedly undermine their girlfriends' impression of their desirability to other women by playing it off as if the very idea of them finding another girl is laughable. Don't shoot yourself in the foot like this. I think these guys think they're reassuring their girlfriends with this... instead, they're just cratering their desirability and shooting their security and boring-factor sky high (unless she's very insecure or very mistrustful of you and actually thinks you might be serious).
   

5. Instead, be oblique about it. Gauge this one based on where she is with security. The more she needs security from you, the more you'll want to reassure her. But when a girl is bored with you, or close to it, you'll want to pique here interest by hinting that "anything is possible" so she doesn't know for SURE. For instance... she asks you if you've been with any other girls since the two of you started dating, and you say, "Babe... I would never do that," in a tone that sounds just slightly insincere. And now she wonders... (again, don't do this with girls who are feeling insecure; you'll drive them to neurosis. Only for girls who are a little bored or starting to feel in control of the relationship).

6. And... show a little disdain for the poor sops you see in movies. Here's the guy, chasing after some girl who's dating one string of losers after another, and he's doing everything he can to get her... egad! "This movie is driving me nuts," you might say to your girl, "I don't understand why this guy just doesn't go GET ANOTHER GIRL!" And she'll reply that she thinks it's sweet that he's so into her... and you'll reply that it's madness. And then ask her if she realistically thinks any of her nice guy guy-friends who are chasing after HER have any chance of landing her at any point in the future. She'll laugh... and then realize you're dead on.

These 6 things alone can and will strongly remedy any "bored girl" situations you end up with on your hands, though the longer you've been in that situation with her being bored, unless you have any major occurances that act to reshape her opinions of you, the longer it'll take to remedy.

But better yet, to save yourself a pound of cure (or, an inordinate amount of time altering your girl's set beliefs about you, her, and your relationship), do these from the start.

Of course, if you only do these, and don't do anything to increase her security too, then you'll be in danger of ending up in the realm of insecurity-induced neurosis, and that's a whole 'nother beast altogether!

See you again soon.

Chase