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Stop Pretending You’re Not Competitive With Other Women

May 10, 2013 by 14 Comments

Name: Lucywomaneer-flirting
Comment: I’m generally slightly flirtatious and am so without even trying. However I know about boundaries and would never have designs on anyone else’s man or chase after anyone who is clearly taken. I find this slightly distressing as on previous occasions, I have been accused of stepping over the line but that would never enter my head as it goes against any idea I have of common decency. The fact that people have said this makes me slightly ashamed.

To give you more information, the type of flirting I might fall into is very low key. For example I might make some silly joke about something. But I have never tried to get physically close to another woman’s boyfriend, initiated contact, tried to get alone with him or anything like that. I do not try to become friends with men and I stick to an all female group. Sometimes I might not even be flirting at all and the man or woman involved will tell me that I am.

I would like to tone down my flirtatious nature because on previous occasions it has caused hurt to others. I now cut men off quickly so I don’t lead them on and I try not to flirt with men I am not interested in. But I want to feel free to be myself without it complicating how I get on with others.
Age: 23
City: Edinburgh
State: United Kingdom

 

Before we begin, I just want to call back your previous letter to me. People can read it here.

I’ll just throw this out there: the people I trust the least are the people who make public declarations of how honorable they are. A wise and mature person would know that they could never say, unequivocally,  that they wouldn’t do something. Impulses, emotions and circumstances all factor in to the decisions we make. When people insist that they would “never” do something, what they’re actually saying is, “I’m smarter/more restrained/more trustworthy than other people.” They’re bragging.

I got a whiff of competitiveness and jealousy in your first letter. Now the stench is undeniable. The underlying message in this letter is, “I can’t help it if men find me attractive. (blink blink) How do I fix that?”

What’s dangerous about people like you is that you actually believe what you’re saying. So here’s the first step for you recovery: stop lying to yourself about your altruistic intentions. They don’t exist. You like attention from men. Join the club. That aspect of your personality doesn’t pose the threat. What makes you suspect is that you also like the idea of pissing off other women.Nothing will get me to turn on my heels faster and walk away from a woman is hearing her talk about all the ways she’s committed to paving the way for other females. No, women like that are all about their own personal advancement. Show. Don’t tell.If you have to frequently remind other women how supportive you are, you’re not.

Equally questionable are women who go out of their way to piss off other women.  Niecy Nash was promoting her book on TV last night. In it, she advises women to always keep their man sexually satisfied. Ok. Fine. Agreed. But when she was asked about people who critiqued that particular piece of advice her response was, “Well..that’s why they don’t have a man.” Oooooh. Sick burn, Niecy. That sort of tripe is no different that the women and men who toss barbs my way about giving advice while being single, or who habitually have to trot out their relationship as proof that they’ve truly learned to love themselves or reached some magnificent level of awareness. Can we please stop that? That sort of talk is actually the opposite of empowered. All it does is reinforce the idea that what we achieved means nothing unless we have a man in our life to validate it.

While I think some level of competition is natural and maybe even healthy, I believe some people take that desire to be the victor a bit too far. If you don’t want other women to think you’re out to steal their boyfriends, then stop trying to steal their boyfriends. If you’d prefer that your female peers didn’t hate on you for being so confident, then stop trolling them.

OP, until you get past your need to compete with your female friends, this problem will exist. Going after or getting a guy just for bragging rights rarely ever ends well. Not only will you eventually repel any man that does give you a chance, but you will alienate all your friends and other women in the process. You don’t want to be that woman with no female friends. Men and women both will keep you at arm’s length.

 

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Filed Under: Dating, First Impressions, Girlfriends & Sabotage, Happy & Healthy, Hook Up Culture, How SATC Ruined Women, Humblebrag, jealousy Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Beware The Man Who Commits Too Soon – Part Deux

March 2, 2012 by 23 Comments

Name: Carina
State: FL
Age:  32
Comment: Hi, Ive been with my boyfriend for 3 months now.  Things are going well and we are getting closer every day.  Ive met some of his friends and vice versa.  As most people, we have facebook accounts and we added each other from month 1.  We traveled together 2 weeks ago to Europe for 10 days but he didn’t upload any pics.  He sent them to me on an online album.  He has very few pictures on facebook but do have 3 pictures from 3 years ago with an ex at restaurants, etc… all had other people in them.  All the pics on his facebook are tags from his friends. He’s in the technology business and has a lot of clients and employees on facebook so 90% of his comments are work related but he does posts daily.  Well, he posts on his tweeter and they upload into facebook automatically.  We haven’t seen each other for 2 weeks because we’ve both been traveling. Question is I’ve been tempted to write on his wall telling him I miss him or commenting on his posts but hes never written on mine so I dont know if I should.  I feel it may be sending the message of “I’m insecure and want everyone to know we r together”.  We speak over the phone several times a day, so is not like facebook is our mean to communicate ever.  But still….  Any feedback?

For additional back story on this situation, read Carina’s first letter so you can follow possible references to the original post.

Since it appears as though he maintains a Facebook page more for work purposes than anything else, and isn’t uploading photos from your trip, that he prefers to keep his private life offline.

I feel it may be sending the message of “I’m insecure and want everyone to know we r together”.

That’s is the message that posting a sentiment like that would send. And let’s be honest, that’s exactly why you would want to post it. If you and he talk all the time, several times a day, there’s no reason for you to post something so personal on his Facebook Wall other than to make your presence known. That’s why most people do it. That’s why they post photos and write cutesy tweets and Like even the most obscure or boring of updates. They want everybody to know that they have someone. Or they want to piss off an ex. Or they just want attention.

You’re bothered that he’s not uploading your trip photos to Facebook. I can understand that. Now, if we didn’t have the first letter and the additional info in there, I’d say you this was a simple case of being insecure. But since we do, I want to follow up on something you said in the first letter. You said he’s met your family. Have you met his? Maybe that’s what the trip to Europe was about. I don’t know. What I do know is that something causing you to be insecure and maybe a little paranoid. What is it?

Is it a bad sign that he’s not posting things on Facebook? Taken at face value, my answer is no. He works in technology and so he’s probably hyper-aware of the privacy issues on Facebook. I find people who are eager to post pictures and updates are usually doing it for the benefit of others or to support some manufactured image they have of themselves and not out of genuine contentment or happiness.

Listen, we all do it to some degree. We Facebook stalk exes, we pour over albums to take a look at their past lovers. We read their tweets. (Or, ahem, their blog.) We keep tabs on past boyfriends or girlfriends or lovers.  It’s hardly atypical these days and it usually isn’t done maliciously. (Unless of course somebody is looking to add a little dramz to their life or tedious relationship.)  Rational people know the lines, and we don’t cross them. We don’t impose ourselves in that person’s life in any way, especially if we know we’re not wanted. We might have private snark/analysis sessions with our friends, but that’s about it. Plus, it’s entertaining to watch the self-obsessed drama queens flame out or take themselves too seriously. It’s all for attention and to add to some creepy mystique or to add some spice to their relationship or to mess with their significant other. I’ve mentioned before that I have male friends who intentionally write on the walls of women who are mutual friends with the women they date. They do it intentionally to get a reaction. Which then compels the woman they’re taunting to check their page that much more often and be on high alert. As I said in an article I wrote for The Good Men Project yesterday, social media does not kill relationships. People kill relationships (TM Crotch Rocket.)

You need to be honest with yourself about a few things. You just wrote a comment about how, when you lived in NYC, you had a hard time finding a guy who wanted a relationship. Maybe you did encounter those guys, but your inability to trust and need to mark your territory pushed them away? When you’re watching what you guy is doing via Facebook because you fear something is off, that’s when it all becomes a problem.

I think you fear that this guy is hiding you away for some reason. Frankly, I think he is. Maybe not hiding you so much as holding off on bringing you in to the fold. You’re concerned that he doesn’t seem eager (or as eager as you) to let everybody know about your relationship. You’re of the mindset that this is a magical love affair and that he should be shouting it from the roof tops. To him, this is just a new relationship, like all the ones he has had before. (And FYI…those relationships never stuck, according to you. ) Maybe he has a recent Ex. Maybe he is cautious about what he shares publicly.Maybe he’s questioning the relationship. Maybe he doesn’t want there to be any public evidence that he’s in a relationship. It’s too early to tell and I don’t know him.

You, on the other hand, are desperate to broadcast this relationship publicly. Not that I don’t understand your anxiety. I do. This guy definitely seems, based on what you’ve shared, to be  slow at incorporating you into his life. This is why I say that committing early, offering you a key to his place, traveling,  meeting your family, etc means nothing . If he’s not making the same effort to introduce you to his world – his public world – something is off. (Also a red flag is if he’s too eager to make the relationship public. That’s for a reason, and it usually isn’t happiness.)

You’re insecure for a reason. Either you’re a naturally insecure person or something about this relationship is setting off some warning bells. It doesn’t make sense that, after all this guy has done and alllll the bragging you have done, that you’re this insecure about Facebook.

I said it last time and I’ll say it again. This guy was way too eager to commit, and likely did so to get laid since you admitted that you told him you don’t have sex without commitment. He committed casually, knowing he could always leave. Which isn’t real commitment.

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Filed Under: Dating, Dating & Trust, Drama Queens, Facebook, jealousy, Latests Posts, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , ,

The Importance of Boundaries

February 7, 2012 by 14 Comments

Tonight’s post was inspired by a piece written by a recent Guest Post writer, Jimmy.

Recently, I came home and my girlfriend was not a happy camper.  Apparently I was in the doghouse for tweeting too many women on my Twitter account.

For real?

Thinking this was just her insecurities, I blew it off until I recently received some emails from some fellow twiends about how their significant others are slightly perturbed over our friendly “twirting” sessions.

Give me a f*cking break.

I’m sorry, but anybody in any relationship who brings up Twitter (and doesn’t have a Twitter account, mind you) as a means of betrayal in the relationship has some insecurities to definitely sort out.

I happen to agree with Jimmy’s girlfriend. As I explained to him, it’s not the flirting (or not flirting) that is concerning. It’s the need for attention that sets off alarm bells. It’s also the total lack of boundaries. Take this excerpt above. Do you really think his girlfriend wants everybody knowing that he thinks she’s insecure? Do you really think she wants him sharing the inner workings of their relationship with his mostly female audience? Probably not. That would make many people insecure. Hence why she’s sitting at home watching his Twitter feed.

Something else that raises a red flag?  That your significant other or person you’ve just begun dating is not just monitoring your social media (many do it) but are telling you that they’re watching your social media. (You never go full Stalker, kids. Ever.) What they’re telling you with this behavior is that they are concerned. Possibly unhappy. To dismiss that is dangerous.

How many stories have we heard about women seeing Wall comments on the Walls of the men they are dating? Or comments they’ve written on women’s Walls? Here’s a secret ladies. I know men that intentionally write comments on a woman’s Wall KNOWING that a woman he’s dating is one of her friends and will see it. More often than not that women, within hours, is checking in with the guy “out of the blue” just to see how he’s doing and how his day is going.

The reason why I enjoy Twitter so much is because since over 60 percent of the North American population is on the social network, it gives me the chance to converse with amazing people I would have never met otherwise and the fact that I write about dating and relationships, I’m already expected to have more female readers than male readers and I won’t censor myself just so significant other can feel at ease.

Here’s the deal. A relationship hinges on the ability and willingness of each partner to consider each other’s feelings. If someone who is in a relationship can’t step away from Twitter or Facebook and has to engage in banter with the opposite sex, then there is something wrong. It’s a desire for attention. That need is supposed to be filled by your significant other, to some degree. Not a bunch of avatars. Knowing that your significant other is announcing aspects of your relationship (even the positive ones) to people, even friends, is unsettling. It also makes it very, very hard for them to trust you.

Nobody likes to feel like their significant other is telling tales out of school. We don’t need to go home for Thanksgiving and wonder if our partner’s sister or brother knows about our sexual proclivities or that fight we had that night when we were drunk. We need to know that what goes on between us stays between us. More over, we don’t like the idea of people judging our relationship. (Although that’s usually a sign of our own discomfort with the relationship.) A more experienced person knows that if they don’t want something judged, they don’t share that information publicly. Keep yer trap shut. It’s a pretty simple concept. If you don’t want to be judged or scrutinized, then keep your private life private. There aren’t enough Twitter or Facebook blocks in the world to prevent people from finding out what you’re saying, either. So either be comfortable with what you put out there, or say nothing.

We also don’t like to feel like we are fodder for conversation when we aren’t around. I mentioned last week how concerned I was that a guy told his friends about who I was and what I did. It’s one thing to feel like somebody is proud of their partner or who they are dating. It’s entirely another to be concerned that someone is dating you for bragging rights. As I’ve said in the past…any guy that says he wants to be written about or doesn’t mind immediately becomes suspect to me. Immediately. Not just because it means he could be  an attention whore, but because I fear he lacks boundaries himself and will broadcast our private life to friends or via Social Media.

Obviously, the issue is boundaries and trust. It doesn’t matter the medium in which you share these details. It’s the fact that you’re sharing them at all that is the problem. The other issue is not just the oversharing, but the need for feedback. You shouldn’t need reinforcement regarding your relationship. If anything, all that noise that will only serve to weaken the bond between you and your partner.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Filed Under: Dating, Facebook, jealousy, Latests Posts, Social Media