Girlfriend Material: A Tale of Ugly Humanity
Our workshop took us to a rooftop bar. The weather in New York threatened rain all day, so the venue had wisely erected giant umbrellas. Droplets teased us like air conditioner condensation from Heaven. A few of the students wanted to see me approach and open because while they had witnessed me wading through the Emotional Progression Model in a few interactions they hadn’t seen me work from a standing start. I looked around and walked toward the prettiest girl I could see outside the umbrellas, i.e. where the students could get a good view. She was wearing a tight white dress and hoop earrings. Her friends were a tiny girl in a red dress and a large man with a military moustache and a designer shirt.
“Hey, trouble,” I said…
…The students watched as I asked for her name and spun her and asked the normal questions but in statement form. “You look like you’re from out west. Not the Midwest, but more like Idaho or Montana. You have a kind way, but you seem hard.” I was wrong– she was from Long Island– but that didn’t matter.* We were cuddling in short order before her friend swooped in.
“She’s mine!” said the little girl draped in red.
“Suit yourself,” I said. “I’ve been telling her to get away from me.”
At this point Big Business tried to intercept. My girl in white was enthralled with me despite the interruption.** I looked to the friends to make sure everything was okay. Her tall man-friend looked on with what I thought was approval. “You better take her number, dude. It looks like she really likes you!”
We chatted more. An attractive couple I had chatted with earlier in the night walked by and, as I asked them to do if they saw me with a cute girl, started cooing and praising me, demanding this girl see my stand-up comedy show.
Soon we were kissing in the rain. Hands, hair, and coy smiles.
“Okay,” I said. “Your friends are vanishing, and my friends are about to pull me away. I better do what your friend said. But we can’t ever talk to each other because it could be the end of the world. You really should stay awa from me.” She gave me her number, and I purposely made a mistake, which she corrected.
She walked back to her friends with my hand in hers. I still had my phone out and said, “I got it,” while making eye contact with her male friend, my co-conspirator.
“What?” he said, his eyes about sixteen shades angrier than I was expecting.
“I got her number like you told me to, killer,” I said. The “r” had not left my mouth before he had knocked my (9$!) drink out of my hand. My eyes widened, and I took a step back, dropping my copy of Blood Meridian and holding my hands up, never breaking eye contact. He’d been drinking, and he wasn’t puffing up or shouting. He just stared and sneered, snapping at his two friends.
The girl in red came quickly to me. “They’re in a relationship,” she said and went back to calm the guy down.
“Dude, I’m sorry,” I said, my hands still up.
“Fuck you,” he said.
Two other instructors dashed forward and tried to smooth things over. Calabrese repeated a few times, “Everything’s cool, man. Just walk away,” and the three eventually left, although the guy was still steaming and muttering bitterness to the girl in white.
Even in the immediate aftermath, I didn’t hold any malice toward the guy. How could I when he gave me my new favorite story? If anything, I empathized with this man with the unfortunate facial hair. While I’ve never been in that exact situation, I was in a relationship for a long time where the girl flaunted her sexual power in extremely painful ways. Like this guy, I had anger toward my girlfriend, but my real rage was directed to the guys who were putting their hands and cocks in and on My Girl. With her I had fitful conversations where I begged her to please, if she could maybe stop screwing or blowing anyone who showed her he bought condoms, that would be super. That frustration was a different experience from the need to wipe the slate clean, to abolish with blood her pristine(?) essence from the filthy hands of those thuggish interlopers who had the audacity to seduce her.
I hope this was a catalyst, that he’s telling his friends about tonight a year from now. I hope this is the light from the sky where he realizes that she doesn’t really respect him, and he owes himself better than to invest energy and emotion in a girlfriend willing and eager to exhibit that sort of behavior.
That’s unlikely, though.
Tonight was probably just another tear in his tattered self-worth, yet another reminder that he is less than they both wish he was. For the rest of the night, I started my conversations by asking who was more fucked up in that situation. Girls unanimously said the girl was vastly more wrong, and guys were usually silent if they weren’t fist-pounding me. But I’m not so sure. Yes, she was wrong in that moment, but that moment isn’t their story. The really egregious business doesn’t happen in isolation. It happens during backed up traffic or missed appointments or flirting with friends or impatience with a bartender or waiter. The seeds of contemptuous behavior are strewn through every day, every interaction. All the worst crimes of a relationship are symptomatic of something else, unmet needs deeper in the core.
Good luck, sir, wherever you are, and peace be unto you. I appreciate that you didn’t take a shot at me… but I would have understood.
[UPDATE: Big Business feels it's appropriate to add that the girl in red and the guy were being, um, unpleasant. And they were. They were EXTREMELY antagonistic and saying ugly things to him and me, although I didn't hear it. Really, these just weren't the most charming people at the bar that night, the girl's tight white dress aside. Still, I think the guy's hostility is still a reflection of his overall insecurity and weakness, reflected yet again in his eagerness to turn his frustration into violence. Despite his douchery, I am compelled toward empathy because no one-- and I mean no one-- should have to watch his girlfriend make out with another guy right before his eyes.]
*– The key is to avoid the Routine Everyone Else Uses, and get the boring stuff answered in an interesting way. There are a whole slew of examples for this in the LS Routines Manual, by the way. My favorite, and the one I contributed to the LSRM, is to wildly and utterly confuse races, i.e. say a girl with an obvious African accent is from Korean, &c.
**– It is boring to recap. I was just spewing obvious sexual intent and pushing her away when the moment was right.
Tags: big business, bootcamp, bullshit, calabrese, infidelity, nyc, thedon, workshop
I’d have to agree that the guy has a lot to answer for in this relationship, and that the girl would never have acted like this if he had strong boundaries, self-respect, and refused to take her bullshit, BUT, I myself (and guys through-out the world I’m sure) have had boundary problems like this guy’s and still dated girls who didn’t disrespect us, who didn’t cheat on us despite the fact we might have forgiven them if they had, and who respected us regardless of some of our weaknesses. The fact this girl would cheat on her boyfriend is due to two problems, and one is him, but the other is her own morality. My exes didn’t cheat on me because they knew the pain they would have caused me, because they knew that even if they had cheated and I forgave them for it, it still would have damaged our relationship and their own self-worth. The fact that this girl didn’t just leave this guy, despite the fact that he obviously isn’t giving her the boundaries and respect (in the form of boundaries and discipline) that she needs, is just as much as a reflection on her as it is on his failure to create those boundaries. Truly high quality women don’t date guys and then cheat on them if the guy isn’t providing the qualities that they need, they leave him and find a new man. There is never one person to blame when someone cheats in a relationship, but usually three. However, the person who cheats has more responsibility than either of the other two.
I completely agree that the girl was largely at fault here. I guess I tend to turn my attention to the guy because it’s too easy to say that she was fucked up and to make him out to be the victim.
Coming to your point about there being three people to blame for any affair, I am not so sure. First of all, let’s not forget those shining stars who run trains or operate orgies on the side. Har, har. Seriously, though, I feel like the involvement of the outsider is a person-to-person issue. Some people might feel a crushing weight on their soul if they get involved with a married person or someone with a boyfriend/girlfriend, but some (and I include myself in this) don’t really feel it’s am outside party’s responsibility to steward a relationship where one person is happy to breach his or her integrity. I do my best not to upset others’ beds these days, but that’s usually because of the hassle involved. I still feel the blame is misplaced, as much fun as it was to punch someone shagging my girl. It doesn’t change the fact that he was just being a guy, and she was the one with the commitment. There is no such thing as a homewrecker.
That changes if you, the other man/woman, know both parties, if you’re the best friend or brother or sister or whatever. In that case, you’re an ass.
That’s a fair point. However, thinking back to my own (limited) experiences of being ‘the other guy’, I’d have to disagree. One case sticks out clearly in my mind. One of my closest friends, who I met when I was a naive 16, had a boyfriend who she occasionally cheated on. This girl is almost the definition of a siren. If you fall for her, you fall hard. Not in love, but in to a deep infatuation, where you believe that you have met Cleopatra, Eve, and the Mother Mary all rolled into one. I have seen her squeeze her breasts together, bat her eyelids, and giggle playfully in a way that would make a playboy playmate blush. Needless to say, when I met her I became more than keen to add myself to her list of validation-givers, whom she tossed by the wayside once she became bored by them. This, luckily for our friendship (an AFC statement if ever I heard it!), never eventuated. Nevertheless she managed to keep me obsessing over her for months, until I met my first LTR, who broke the spell with a genuine love, rather than this shallow consumption. We’re still friends, and I now watch her devour other men with amusement, rather than envy. She has long since been dumped by the boyfriend she had when I met her though, more power to him. At the moment she has a LTR who she has yet to cheat on, despite the fact that she and I both know that she could probably get away with it. Honestly, why hasn’t she? Because there are no guys infatuated with her to cheat with, much to her surprise. And if there are no men willing to cheat, then she can’t do it. “It takes two to tango”. It’s easy to excuse a guy’s actions by saying ‘he was just being a guy’, but that’s taking a highly cynical view of men. Is it really in our default nature to be willing to sleep with any woman we desire, regardless of whether she has a boyfriend? I hope it’s not in mine. Even right now, there are two women I want to sleep with, who both have boyfriends. One of the boyfriends is an arsehole, who treats his girl with complete disrespect. To a degree I feel he deserves something like this. At the very least I want her to dump him (though not for me). The other is perfectly nice, a genuine guy who has no bad feelings towards me, despite the fact that I dated his girlfriend before him. I know she definitely won’t cheat on him with me. If the opportunity arose to sleep with either girl, would I do it? I really don’t know. I do know why I don’t know though. It’s my lack of an abundance mentality. I haven’t met many higher value girls than the ex, and so I feel as if I couldn’t just let the opportunity pass if it arose, without at least considering it. I think that’s the important issue here. If you truly have an abundance of women in your life, why not let the ones with boyfriends go? It’s true that some women have so many options that they are often in relationships by default, and that if you waited for these women to break up then you might miss your chance. That’s ok though. If that woman is willing to cheat on her boyfriend for you, do you really want her as more than a FB? And if you don’t want anything more than an FB, than just find another girl. If she isn’t willing to cheat on her boyfriend, good for her. She’s probably getting what she needs and you’d be selfish to interfere with that. If you’re better for her than her current boyfriend, then if she’s high value enough, she should be able to see that. The best LTR i’ve ever had was when a girl left a friend of mine for me. We went on to date for about 3 times as long as they did. No cheating necessary. Basically I see four options when a girl has a bf: 1) You want a LTR, and she’s willing to cheat. Either she, A) cheats on him and doesn’t leave him for you. You lose. Or she, B) cheats on him, leaves him for you, and then cheats on you too, because of her own problems that led her to cheat on him. You lose. 2) You want a LTR, and she’s not willing to cheat. She, A) doesn’t leave him for you because he’s better for her than you would be. You lose in the short-term, but win in the long-term because she’d be less happy with you once she regrets leaving him. Or B) she does leave him because she’d be happier with you, and you have a happy relationship together, that doesn’t originate from the negativity of cheating, and doesn’t have her cheating. You win. 3) You just want a ONS or a FB and she’s willing to cheat. She A) cheats on him and then you leave her in your past to avoid seeing the repercussions. You (sort of) win, but either you’re left feeling a little guilty by the fact you have contributed to the downfall of a relationship, whether or not they break-up. Or you don’t feel guilty, which is just a sign that your heart has become hardened towards women to the point that you’re willing to sleep with women who disrespect themselves and their boyfriends by cheating. B) She cheats on him, and you stick around to witness the outcome, which is almost inevitably negative. You win in the short-term, but lose in the long-term. 4) You just want a ONS or a FB, and she’s not willing to cheat. She, A) doesn’t cheat, you leave her in the past and you find another girl, who you have a healthy ONS or FB relationship with. You win. B) She doesn’t cheat and you stay friends with her, and she introduces you to her best friend, Megan Fox. You win the lottery.
There are two pieces of wisdom that back me up on this. One is the conventional PUA saying ‘leave a woman better than you found her’. I fail to see how assisting a woman in cheating will leave her better off, unless it is the catalyst for the end of a unhappy relationship, something that is extremely unpredictable.
The other is Edmund Burke’s bastardised “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle”, which is better known as “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing”. Every time you assist a woman in cheating, and explain it off as ‘i was just being a guy’, you’re making the assumption that is in our basic nature to assist a woman in cheating. Personally I want to believe that men, or at least I, am better than that. If all men refused to assist a woman in cheating, then women would never cheat. I refuse to believe that the opposite is the preferable state of affairs.
I realise this is a rambling, unfocused and overly wordy reply, and that it may come across as overly preachy. Apologies for that. However, I do feel that the seduction community on the whole follows your ethical viewpoint on assisting with cheating because it suits them, rather than because they have a greater moral insight than the people who would oppose that point of view. I eagerly await your reply/ intense roasting of me.