Can We Control Our Date’s Thoughts?

I am the knight in shining armor (dusty robes?) that you’ve been looking for.

One common way to look at dating and relating with women is through the lens of “If I just say the right thing / do the right thing, she’ll totally be attracted to me!”

Upon closer inspection, we can see the underlying assumption behind this idea of dating: “If I just say a certain thing or do a certain action, I can control and/or influence another person’s will.”

Not even looking at the ethics of whether one SHOULD try to influence another person’s thoughts or not, let’s just examine how effective that would be. Our take is that it’s hard enough directing our own thoughts, nevertheless having to worry about trying to control others’ thoughts. The assumption that people are able to control the thoughts of others drives persuasion-based dating philosophies (ie, “I can convince her to like me!”).

The fact of the matter is when women are into us, it’s because she liked the way we looked right off the bat. From that more, it’s more a question of simply not messing things up rather than actively trying to “do” something.

This works out extremely well for guys using Identification. When they see that a woman 1) isn’t into them or 2) seems to be into them but has some weird agenda going on, they can simply smile, walk away from the mess and, usually within minutes, go find another woman who IS into them.

As anyone who’s ever been in a long term relationship knows, we certainly can’t control people over the long-term. At best, we can ‘draw out’ certain shades of characters and flavors, but only if they were already ‘in there’ to begin with… and even then, they have to be willing to do it all of their own volition.

How does this apply on a shorter dating time scale?  if she’s totally into you, she’ll be willing to ‘draw out’ her charming side – the side of her that does everything in her power to try to get you to like her more. We sometimes refer to this as her bringing her A-Game to the date. When she’s NOT into a given guy, she’s just NOT going to bring her A-Game.

If she brings her B-Game (or even C-Game, yuck!) to the date, it just causes undue stress and headaches for all parties in involved. Rather than trying to control her thoughts, actions and behaviors, best to call it off as soon as it goes down that path and start looking for quality back-up.

Be Amazing,
John Robie