Chase - BOUNDARIES?

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Tool-Bearing Hominid
Tool-Bearing Hominid
Joined
Nov 24, 2012
Messages
317
In one of your articles you say you have a few simple boundaries that you seemed to think were obvious such as arguing with you in public - I think a little more detail on this could be useful, what are the modern normal boundaries for bf/gf, and what should they be? and are these the same at the start, how do they evolve - and when do you start actually enforcing them (since you are supposed to let her chase and not be pushing for a relationship)- I think many guys would have some trouble knowing exactly what boundaries should be (having been brainwashed by disney that they aren't needed because they live happily ever after in a palace).

One point I was also a little puzzled by - you seemed to think its unacceptable for your gf to go out on a girls night out? Of course I can totally see your reasoning why (puts her at risk of "making a mistake" while drunk) but I think many girls I know would expect to be allowed (I don't mean this in a controlling way - of course they can do whatever they want - I mean they would expect it to be within boundaries) to go out with their friends - and that might occasionally include something that be/ accidentally turn into a drunken girls night out (they would expect to not be quizzed on what they are doing infact). So that was one boundary that wasn't so obvious to me! Especially if you can then only confront her after the event and nothing "really bad" necessarily happened - do you then go out and let her see how it feels?
 

Chase

Chieftan
Staff member
tribal-elder
Joined
Oct 9, 2012
Messages
5,484
GF-

This really depends on your own preferences and what you're looking for / what you want in a mate. And it's more about selection than it is control or repression.

e.g., I've never had to tell a girl I don't want her going out and getting drunk with friends because I've never had a girlfriend who did that. Girls who do that are great - they're fun, they're wild, they're often great in the sack - but I screen for that quickly and reserve those girls for one-night stands and casual relationships. Just a personal preference to limit drama / headaches in my relationships, which are something I don't want or need.

My view is, you can't change anybody. So if you meet a girl and she likes screaming at her boyfriend in public or trying to make him jealous by flirting with other men in front of him or she goes out and parties and gets wasted without him or she plays subtle power dynamic games to one-up him in front of his friends... none of those are things you're ever going to change without completely breaking her spirit, which only generates resentment and all kinds of ugly, messy situations in the long term. If those are things you'd prefer to do without in your relationships, then just keep an eye out for them and as soon as you see any indications of them, scratch a girl off the "potential girlfriends" list.

Boundaries aren't really something I've given much conscious thought to; it's more a "you know it when you see it" type of thing. Off the top of my head, things that would immediately write a girl off as potential girlfriend material:

  • She gets drunk
  • She does drugs
  • She goes clubbing
  • She has club/bar girls' nights outs
  • She fights with you in public
  • She disrespects you (public or private)
  • She undermines you (public or private)
  • She's passive-aggressive (public or private)
  • She speaks ill of her past boyfriends / blames them

I will defend a girl's past boyfriends or get annoyed at her if she maligns them... and my girlfriends have had the tendency to do the same if I ever slip and say something not praising about past girlfriends of mine. It's sort of an unspoken rule among cool / balanced people that if someone speaks ill and thinks ill of their exes, someday he or she will speak ill and think ill of YOU (often, quite possibly, while the two of you are still in a relationship), so you do not permit it.

I don't mind a girl who has the occasional drink now and again, but if she gets drunk, she's out of contention. I mean, I'll still hook up with her, no problem ;) Just won't have her in a relationship, is all. Getting drunk / going clubbing / having girls' nights out that include drinking/clubbing (girls' nights out where it's 4 or 5 girls sitting around having dinner in somebody's house is fine... just no drunk clubbing revelry) increases variability / randomness, and while that's probably great for some people, I'm super busy and there's a lot I want to do with my life, and having a girl who's randomly drunk and maybe flirting to excess with guys / hooking up with guys / changing her emotions toward me / or maybe not / who knows, it changes from day to day, that forces me to turn my attentions away from things that are important to me (like building business or developing a skill set I'm working on) to instead putting out fires, dealing with drama, and trying to figure out what's going on with a girl who now seems to be hiding stuff from me that she obviously doesn't want me to know.

Basically, my way of thinking about a mate is here is your #1 supporter, and you are her #1 supporter. If your #1 supporter is going out and getting hammered and dividing her support between you and Scumbag Steve and Playboy Pete, then instead of her being a support, she's become a needless distraction and a pain.

I'm fine with girlfriends having friends, and fine with them having girls' nights out where they all go to somebody's house and play board games or cook dinner together. If they're going to go out and get sloshed and grind on randoms and encourage each other to hook up with that sexy guy over there because they'll only be young once... they're girls whom you keep around for sex and that's it. Anything more than that, and they quickly become the swirling central vortex of madness and destruction in your life and force you to cast all nobler pursuits to the side to focus solely on trying to control / placate / figure them out.

If you're in the club/party scene, it can seem like, "But doesn't EVERY girl do that?!" and my response would be, "That's a distinct MINORITY of women who do that." I don't know what the exact percentage of girls who go clubbing / partying and get drunk is, but it isn't as high as you'd think when you're running in those circles. The reason they seem to be EVERY girl sometimes, though, is that the other girls don't go out, you don't meet them in these places, and they lead (comparatively) more "boring" lives. You only meet them during the daytime, since they spend their nights reading books or watching movies, rather then drinking and carousing.

The MAJORITY of girls do not go out, get drunk, and party up, EVER... except in certain circles.

I will say that with, say, college girls in the West, the number is significantly higher - maybe somewhere around 60% of girls do this at least sometimes (with perhaps 20 to 25% of them being hardcore about it). The other girls are probably invisible to you if you run in these circles because they're either a.) constantly paired up with boyfriends, or b.) are quiet / keeping their heads down / more focused on their studies than they are on socializing. You can also keep your eyes out for the girls in the party scene who DON'T drink - these girls, so long as they're only infrequent partiers, can be some real diamonds in the rough, relationship-wise.

One other note: the common thing you hear from men dating women like this is, "Yeah, but my girl keeps a lid on it - she's got CONTROL, unlike all those OTHER girls out there." Two things on that one - yes, she may have control now, but watch what happens as soon as you start fighting and/or she starts getting bored with you. Same story every time. Other one - partying / aggressive flirting (which you will usually never see - she's not so stupid she's going to do it in front of you or tell you about it) / getting drunk is something that increases random variability. You can be the most in-control guy in the world, but if you get trashed on liquor and some pretty girl propositions you, there's some percentage of the time something happens there that impacts your relationship. Women are arguably less well-suited to monogamy than men are (men are more romantic than women are on average, take longer to get over breakups, and fall more deeply in love than women do), and expecting them to be different than you would be in the same situation is silliness.

Anyway, if a guy keeps climbing tall buildings or sheer cliff faces without a rope, my prediction is sooner or later he's going to fall to his death, no matter how in-control a climber he is.

Chase
 

trashKENNUT

Cro-Magnon Man
Cro-Magnon Man
Joined
Nov 20, 2012
Messages
6,553
Chase said:
my prediction is sooner or later he's going to fall to his death, no matter how in-control a climber he is.

Bruce Lee would have given the same advice. His was about fighting. :) such knowledge.

Zac
 
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