I see questions all the time asking if she should text him, reach out to him, tell him she wants more. In a word, the general answer is no. The reason is a bit complicated but once you understand it, I hope you’ll see the wisdom in it. Caution is an important element.
Relationships at any level, be it friends, friends with benefits, lovers, or a couple is based on each party having an emotional investment in the relationship. This leads to an axiom a friend told me in college that has served me very, very well:
Your commitment to a relationship is proportional to your investment in it and NOT your profit from it.
Think about that. I found this to be both true and profound. It summed up how a huge number of relationships go off the rails. One party gets significantly more invested and therefore more committed than the other and ends up ofttimes getting hurt.
So how do people emotionally invest in a relationship? With their time, energy, attention, and to a lesser degree money. When a woman meets a man she likes, she will often flirt and do other things to encourage him. That’s investment that’s largely one sided. She’s investing and he’s not, hence things are out of balance. To get them back in balance, he needs to invest. Men invest more than any other way through pursuit. Men also invest my doing things for her, be it helping her with something physically a bit beyond her comfort level, like moving a piece of furniture to helping her with her computer to asking her on a date. Yes, asking is an investment. There’s risk in asking early on that she’ll say no so when he asks, he’s investing. Simply put, make him work for it.
One way the investments get out of balance is early sex. When a couple has sex too early in a relationship, very often she’s much more invested because physical intimacy is much more emotional for women than men. There are lots of exceptions for this but generally it’s true. He’s there for the good time and really enjoys the physical aspects but often times doesn’t invest emotionally. That’s why we see men pursue a woman just enough to get her in bed and then move on. She’s all invested and he’s virtually absent any investment.
Bottom line, take things a bit more slowly and deliberately. Gauge how much you’re invested versus how much they seem to be and if there’s a disparity, fix it before you move on.
I see questions all the time about how long should we wait to have sex. I always reply that it’s not about time. It’s about emotional connection, aka investment. When the connection is strong enough, sex will be on the table but before, the risk of imbalance and failure is very high.
Most Helpful Opinions