Transcription
If you remember back in the 1990s, one of the first real scammy emails we got was from that Nigerian prince; some kind of a deal where he was going to send you a million dollars if you'd send him like a thousand or something like that. I imagine some people went for it. I imagine some people must have, because that email circulated for quite a while before people really figured it out and became kind of a meme.
I bring that up because earlier this week I created a, uh, video about why guys are attracted to and continuing to partner up with really low-quality women. And I think that a lot of it has to do with guys just not recognizing the signs. Now, sure, the real overt signs we get, like if somebody sticks a gun in your face and tries to take money from you, you know that's a bad guy, you know, but, uh, you get a scammy email and you think, "Well, maybe it's legit. Maybe I can trust this guy. He's got a website, you know, it's probably all good, right? I'll send him $1,000 and I'll get a million. I don't know." But you get what I'm saying. The subtle signs are a lot harder to pick up on. And if you don't know what you're looking for, they can really slip by you.
So, today I want to talk about the subtle signs that you're with a bad woman. And these are the manipulative tactics that women use to control men. And when a woman uses manipulation to get what she wants from you, it's a, it's not just a red flag. It's like, it's like the giant red flag that you are with a woman who is a problem; that she has mental health issues, or she's insecure. She doesn't know how to communicate. Whatever it is, this is not the person you want to have a relationship with. All right, so let's talk about it.
The real blunt instrument that women use as a manipulative tactic is first the threat of withholding affection, and then second the actual withholding of affection and intimacy. These are the blunt instruments. If you are in a relationship with a woman who either threatens to withhold intimacy or actually withholds intimacy, this is like the nuclear bomb going off in your relationship. This is a complete desolation of everything that came before it. There is no trust from this point forward. This woman cannot be trusted under any circumstances ever again. You cannot have her in your life. She is a, I don't know, sociopath. She is, um, dark triad. She's whatever you want to call her. She's not someone you want to have in your life. I've had this happen to me, and, um, I was under the unknowing or un-understanding that maybe I could somehow fix this. You cannot, you cannot fix this without sacrificing your self-respect and dignity. There is no way through this problem. When she says, "Unless you do this, I'm not gonna do that," man, she's done. She's out. Screw her. Don't screw her. Whatever. She is done. Do not let her in your life.
The next one is the guilt trip. You know, and I have tons of experience with guilt because my mother, she was like a master at guilt. She got like the ninja black belt level of guilt. And for a mother, I guess you got to deal with it. There's nothing you can do. But, uh, with a girlfriend or a wife or a partner or whatever, yeah, guilt tripping is not acceptable behavior under any circumstances. That's a sign that she doesn't know how to communicate, that she's lacking the basic, you know, self-respect. She doesn't know how to get what she wants. She doesn't know how to talk to you. If she's, um, giving you—because you want to spend time alone, you want to go out with your friends, you're not spending time with her—she's making you feel less than because you're not prioritizing whatever her priorities are, she's not an independent, freethinking human being. You have no business being with this crazy person. Guilt is a dead giveaway for a, um, uh, you know, someone you don't want to be with. I'm just going to call them generally sociopathic. And what I mean by that is not that they lack empathy or anything, but this is—they don't know how to function in society; sociopath. So, do not allow this person in your life.
Number four is passive-aggressive behavior. This is a very difficult one to identify sometimes because it's frequently couched in some kind of a joke, like a backhanded compliment. Um, so you got to really keep your eyes open for this. But essentially, it's her way of communicating with you in a passive way that she aggressively wants something from you. She wants you to perform in some way. This is another toxic way of behaving; sociopath. If you find yourself getting these backhanded compliments or these hidden messages and you're constantly trying to read between the lines to figure out what the hell she's talking about, chances are you're dealing with a crazy person, and you definitely do not want her in your life. She's—this is antisocial behavior. It's a lack of ability to communicate, a lack of self-esteem. Um, now, you—I can just go down the line. This is an unhealthy human being. You do not want her in your life. So, you come across that, you can address it specifically with her and say, "I don't want to be communicated with that way," or you can just walk away. But it's a red flag anyway you cut it.
These next two kind of go together. One is, um, playing the victim, you know, where, uh, she is, um, like the damsel in distress. You know, the world is against her. No one loves her. You don't love her. You're not playing, you know, way she wants. She's dissatisfied; her life isn't working. All that stuff, you know, that's that's a big one. And the other one is this feigned vulnerability. It's this idea that because she's just a weak little girl, she needs you to be—to protect her, to do all these things for her, and to basically be her slave. Well, I'm afraid those days are over, you know, um, feminism, if nothing else, has taught us that women are quite capable of taking care of themselves. And under the current circumstances, I think it's completely, um, within the, uh, realm of reasonable expectations that a woman should be able to support herself financially, should be able to pay her own bills, and, um, basically take care of herself. Now, she needs help opening a jar of pickles; hey, you're the guy, you open those pickles for her, man. If she needs you to lift up one end of the couch, you lift up one end of the couch. But do not let her sucker you in to thinking that she's incapable of doing some things for herself or that she is a victim in some way or that she is vulnerable to the world in some mystical, you know, feminine, you know, um, way of manipulating you, you know. So just, just be aware of that when it comes up. It's just a manipulation. It's just a form of control. That's all it is.
These next two go together pretty well too. Um, gaslighting, which of course is a dead giveaway for someone who is a, um, narcissist. And this is when, um, you know something happened and she denies it, you know, or vice versa. Something didn't happen and she says it did. Um, she's just changing your frame of reality. This is a, um, huge manipulation. This is manipulation at a master level. I, um, if you see any sign of this, you need to run. Do not walk. Run toward the exits. This is the kind of behavior that serious mental health patients have. This is, um, narcissistic, um, path pathology, and it's something that you just do not want in your life under any circumstances. What kind of goes along with that is avoiding accountability. Um, changing the subject to avoid, um, having a conversation about whatever the issue might be. So gaslighting and changing the subject have some similarities. The gaslighting is much more, uh, potent of a, of a manipulation and it's much more dangerous as a whole. But that continuously changing the subject to avoid having a serious conversation or dealing with an issue is along the same lines. Because what's happening there is she knows that she's done something or something's out of line and you need to have this conversation, and she's trying to avoid it, probably because she doesn't want to tell you what she really thinks. More often than not, she has lost interest in you or she doesn't feel the same way about you and she doesn't want to have that conversation. She wants to put that off until she's sorted out whatever she's got coming next. Either way, these kinds of behaviors are, um, not healthy. They're not the kind of person you want to have in your life. If you can't have someone who can, you know, at least deal with reality in its actual form or at least have a conversation about reality, you know, and deal with what's in front of you, then yeah, you, you obviously—with a low-quality person, you do not want them in your life.
One of my favorites is shifting the blame. Ah, this is a classic. This is when, and this is a female thing, 100%. I don't know how it happens, but I always end up apologizing for something that she did. And I don't know how that ever happens, but it definitely happens where she's definitely screwed something up majorly. And then I make the mistake of pointing it out to her. And then in return, she gets upset and blames me for being unfair and unreasonable and maybe even, I don't know, just sort of an—and then I'm apologizing to her for being an—when she was the one who did the whole thing to begin with. This happens so frequently between men and women, it's almost a meme, you know? I, I don't know how they do it, but they do it. This one is not as bad as some of the others because I think it's sort of ingrained in them. I think that women just do this naturally. So, I don't think you can naturally assume that it's a pathological behavior, but it's definitely very irritating and if not a red flag, definitely a yellow flag.
One of the most toxic ones is using comparison and jealousy to manipulate you. Well, my ex-boyfriend did this, this, and this, and every other guy I've been out with has acted this way, and you're acting like that. These are cruel and manipulative, and I don't know. This kind of behavior is just completely out of, out of line. This is something you can never put up with. If a woman that you're with is starting to compare you to her past boyfriends and all the things that they did and how you're not measuring up, yeah, that's, that's an enormous red flag. You got to get the heck out of there right now, cuz she is, she is just digging in to control you. You know, once you go down that path where you are allowing her to, to, to pull your strings that way, man, you are, you're in for it.
Another one that I've had done to me over the years, both by women that I was dating, by sisters, by mothers. So, I don't know if it's necessarily pathological, but it's certainly one of those things that's extremely irritating and something you need to call them out when you come across it; and that is moving the goalpost. So, there's been some kind of a definition as to what the end of a job is or you're supposed to accomplish something or do something for them or whatever it is. Usually, it's some kind of household chore, and then suddenly that chore just gets deeper. Like you think you've gotten to the end and you're like, "Okay, the lawn is mowed, trimmed, everything's done." And then she said, "Well, did you get the mulch?" You're like, "What? You didn't say do the mulch. You just said mow and trim." She says, "Well, you know, we have to get the mulch done. It's springtime. Our neighbors are all mulched." You know what I mean? That kind of crap is—you've got to at least call it out when you see it. It's like, "Hey, we had talked about this. This is what I said I was going to do. I'm going to do that," and then walk away with it. Walk away from it. Even if you think you have the time and the inclination to do the job anyway, if you allow her to use this manipulation on you, she will use it every single time. So, do not allow this to happen to you.
Treating you and talking to you as if you are a child. This is the most annoying and, um, I think it's almost an intentional act to get under your skin, to undermine your confidence, to make you feel like you're less than a man, to make you feel like she's got some kind of upper hand on you and she's smarter than you, more competent than you in some way. This is a non-starter. If a woman starts talking to you like you're a child, you need to just say, "I'm, I'm out," you know, or point it out to her and immediately say, "This is not acceptable behavior. If you're going to talk to me like that, we cannot have a relationship." When they start doing that, it is, um, a subtle way for them to take the upper hand in the relationship by exerting some level of intelligence or some level of competence that they have in a particular task. Now, if it just so happens that your woman is really good at something that you're not so good at, which is entirely possible, that's fine, so long as she is not holding it over your head, lording it over you, and then talking to you like you're incompetent or you're less than her as a result of your inability to accomplish whatever it is that she's doing. So, keep that in mind when you hear that tone in her voice that, "Oh, let me help you with that. You poor little thing. Oh, you just don't know what you're doing. Let mommy handle it." No, no, no, no. You already have a mother. You've moved out of her house. Hopefully, you do not need another mother in your life.
One that is kind of familiar or similar to that is, um, exploiting your insecurities. So when you get to know a woman really well and you, you know, expose yourself to her on a number of different levels emotionally, psychologically, they now have power, and how they use that power is reflective of the kind of person they are. If they are a psychopath, they will take that information, that power that you've given them, and they will use it to manipulate you by exploiting your insecurities, whatever they may be. Like if you've got an insecurity about, I don't know, the way you look or your weight or, you know, relationships with your family or whatever it might be. Um, yeah. You can never ever ever allow a woman to use that really exclusive content, that information that you've given to them as a—in a trusted relationship, pillow talk perhaps, you know, after sex, all that stuff where you're most vulnerable and you're most open and you give her that information and she turns it around and uses it against you. Oh man, that is the lowest of the low. I mean, that's, that's right up there with withholding sex, you know? That's like really, really a, a non-starter.
These next two are particularly meaningful to me because I've experienced this firsthand and I really, really hate it. First one is, uh, diminishing your achievements; anything that you've done, you know, that you have a sense of accomplishment from, whether it be something as simple as, you know, building something in your woodworking shop to something as meaningful to you as running a career, maybe running a business, making a lot of money, and they blow it off like, well, it's no big deal. You had all the advantages. You did everything, you know, that you were supposed to do, but you didn't do anything extra. We're only—we're not the richest people in the neighborhood, you know. That kind of—I hate that. Hate that. That is one of the worst things ever. Um, where you feel like you're putting in all the work. You're doing everything necessary to fulfill your end of the bargain as a husband. You are, uh, fulfilling the contract. And she blows it off like it's no big deal. Like, yeah, you're just, you're just, um, I don't know, barely getting by. It's not meaningful to her, you know? It doesn't matter. Yeah, that, that sucks. You can't have that.
And then the last one, which I've experienced firsthand, which I abhor, is, um, triangulation. This is what—she brings somebody else into the conversation, into the argument to get their opinion. Obviously, they're—she's going to try to win them over. So, as my marriage was falling apart, my ex-wife thought it would be a good idea to get my sister and my mother in on it. Oh my god. She thought that they were going to be her allies in this endeavor of hers, and they were not; they were loyal to me to the end, and she, uh, was expecting them to—I don't know—what, say something to me, to gang up on me with her. I have no idea what she had in mind, but nevertheless, um, it did not work. But that's, that's a non-starter for me, man. You cannot be bringing other people into our personal relationship in order to convince me of something or to be an ally or whatever. Yeah, that's just not happening. That is absolutely not happening.
So those are the, uh, I don't know, it was 12 or 13, 14, somewhere around there. There's a lot of them. Primary sources of manipulation that I have come across in my life that I think are red flags. These are signs that you are dealing with a nut job and, um, probably a pretty good indication that you need to be looking somewhere else for a good woman. People who use these kinds of techniques—and even men can use this kind of crap in a lot of cases—people who do this are generally, um, insecure people who don't have a, uh, enough self-confidence to talk to you or confront you directly about something that they have sincere problems with. I mean, not everybody in the world is going to agree with you. And if they don't, that's okay. The thing is, you got to confront it straight up. You know, you got to go head-to-head, face to face. So, you can't just, um, use these manipulative techniques to try to get what you want out of people. That's underhanded. It's, it's weak. It's sad. It's pathetic. And you don't want to be with a weak, sad, pathetic woman.
All right, you guys. That's all I got for you today. I certainly hope you've enjoyed the video. If you have, please like and subscribe. If you know anyone who might be going through something like this and might need some help, um, you know, share this video with them. Maybe they're not aware they're with a manipulative, and you could save their life. Anyway, until next time, stay healthy and if you can be the better man. I know a lot of you guys like that stay single thing, but you know something? I don't think you need to stay single to be happy. I think you can potentially have a relationship with a woman. You just need to be a better man and you need to find a better woman. So, if you can be the better man, that's all you can control. You can just be the better man. Um, I know a lot of us got into some really crappy relationships because we weren't the best we could be. And, um, I think you can, you can control that. Anyway, be the better