I Got Complacent & My Girlfriend Wants An Open Relationship

Things to consider if your girlfriend wants an open relationship after you got complacent.

In this video coaching newsletter I discuss an email from a viewer who has been a long time follower, but only read 3% Man a few times several years ago. As a result he got complacent and started neglecting his girlfriend. He stopped dating, courting and seducing her.

Now she wants an open relationship, but he wants to remain exclusive. My comments are in bold italics like this below in the body of his email.

Well, probably most people watching this would recognize that as being sub-optimal. That’s the last thing you want to hear from your girlfriend, that she’s unhappy and basically wants an open relationship, which is basically another way of her saying, “Hey, I’d like to keep hanging out with you, but I really want to monkey-branch and find somebody I’m more into. Then when I find that person, ‘Hasta la vista, baby!'”

So this particular guy says he’s a long-time listener and follower. He’s been with his girlfriend for about four-and-a-half years. However, in all that time, I guess he knew my work before he met her. He’s only gotten through the book, let’s see, four to five times? That was probably many years ago.

So like a lot of guys, he probably focused on the pickup and the seduction, the dating techniques. Then when he started regularly hooking up with his girlfriend, especially once he got into a relationship, he never kind of went back to it. He just figured he had it down, it was easy. Then years later, he realizes he’s gotten away from the book and now he’s getting back into it. So he wants to turn things around. She’s, I guess apparently, is going to another country for a while. She said once she goes, she wants to have an open relationship. In other words, they can date and sleep with whoever they want, but when they’re, I guess, together back in the States, she wants to be able to hang out, have fun and hook up. He wants to stay together. She wants to basically have permission to monkey-branch or have a hall pass. That’s kind of like a perpetual hall pass or an extended hall pass, I guess.

Viewer Email:

Hi Coach,

Long-time listener and follower of your work. I’ve read 3% Man four to five times (I know I need to up those numbers, which I’ve been doing lately because of a dilemma I’m in).

Well, that’s how most guys are. It’s not until they’re in pain and things are going sideways, they’re going, “Yeah, I probably should get back to the book.”

This is why I say read the book 10 to 15 times. Then maybe twice a year, every six months, you go back through it just to keep the information fresh, because if you’re constantly consuming TV shows, movies and traditional media, you’re in essence re-brainwashing yourself in ways that are the opposite of what’s innate and natural that creates attraction. Slowly over time, it’ll put you back to sleep. A lot of guys don’t recognize that’s happened until, like in this case, she’s like, “Hey, how about an open relationship?”

It’s a good email to learn from because this is what I typically see in long-term relationships. Guys do the same things. They stop dating and courting the woman, usually because they’re trying to save money or save up for something some big expense, a down payment on a house or whatever. The other thing is, they don’t make her feel heard and understood, so the courtship stops. They stop dating and courting her, and then they don’t take the time to open her up, make her feel heard and understood. Things are mediocre for a period of time, and it’s not until the woman starts saying she wants to leave, she wants to move out, she wants a break, those kinds of things, that the guy actually starts paying attention to the things that she says. I often hear guys go, “Well, I didn’t think she was serious. I didn’t think she meant that. I thought we were just going through a rough patch.”

So you got to pay attention to what your woman says. If she says things that you’re not sure what they really mean, I was doing a phone session with a guy last night, and his girl just kept saying things to him, and he would just, “Whatever that means,” you know. That was his attitude towards it. He didn’t say, “Well, what do you mean?” He didn’t dig deeper. So she’s communicating things that she needs or things that she wants in a relationship, and he’s not taking the time to really understand her and ask a good quality question. Then nine times out of 10, he does the wrong thing and he just makes the situation worse.

Women help you when they like you, and if they say things that don’t make sense, don’t assume. Just say, “What do you mean? I don’t understand where you’re coming from.” Make her tell you specifically and explicitly what she wants and what she needs, because if you just keep sweeping things under the rug, eventually you’re going to end up with a big lump under the rug, and then your girl’s going to be like, “Hey, how about an open relationship?”

I’ve been with my partner for 4.5 years, and for the most part, it’s been a loving and fulfilling relationship. About two years in, I stopped revisiting your book and gradually slipped back into old habits, which have caught up with me this past year.

So he was good for about two years and he just kind of went back to sleep. And it’s been many years since he’s been through the book. And so for the most part, he’s probably forgotten it because whatever you observe, you participate in. And so if he’s only consuming traditional media, he’s consuming dysfunctional archetypes, and you get emotionally anchored based on the soundtrack, the emotions at the scene or the show elicits. And next thing you know, your girl wants an open relationship.

The main turning point came earlier this year when my partner brought up wanting to live overseas and possibly do a long-distance relationship. I told her I wasn’t into long distance but suggested we could see if an overseas trip together was possible later on. I hadn’t been able to give a definite date because of work commitments. I’ve had to stay local but could possibly move overseas for a shorter time late next year.

As the year went on, resentment grew. I started working longer hours to save for a house deposit, which created more distance.

Again, I just see this over and over again. Women want to be in a love story. If you don’t date and court your girlfriend or your wife, eventually somebody else will. One of the most famous recent ones is Tom Brady. They presented an image to the world that they had a great marriage, great family, and come to find out, he wasn’t present, wasn’t around. He was more focused on football. He didn’t date and court his wife anymore. So the jiu-jitsu guy did it for him and knocked her up. Now they have a kid together and they’re living happily ever after.

So despite the fact that Tom’s incredibly good looking, he’s charming, he’s very wealthy, very successful, he’s the absolute goat, he didn’t date and court his wife and eventually some other dude came along and did it for him. These are things that if you’re going to be in a long-term relationship, you just have to do. You have to be disciplined. As Jocko Willink says, “Discipline equals freedom.”

A few months ago, she revisited the overseas topic, and I told her she should feel free to go if she wanted, and we’d figure out seeing each other if possible. Fast forward to last month, an opportunity came up and we had decided to move in together, but since then, I’ve shown some controlling behavior and failed some of her tests.

Last week, she brought up three main issues: Her communication needs not being met, my controlling behavior, and sexual intimacy issues.

Well, that’s another thing in a long-term relationship. You got to lay the pipe. Healthy, statistically good relationships, the man’s laying the pipe two or three times a week. A lot of guys in long-term relationships, they stop dating, courting her or trying to save money. Then after they’ve been together for a couple years, they’re having sex maybe twice a month, usually what happens is the guy works up the urge to merge because he wants to release, and then he’s good for a couple of weeks. Then when he wants to get his freak on, same thing. Then the woman starts to realize that he only wants to have sex when he wants to release. Other than that, he just completely neglects her. When a woman recognizes that’s what’s going on, then the legs close.

If you’re following what’s in the book, your girl’s going to want your attention all the fucking time, to the point where she’s annoying and she will be stuck to you like a sucker-fish. You gotta deliver even when you don’t want to have sex and she wants to. You gotta lay the pipe. Just remember, two to three times a week, statistically, is where the sweet spot is. You got to maintain that intimacy even when you don’t feel like it. There’s going to be times as a man where your girl’s going to want to get her freak on, and you’re not going to feel like it, but you still gotta deliver. You gotta lay the pipe properly. Can’t just go, “Oh, I got a headache,” and then get mad when she does the same thing to you. So as long as the sex, the intimacy, the dating and the courting is happening and you’re beating up her pelvis properly anytime you want to get your freak on, you can just basically walk over to her, put your hands down her pants, and she’ll be ready to go.

If you get into the habit of where you only want it, when you want to release twice a month, eventually she’ll cut you off because she gets tired of getting neglected, or they’ll say things like, “We never do anything. You never take me anywhere,” and a guy goes, “Honey, you know we’re saving for a deposit for a house.” Then she just hears, “Well, nothing’s going to change because the house comes first.” Then eventually, the guy at work takes some time to listen to her complain about her life, her relationship, her boyfriend, or her husband’s neglecting her. Then they go to lunch. Then they’re going to drinks. Next thing you know, she’s having an affair or screwing the jiu-jitsu guy. That’s how it happens. You can’t neglect your woman.

She said she wanted solutions but said it would require both of us to work together. We met this weekend to discuss it. I told her I’d meet her communication needs better, stop the controlling behavior, and that I’d reached out to a psychologist to work on myself, not just for us but to be a better man. I also acknowledged the intimacy hasn’t been great but that it would improve over time (As I focus on courting and dating her again).

Yeah, if you guys don’t have kids, you should be having at least one date night a week. It’s absurd to be in a relationship, not have any kids, and then can’t find a time to even go out on one date night a month. Then you just want to Netflix and chill every night. That is boring. You want to dry a woman up, do the same thing every week.

She said she’s emotionally checked out and loves me as a person but feels we’re more like best friends and that doing something drastic like an open relationship could help.

Basically what she’s really saying is, “Well, you don’t seem to want sex and intimacy with me, so how about I go seek it somewhere else? Maybe things come back for us, maybe they don’t,” but at the end of the day, she wants to get her freak on and she’s tired that her man here is just not laying the pipe. He’s not doing his duty.

I told her, “Fair enough. I want you to be happy but an open relationship is something I’m not interested in. If the changes I’m committing to aren’t going to work, we can go our separate ways.”

So he’s drawn a line in the sand saying, “Yeah, I’m not down with an open relationship. We’re either together or you can go on down the road,” basically, which quite frankly, is the right thing to be doing because the worst thing you can do is go along with it when you don’t really want it, and then you might as well go and get yourself a cuck chair. It’s a bad way to go.

So if you want to stay together, you got to tell her that if she’s insisting on an open relationship, well then you get to insist that she go find somebody else to date and have a relationship with because you’re out.

The next day she said, “I want you to be my life partner. We have something special, but I’ve been taken for granted for too long.” She later brought up being sexually curious again and suggested testing an open relationship for when she goes overseas…

She’s really testing the shit out of him because probably she thinks he’s a little soft and a little squishy because he’s been so neglectful. She’s also basically trying to say, “Show me that you want me. Show me that you desire me. Show me that you want to stay in this relationship with me,” because she’s basically saying she wants to go fuck other guys and he’s like, “Well, I’m going to get around to making a date one of these days. I’m going to get around to laying the pipe one of these days.” It’s like you just can’t sit there and act like a fucking statue and make a bunch of Kentucky guarantees. When she’s complaining about these things, make a date, go hang out, have fun, and then hook up and lay the pipe later on, dude. The sex comes at the end of the date. Those are the basics.

What you do to get a woman is what you do to keep her. If you haven’t been dating and courting her, well you need to go on a date at least this week. It needs to immediately happen. You need to change now. Not like, “Oh, I’ll get around to it in a few weeks. I got a few things I gotta get out of the way,” that shit. That dog won’t hunt. You better fucking pull your head out of your butt and start dating and courting your girl because she’s trying to tap out. That’s why she keeps bringing it up, because probably nothing changes. You make promises and guarantees and you say you’re going to address it, but at the end of the day, days and weeks are going by and not much has changed.

…But said “nothing physical” will happen (Whatever that means).

So again, if she goes, “Oh, nothing physical is going to happen” and you’re going, “What?” You should say, “What do you mean nothing physical is going to happen? You want an open relationship? You want to date other people, but nothing physical is going to happen unless you change your mind, then you tell me after the fact? I’m not down for that.”

Again, you gotta ask good quality questions. The quality of your relationship is in direct proportion to the quality of the questions that you consistently ask each other. When your girl says things and you’re like, what do you need to tell her? It’s like, “I don’t understand where you’re coming from. What do you mean?” Make her specifically and explicitly explain where she’s coming from and why she said the thing that made you go, “What?”

I told her I value our relationship and only want to share that intimacy between us.

She said she’d stay to see if I change and if moving in would work (Almost like a test run) but hinted at wanting an open relationship when she moves overseas or suggesting we either break up before she leaves and we reconnect when she’s back.

You want to stay together, you say, “Again, I’m not going to do an open relationship. If you leave and you want to date and sleep with other people, then I’m not going to be here waiting for you. When you come back, I’m going to move on with my life and you’re going to do the same. I’m not going to do a long-distance relationship while you go sow your oats in another country. I’ve committed to make the changes to you, and you need to commit to make the effort, to make our relationship work. Not be tapping out, looking for the exits.”

I told her I wouldn’t be open to an open relationship in any situation but that I’d be open to reconnecting when she got back if that was something we decided to do. I reiterated that we should see how we go for now and make a decision of how future closer to before she leaves. 

Apologies for the long message, but I’d love your guidance on this, Coach.

Bob

Well, you got to start dating and courting her, because it’s pretty obvious from the mindset of your girlfriend that she doesn’t think you’re up for it. She thinks you’re just going to bullshit her and blow sunshine up her ass like you’ve probably been doing for years and not change anything. That’s why she keeps bringing it up, because she doesn’t believe you. That tells me she doesn’t trust your masculine core, and the reason she doesn’t trust your masculine core is because you continually say one thing and then you do another.

So if you’re serious about fixing it, well there should be a date night plan this week and next week. There should also be a date night that happens. You should be going on at least one date night a week, and that’s up to you to make that happen. Hang out, have fun and hook up. Beat up her pelvis. If you rock out with your cock out in the bedroom with your girl and you give her lots of happy finishes, she’s not going to be getting up every day unsatisfied. If you don’t want to do that, then it’d be better just to break up with her, let her go, and then you can go find a woman that you that actually makes your dick hard and that you want to hook up with, because it looks like you lost interest and attraction for your girl, and you just totally checked out, and she’s just she’s ready to dip, but she’s also open to giving you another chance.

Like I said earlier, you better pull your head out of your ass and take this seriously because you’re on the verge of losing your girl because you checked out, you’re not making the effort. On top of that, it looks like you’re just giving her excuses. It’s clear, like I said, her mindset is that she doesn’t believe you. She doesn’t think you’re going to do what you say you’re going to do. So if you make all these promises about communicating better, dating her, intimacy and all that, then two weeks from now nothing’s changed, no dates have happened, you haven’t beat up her pelvis, well then you’re just going to get closer and closer, and then eventually she’s just going to leave you and it’ll be totally over. You got to date and court your girl. You got to seduce her, because if you don’t, you’ll end up like Tom Brady.

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