Why A Man’s Failure To Lead Results In A Failure To Attract Her

The importance of men leading the romance to avoid turning women off and losing attraction.

In this video coaching newsletter I discuss an email from a viewer who was a recent coaching client. He was difficult to work with because he had a real hard time listening to what I was trying to explain because he was so focused on replying. His now ex often complained that he didn’t listen. I told him to send a list of questions I would answer in a video newsletter to ensure all questions were answered.

The woman he was dating lost attraction for him due to a failure to lead the romance. She said she only had platonic feelings for him after only a few weeks earlier trying to win his approval to consider her for a marriage prospect. His biggest problem is he only read the book once years ago and simply is flying blind because he has no idea what he is doing or should do to turn her on. He often acts more like a robot. He’s doing more to turn her off than on. My comments are in bold italics like this below in the body of his email.

This particular email is from a phone session client that I had last week. A couple times a year, I get clients that are very difficult, and like this guy was extremely difficult to talk to because a big part of his problem was he was not a very good listener.

In doing the work that I do, sometimes when I see that, when I see clients like this, where you they ask you a question, you start explaining something, and then you start giving uncomfortable truths, oftentimes what will happen is they’ll start talking and then talk over you and raise their voice to try to drown you out, and it’s basically the equivalent of somebody putting their fingers in their ears and go, “La-la-la-la, I’m not listening,” because they don’t want to hear deep down, especially if it’s something that they were doing wrong or it’s unpleasant or something that maybe they have insecurities with.

As a coach, my job is to give people the unvarnished truth. A harsh dose of reality, because that’s what they need and that’s what people pay me for. They pay me to be honest and give them the unvarnished truth. So a lot of this phone session, this guy was just constantly talking over me, interrupting me, asking me the same question over and over, and I kept answering it. I would get ten words out of my mouth and then he’d be interrupting me and talking over me and trying to drown me out. So it’s very hard for me to get my message through when I’m constantly interrupted by somebody.

What’s interesting is his now ex that he was dating said he was a terrible listener and didn’t listen. So I can understand her frustration because as a coach, it was hard. This guy just could not sit still and listen to what I was saying, because a lot of it was just uncomfortable stuff that he didn’t want to hear.

He came across my work years ago and read 3% Man one time and then in the last year got involved dating this woman. I guess they were only dating for a few months. He actually lives in Israel and the girl he’s dating is in Israel, so they’re Jews. He’s more, I would say, more conservative and more religious than she is. They’re both divorced. As he explained the situation in his interactions with her, basically when she broke up, she said that it just felt like she was hanging out with a friend. So a big part of his problem was that he failed to lead the interactions.

He had a death in his family, I think his parents or one or both of his parents had died in the past year. Part of the Jewish religion is that, especially for the ultra-Orthodox Jews, as I was talking to my resident Jewish expert, Erica, and asking her about this, and what she was saying is that, this guy mentioned, during the 12 months after a parent or somebody really close to you dies, you’re supposed to go to the synagogue and pray with ten other Jews. You do morning prayers, you do prayers around lunchtime and then prayers at sundown. So three times a day for literally every day for a whole year, you got to be praying. So you can imagine the logistics of that can be really difficult.

On top of that, this guy is about an hour, hour and a half bus ride from where this woman that he’s seeing happens to be. So he’s got the additional logistics of some long distance, to throw in a monkey wrench into this. What he was doing was he would show up, and because of the prayers and things he’s got to do, he ends up having this girl trying to figure out where to take him so he can get his prayers done.

For those of you that are familiar with 3% Man, it’s the man’s job to lead. Even if this guy is going to drive an hour and a half on a bus ride, he should know where he’s going to go to pray, what time he’s going to pray and what time he’s going to be done. He should be arranging the dinner reservations or whatever kind of functions or activities they’re going to do together.

What’s happening is he’s showing up. He’s like, “I got to pray. Where do we go?” So she ends up basically, a lot of ways, he’s made her his mommy, so he’s failed to lead the romance. You can’t show up for a date, like on one of the dates, he showed up like four hours late. He was in constant contact with her, but he was just totally disorganized. You know, he’s just not an organized, disciplined person. The number one most important thing that women find attractive in men is confidence. Men are supposed to be direct, decisive, get to the point, be the leader. Lead the woman to where he ultimately wants to take her.

In this case, if you’re very religious, you’re not going to be having sex until probably your wedding night, in most cases. So if he’s constantly hanging out and showing up for dates and then being disorganized, not knowing where he’s going to go to pray, not having the dinner date plans all made, it’s like he’s showing up and basically turns her into his mommy. So instead of him leading the relationship, he’s making her lead the relationship and making her be the man.

Even though he said she did almost 100% of the pursuing, it’s like you can’t show up for a date four hours late or showing up and then your prayers and things get in the way of that. Then instead of hanging out and having fun together, then it just becomes her driving you around town so you can do your religious obligations. It’s like, where’s the fun in that? Where’s the excitement? Where’s the leadership from his perspective in that?

So after the call, right at the very end, he’s like, “Hey, I got about 10 questions,” or whatever. It’s like, “Would have been good if you had told me at the beginning of the call we had those.” So I said, “Send them in and I’ll make a video newsletter out of it.” So these are the questions that he has sent in, so I’m going to go through them.

Just a couple of things. He was constantly basically displaying incompetence as a man, his inability to lead. One thing he does have going for him, he’s got a great sense of humor. He shared some of their text exchanges and the banter. He’s a pretty funny guy, so he’s got that going for him. So he can be very charming, very playful and very fun, but when he was explaining their interactions, just because he shows up for the dates, he’s long distance, he’s totally disorganized, it’s really unattractive behavior.

What was interesting is when he first started dating her, he was like, “I’m not sure if our values really align,” because again, as I was saying earlier, he’s a little more strict in his religious views than she is. So at the time, she had the attitude of she’s trying to get his attention and validation. She’s trying to prove to him why he should give her a chance to show him that she can be the kind of woman that he’s looking for, but as the weeks went by and he continued to show up for dates and be disorganized and not knowing where to pray and basically turning her into his mommy and the leader in the relationship, she just obviously lost attraction.

The other big thing that’s really working against him is I could tell talking to him, because he only read the book once years ago, he has no idea how attraction works. There’s so many things, little things he’s doing and saying. I kept imploring him. I was like, “Man, you’ve got to read the book 10-15 times. The time that you’re away from her right now, you should be filling in your knowledge gap, so if she does reach back out, she’s going to get a much better, much more attractive and prepared version of you. If you don’t take the time and then she does show back up, you’re going to make the same exact mistakes and you’re going to turn off for the same exact reasons. If you don’t get it right with her, you’re going to make the same mistakes with the next girl.”

If he’s driving an hour and a half away, he should have it done to where maybe he gets into her city right before lunchtime prayers or whatever. Or maybe he goes right from his city straight to where he’s going to pray, does his prayers, and then meets up with her maybe after the evening prayers and then does things in the evening, so his religious obligations are not an issue for their date. You want to have your time with your girl to be the escape from her boring, mundane, dull, regular life. I mean, all of us have lives at times get boring or whatever, and if you’re going to show up, you want to be the fun escape that she looks forward to.

If you’re constantly coming to town and then she’s driving around for your prayers and you don’t know where to eat because you didn’t take the time to use Google Maps or figure out fun things to do, any woman is going to lose attraction for you. You just can’t show up for a date totally unprepared like that.

If I was him, I would be making, maybe for the evening prayers, he drives, takes the bus, gets there right before the evening prayers or the sundown prayers begin. He does that. Then afterwards, he’s free to meet up and enjoy his evening with her in the city. He should probably stay over in the city somewhere, get a hotel or something. Or maybe he stays at her place.

It just depends, because again, you’ve got very fairly religious people here. So it’s not like normal guys in the West where you sleep at her place, she sleeps at yours. So you’ve got the additional for you guys that are ultra religious. These are some of the logistics that get in the way of that fun and things just flowing.

Viewer’s Email:

Hey Coach,

Does a woman that’s a giver mean her love language is acts of service or it shouldn’t matter?

Well, what I talk about in the book, 3% Man, being a giver is that there are some people, and we all know people like this, you’ll do something nice for them and then they do like ten things nice for you in return. Then there’s other people that you’ll do ten nice things for and they won’t even do one nice thing for you. When you give to a giver, the giver tends to give back. When you give to a taker, the takers just basically suck, because they don’t give. So when I say that a woman is a giver, does that mean she’s affectionate? Does she do nice things for you? Does she buy little gifts, or does she buy you pants or t-shirts?

I had a girlfriend one time buy me new sheets, a comforter, pillows and things for my bedroom set just because she loved me and wanted to decorate the room that she, quite frankly, spent a lot of time in. That’s what women do. Women that are givers are good for you. They’ll make you dinner. They’ll do nice things for you, but selfish women that are not are just takers and they won’t ever do anything for you, even when you do things for them you ask, because it’s not their nature.

I have difficulty making conversation and I find it only goes with about 10% or 20% women… I used to think I need a woman that likes to talk, but I’m thinking it has more to do with an elevated attraction level and most women like to talk?

Yeah, on a daily basis, the average woman tends to say about 8,000 words and guys tend to say about 2,000 words. I can relate because I’m more of an introverted type of guy. All of the girlfriends I wrote about in 3% Man and throughout my life, the women I’ve connected most with and even my closest friends are all very talkative, very outgoing, and I’m more of a guy that likes to listen, analyze things, take it in and then give my opinion.

Even though I talk for a living, it’s a skill of mine that I’ve developed. I liked being social. When I was a kid in high school, I really liked going to parties, socialize and hanging out, but I was always a good listener. All my closest friends and girlfriends over the course of my life, one of the things they always liked about me is I was always a good listener. If they wanted to say something to me, I was always happy to sit there and listen.

If a woman has a lot of patience, does that have more to do with attraction level than personality, especially if she is a punctual and organized woman?

So the reality is, what’s super important is that if you think a girl is really attractive, she’s beautiful and then you start talking to her, getting to know her, and then conversing with her is like pulling teeth, or maybe she’s boring or doesn’t have much to say or much going on, yeah, it’s definitely partly due to interest, but it’s also partly due to her personality.

Women that really like you are going to make the effort to talk and open up, and when you ask them questions you’ll get more than one word answers, especially when you ask them an open ended question, “Tell me, what things do you love to do for fun?” “Oh, I like to surf.” “Really? What do you like about surfing?” “Oh, I like the waves and the sun.” Versus, “What do you love to do for fun?” “Oh, I love to surf and be at the beach. I just love the sun. I love the water. I love to snorkel. I love diving. I love boating. It’s just so much fun. I had a boat growing up.”

The first response, you’re getting very short answers. It’s like trying to carry on a conversation with somebody, it’s like you might as well talk to a lampshade. So it’s important, especially if you’re doing online dating, is that you want to at least talk to the girl to see if the conversation flows because if it doesn’t flow on the phone, you’re absolutely wasting your time and your money meeting up with her in person. So you want somebody that has enthusiasm for you also. She’s excited to talk to you. She’s excited to get to know you.

These are basic things that are covered in 3% Man, so you know what to look for. So you can tell when a woman is interested and when she’s not so you don’t waste your time and money, because there’s plenty of women that are happy to go out, have you take them to a nice, expensive dinner, fill their bellies and then you get a nice little peck on the cheek, and they had no intention of ever dating you, kissing you or sleeping with you.

I’ve had plenty of women friends over the years that I’ve talked to, I got to know them, I know well, and they laugh about it. You just ask them a simple question. “Have you ever gone out on a date with a guy that you had no intention of sleeping with and no interest in kissing?” Most of them will laugh, giggle and say yes. It’s just a fact of life.

In other words, women will go out with a guy, even when there’s no chance he’s going to sleep with her. That’s why it’s important that you know how to properly vet the girls you date. Make sure there’s enthusiasm, that she’s excited to see you and spend time with you. Again, these things are covered in the book.

How do I turn around something when she complained I didn’t reach out enough (and I never listened) but her attraction was also lowered? When she says we’re drifting apart? She feels like I’m a friend?

Well, like I was saying earlier, and I tried to explain as many times on our phone session, was that the reason she said she felt like you were just a friend is that you’re not leading, you’re not showing up with confidence. You don’t know where to go do your prayers. You don’t know where to go to eat. You don’t know where to go to have fun. You know, there’s a whole process. The book covers pick-up skills and then transitioning from pick-up into dating and then from dating into relationships.

There is a process, and you can’t rush that. Instead of her attraction going up over time, her attraction was moderately interested in you, and then it just had a slow decline because of your failure to lead, make the dates fun and know what you’re doing. A lot of it was she’s chauffeuring you around town so you can get to your prayers. If I remember right, in some cases, after that it’s like they do one activity and then he’s on an hour and a half bus ride to go back home. So there’s really not much time together for intimacy and warmth in a caring to develop. So if he’s not reaching out enough and he’s not leading the date, if she’s doing all the pursuing, but when they go out on the date, he’s not acting like a man, she’s going to quickly lose attraction.

Having a woman do all the pursuing, it’s not going to solve every problem you have. If you get around her and you let her do all the pursuing, but your behavior, your demeanor is one of a lack of leadership, everything you’re doing is going to be continually displaying that you are incompetent as a man and you don’t know how to lead, and you’re used to letting women lead in the family.

Women don’t want to be the boss. They don’t want to teach you how to be a man, and that’s part of the problem. She says, “We’re drifting apart.” What she’s really saying is, “My attraction level for you is continuing to drop when I know you’re a good guy and it should be going up, but my feelings are going down.”

Most women, quite frankly, don’t understand why that is. They just know that their feelings, instead of getting stronger, are getting weaker and more platonic.

They can say, “Oh, you’re not calling me enough.” The problem is that, when you’re in person, the most important thing is, I talk about this, and these are the two big reasons why long term relationships don’t work out or they have problems: The first one is the guy doesn’t date or court her properly, because the courtship never ends. Women know that if you care, you continue to date and court them. When you don’t, you don’t give a shit. You don’t do any of those things.

The second one is that when a woman feels heard and understood, the legs open and when she doesn’t, the legs close. So when they’re getting together on their dates and he’s constantly talking over her, just like he was doing to me throughout most of the phone session, she’s going to get extremely frustrated and get to the point where it’s like, “This guy’s clueless. He just doesn’t listen. He doesn’t get it.” So every time they get together, instead of her feeling heard, understood and validated, all it feels is that they’re drifting further apart. In other words, she’s losing interest in attraction and desire to spend more time with him.

At what point do I reach out more, when she is already pursuing me 100%? When she says she wants me to reach out (Or do something), do I do it right away and then the next time make it spontaneous?

This is part of the problem with only reading the book once years ago, is that now you’re trying to copy and paste things that you’re hearing in videos because this guy is lazy and he’s trying to cherry pick. Plus some things he vaguely remembers from the book.

So what happens is you’re all in your head and you end up coming off like a robot. The point being is if a woman gets to the point where she’s complaining multiple times that you never reach out, what she’s really trying to say is that you’re just not making her feel like you care. In other words, you’re not sending her a card every once in a while. “Hey, thinking of you. Have a great day.” Or sending her a text or Snapchat, an email, a meme or whatever. Just reaching out randomly when all the conversation threads are closed. Meaning she’s not waiting to hear back from you and you’re not waiting to hear back from her.

Just reaching out maybe once a week in an unusual way and an unexpected way in a time and in a day where she’s not expecting to hear from you and you just do something sweet to let her know that you’re thinking about her. That’s all she’s trying to say. It’s not like, “Let me be a robot. Do I do it Wednesday at 3 p.m. and then next Saturday at 8:53 p.m.?” That’s just not going to work, bro. Hope you guys enjoyed the robot impersonation.

How do you tell the difference if she wants space or you need to open her up?

Well, if she’s not looking like she’s having fun, she’s kind of quiet and normally she’s very bubbly, outgoing and talkative, you’re going to say, “Babe, what’s up? You seem a little quiet today. Usually you’re not one for to be at a loss for words.” It’s like, “What’s going on? Talk to me.” “Oh, you don’t care?” He’s like, “Yes, I do. That’s why I’m asking babe. Tell me what’s on your mind.”

So if she’s not a happy, bubbly self and she’s kind of cold and distant, you’ve got to call her out on you can say, “What’s wrong? You seem upset. Something’s bothering you.” Maybe it has nothing to do with you. Maybe it’s something else going on in her life. If you notice, her demeanor is different and you don’t ask, what that communicates is you don’t give a shit. If you do that enough, she’s going to lose interest. She’s going to lose attraction.

Do you do it when you’re just dating too or maybe somehow I was clueless and it was a relationship?

Again, like I said in the earlier question, women tend to say about 8,000 words a day and men say about 2,000. Women are just natural talkers. They talk and they solve their problems by talking about them. Your job is to facilitate that. Take in a sincere, authentic interest in her life and what’s going on. How’s her work? How’s her family? What did she do for fun the past weekend that you weren’t together or whatever? If you care, you want to know those things, and if you don’t and you never ask them. It’s just part of being a human.

His part is he’s always talking and not really doing much listening. If he talks to her like he was talking to me, he’s talking over her, she’s talking, he interrupts her and he just keeps talking, he’s not a good listener. If she’s trying to explain something that she’s upset about, he probably gets butt-hurt. Again, it’s like the fingers in the ears and, “I’m not listening.”

That’s basically what you communicate, and eventually she starts to feel like, “This guy doesn’t give a shit about me. He doesn’t care what I have to say. He’s always talking.” So she doesn’t feel heard and understood, and she eventually gets to the point where she doesn’t feel like you have the capability to make her feel heard and understood.

Can a woman do something you find important consistently out of love?

Yes. A woman who loves you and cares about you, most importantly, who is a giver will do the things that are important for you. If she doesn’t care and she’s not a giver, even if you tell her that you want these things and they’re important to you, she just won’t do it. So there’s a big difference. It’s important to date a woman that’s a giver and she’s nice to you and does nice things for you.

If she said she would do it before but now I said I would accept what she was wanted to do, would doing it out of love still apply?

I don’t really understand what that question means. The point being is if she’s a giver and things are important to you, you ask her to do it and she cares about you, she’ll do them. Even if she cares about you, but she’s not a giver, she just won’t do them because it’s not her nature. Part of the vetting process.

How do I do the 7 Principles To Get An Ex Back if she contacts me when I’m an ocean away?

Typically, since she ended it, she has to fix it. For this guy, it seemed like most of the time he was always driving to her or they were kind of meeting somewhere in the middle. Well, if she reaches out, your mindset should be, just like 7 Principles To Get An Ex Back talks about, is that you’re willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. You’re willing to give her another chance to win you over. Yet remember, she’s the one that unilaterally ended things and said she wasn’t feeling it and that you only elicited feelings of platonic friendship in her. So you have to let her come to you.

What I would do is, at least for the next three days, have her take the hour and a half bus ride to your city so you can hang out there and maybe you figure out something, some kind of arrangements where she can stay in your city instead of just trying to do it all in one day. Because again, you got your three times a day prayers to worry about.

If a girl has guy friends how would you convey you don’t think it’s appropriate in a marriage?

I’ve done a lot of questions on myself and with the girls on the podcast. We had that question a lot. Here’s the reality: A lady, a woman who’s married and who values her marriage or her live-in boyfriend or whatever happens to be, if she’s in an exclusive monogamous relationship and she cares about that relationship and cares about her man, she’s going to understand.

If she doesn’t, the man will teach her that the true nature of men is that most guys are not going to care that she’s married, in a relationship or living with their boyfriend, whether it’s a co-worker or a male orbiter or the guy that’s just a friend or whatever, those guys are going to try to go out one-on-one on dinner dates, lunch dates or happy hour and meet the woman one-on-one.

If a guy goes on a dinner date with a married woman or a woman that’s in a relationship, he’s thinking that since she said yes and is on the date in the evening that he’s got a chance to get in her pants. That’s reality. That’s why women who are ladies understand it’s not necessarily that she’s going to do something wrong, but it’s that a man who’s asking a married woman or a woman in a relationship out in the evening for a date, a dinner date, it’s not appropriate. A lady doesn’t do that.

I’m not going to call my closest friends and ask to hang out with their wives at dinner, just me and their wives, even though we may have known each other since we were in high school for 40 years. It’s not appropriate, because that would look bad. Anybody thinks, “Oh yeah, my wife went out with one of my close friends. We all went to high school together and they went to dinner and happy hour and stayed out till 2 a.m.,” but you let your wife go out on a date? That doesn’t sound right. The lady’s just not going to put herself in that position.

If she goes out and does things with guys that are there or guys that have interests, it’s going to be in a group date with other co-workers, or maybe it’s a happy hour or there is a dinner function to go to, or a trade show or whatever. When the rest of the girls leave, she’s going to leave. She’s not going to hang out one-on-one with a dude, just because men are not going to stay friends with a pretty girl that’s in a relationship because they want to be pals, typically.

Now, maybe you knew each other your whole lives, but the reality is, there’s going to be some level of respect. If the guy has integrity, what I do with my married friends who I know their wives because we grew up together is that when I text them things, whether it’s birthdays or Mother’s or Father’s Day or whatever happens to be, I text them both in a group text, because that’s the right thing to do.

Women who understand this and especially younger girls, you might have to explain this to, if they respect your authority, they’ll listen to you. If they don’t, they won’t. If a woman continually wants to go out one-on-one with men that are not her boyfriend or husband or a male family member, then that’s not a good sign. Women that are constantly giving out their phone numbers to men even though they’re in relationship, “Oh, we’re just friends. I need new friends, more friends. I like making friends.” No, it’s not appropriate, because those guys don’t want to be just friends. They want to get in her pants. That’s just the reality, so don’t do it.

If I can’t have a conversation Doc Love says just to ask for her number?

So in other words, if you meet a girl, you’re really just nervous and you’re overwhelmed, you just say something quick like, “Hey, you seem like a nice girl. I’d really like to chat some more. Let me get your number and I’ll call you later this week, early next week or whatever when I get some time. What’s good for you?” As you hand her your phone. Then you say, “Hey, have a great day.” That’s it. Then you can calm down. Maybe you meditate or whatever before you call her and you have a phone call. If the call goes well for 10 or 15 minutes, you say, “Hey, we should get together for a drink sometime. Hey, we should get together for dinner. Hey, we should get together and hang out,” and make a date.

If you’re intimate in any way, do you reach out right away or the next day?

Well, I wouldn’t reach out at all, typically. If this is somebody you’ve been on just one or two dates with, she can call you too. She can text you too. If she stayed over at your house when she leaves, you’re going to say, “Call me later,” and she may do that. The book creates the conditions where the woman starts pursuing you in every way, not just through the phone.

The one thing this guy had going for him was the woman was doing all the pursuing through the phone and through texting, but when they got together, it’s like he was totally fumbling the football. In other words, instead of her becoming more interested in him, he did more talking her out of liking him.

If you’re chivalrous one time/the first time, does that mean you have to do it all the time?

Bob

Well, a man should always be a gentleman. 90% of the time he’s a charming James Bond and maybe 5%, 10% of the time he can be the naughty boy, but you’re always going to be chivalrous. You’re always going to open the door for women, old ladies, kids, families or whatever, because it’s just the gentlemanly thing to do. So you should always do those things.

So, if you’ve got a question or a challenge and you’d like to get my help, go to UnderstandingRelationships.com, click the Products tab at the top of your screen and book a coaching session with yours truly. Until next time, I will talk to you soon.