Why Getting Back Together Must Be Her Idea

Why getting back together must be her idea instead of pursuing after getting dumped.

In this video coaching newsletter I discuss an email from a 45-year-old viewer who has been following my work for about four years. He’s read 3% Man over 15 times. He’s been married for 21 years with two kids, a 14 and 19-year-old. They’ve been separated for four years by his choice. They have been co-parenting and both have had other serious relationships. They started hooking up again recently and she was hot for him again for about two months.

Now she has gone cold and won’t commit to any more romantic dates when he asks. He’s unsure of what to do now. My comments are in bold italics like this below in the body of his email.

This particular email is kind of an interesting one. This guy is 45 years old and has been following my work for about four years and he’s read 3% Man, he says over 15 times at this point. He’s been married for a total of 21 years with his wife, they got a 14 and a 19 year old kid together and they’ve been separated for four years, he says, according to his choice. As you see, as I go through this email, it kind of looks like it’s not really by his choice. Maybe it was initially, but they’ve been co-parenting. Both of them have had, he says, serious relationships with other people over the last four years. They’re still married, but they date other people. Basically, they’re not really together.

What’s interesting about this is a couple months ago, I guess were on a trip together, and his wife, I use that term loosely because it doesn’t seem like they’re getting divorced. They’re just kind of together as a family, but as far as their romantic lives, they each have their own relationships. Well, she basically came on to him, they started hooking up and for about two months they were hanging out, having fun and hooking up. So it sure looks like he’s got feelings and wants something more, but now she’s kind of backed off and their attraction is dropped, and now he’s trying to scratch his head because he doesn’t understand what the hell is going on. He says he doesn’t mind going back to them just co-parenting, but he’s kind of scratching his head wondering why she kind of went so cold.

So in a situation like this where the woman starts coming on to you and pursuing you, hanging out, having fun, hooking up, I mean, what’s innate, you guys that are familiar with 3% Man know that it’s innate for women to chase and to pursue. When you look at the older movies, the black and white movies from the 40s, 50s, some in the 60s, the women were always pursuing the men. They were always trying to chase after the most eligible bachelor and lock them down. So those of you that are familiar with 3% Man and have seen those patterns happen in your own life, it’s innate. So when you go against things that are innate, especially when you act in ways that the current movies and TV shows, which is the guy basically acts like a stalker and of course wins the woman over, chases her into his life. When you do that in your life, instead of watching it in the movies, instead of chasing her into your life, you chase her out of it. Where this guy is going wrong is that at some point, once he started to catch feelings, then he wanted to advance things a little further. Then as she backed off, he kept pursuing to where now they’re no longer hooking up. So he’s just kind of in limbo land going, “What the hell happened?” So it’s always better if the woman thinks that she likes you more than you like her.

Keep your hands off the keyboard! I got the puppies here, because if I let them roam around and they hear something in the hallway, they’re going to be barking, so we just kind of bear through it. We got two more videos to do, so you guys get a little view of my furry companions here.

So let’s go through his email.

Viewer Email:

Hi Coach,

I hope you’re doing well. I’m a 45-year-old who has been following your work for about four years. I did read your book about 15+ times and feel confident in my understanding of the fundamentals. I know I still need to work on my muscle memory.

I’ve been married for 21 years but we have been separated for the last four — My choice. We have two daughters, 14 and 19, and we’ve managed to co-parent effectively. Both of us have had serious relationships during the separation, and your, “Hang out, have fun and hook up,” approach has worked well for me.

Well, a man’s job is really to create an opportunity for sex to happen. As far as the relationships, bonding, connecting and becoming a family and all that stuff, that is the woman’s department. When the guy starts acting like a woman, then he’s going to have problems when he assumes the woman’s role and locking her down again. That’s what they show in current movies and TV shows, but when you look at the old school movies, it was always the women that were scheming and plotting, trying to lock the guys down.

So for those of you who have gone against what’s innate and hasn’t worked out too well, if you allow them to come to you at their pace, makes it pretty easy, because as it says in the book, your goal is to create an opportunity for sex to happen. Usually the second or third date is when most women sleep with a guy on average, and after that, within a day or two of the last time you saw each other, then she’s going to reach out. The guy starts the courtship off by just setting one date per week where he’s doing the reaching out. He kind of starts the ball rolling, and as her interest goes up, she kind of starts to take that over and start doing the pursuing. At that point, you can just slowly back off and most women will let you get away with them doing 95% to 100% of the pursuing. So when that happens, when she starts to pursue, if the guy doesn’t start to back off a little bit, then it actually becomes counterproductive for him to keep reaching out. It gets in the way of her falling in love and emotionally bonding with him because again, he basically starts to assume the woman’s role, which is unattractive.

Several months ago, during a joint family trip, my wife surprised me in my hotel bed with some very passionate indoor Olympics. She expressed that she still loved me and for the next two months she created several opportunities for sex to happen. 

Well, if she’s doing that, you should have kept letting her do that because it was her idea at the time. That’s why it was so easy and so effortless, then typically, what happens is your feelings become engaged and then you start pursuing her.

About two months after that first encounter her interest seemed to go from a nine or 10 to a five or below almost overnight.

Yeah, because you changed once you started caring and probably started focusing on a relationship, getting back together and being a full family again, she started to back off, kind of because women are like cats. That’s what they do. Instead of just letting her be, you didn’t. You thought something was wrong and then you started to pursue. You started to try to make make things happen or try to force yourself into her life.

While we’ve managed to hang out and have fun a few times since, there has been no hooking up, and now she regularly leaves my DMs on read…

So what does that tell us? He started pursuing at some point and that’s where he went wrong. It’s counterintuitive. What happened is he starts liking her again, thinking, “Oh, now I can advance and we’ll spend more time together.” It worked at first, but as he started to pursue again, she started to back off and then she went completely cold.

This is what happens when you don’t understand how women are like cats. They kind of come and go. They get a little cold. You just let them be. In this case, she’s the one that had initiated the courtship and where he made a mistake was thinking he was going to advance the ball when she started doing that, and all he ended up doing was chasing her out of his life and he doesn’t recognize it because he’s blinded by his emotions and his interest in her.

…And skips past anything not related to the kids unless she needs something.

We recently spent the day together having fun and lots of laughs — Winery, axe throwing, dancing. It was about the last call when the mood shifted. Without me asking, she revealed even though her ex was a “terrible person” she would take him back and that they enjoyed sex multiple times a day.

It’s a scientific fact that women are more attracted to men whose feelings are unclear. So maybe she was on a rebound because the ex dumped her. Then again, his mistake was he started pursuing her because again, if you’re sending DMs and she’s leaving them on read and she’s ignoring your date requests, it should have never happened. You should have just let her do all the calling, texting and pursuing and then making dates when she does reach out. If she just ignores it, you don’t do anything until she contacts you again. If you do it two times in a row and she doesn’t bring it up or won’t commit to anything or leaves you on read, then you don’t bring it up anymore and then you’re kind of following the 7 Principles To Get An Ex Back script at that point. So it looks like his ex-wife was kind of on the rebound because she had a breakup with her last boyfriend, and he happened to be single at the time. So it’s like proximity. She started hanging out, having fun and hooking up. Then when he became focused on a relationship and locking her down, then he noticed she started to back off at one point, he thought it was a good idea to start pursuing. He probably looked at what was in the book and fell back to the once a week rule, but here you’re no longer together. Like I said, even though he claims it was his idea to end things when I read this email, does it sound like somebody who ended things? It kind of sounds like the dude’s been holding on and waiting for another shot with her, and he only begrudgingly went and dated other people.

There’s too much to fit into an email but she threw a bunch of barbs from our past and made it known that she had been going out of her way to not hook up with me.  In retrospect, I can think of a lot of ways I could have responded, but in that moment I felt like I was in the matrix dodging bullets.

I’m really not sure if this was some sort of shit test or just an invitation to stop suggesting dates…

Well, that’s your problem. You’re ignoring her actions because you’ve become totally focused on your interest in her and you’re ignoring the fact that her interest has gone down, because what happened? At first, you were letting her come to you and you were hanging out, having fun and hooking up. That went on for about two months and you probably started thinking, “Oh wow, this is great. We’re going to get back together and be a family again,” and then you started pursuing her, then she started backing off and then you didn’t pay attention to the fact she was backing off, because then you probably became fearful and worried you were going to lose her. So the more you pursued, the less she pursued. Then it got to a point where she stopped making dates and stopped sleeping with you. Then you’re hanging out, trying to facilitate the get togethers and you’re getting rejected at that point. That’s the opposite of what the book teaches.

You got to let women come to you at their pace because again, the book teaches how you start the courtship off, but once the woman starts to pursuing, then from that point forward, you can pretty much see she’s going to do 95% to 100% of it. Sometimes what will happen is you’ll spend a lot of days together and a lot of hanging out, having fun and hooking up, then she’ll go a little cold and then you might not hear from her for a day or two or whatever. When that happens, you just got to let her be. Instead of letting her be and understanding that women are like cats and they sometimes get a little bored and want to go do something else.

I mean, Ocean here, I don’t know if you guys noticed a second ago I was sitting with them in my lap, kind of keeping them calm. Then she wanted to get up and take off, and she went and left. Rocky, the male, stayed here at my side. Then about two minutes later, what happened? She came back up and wanted to sit in the chair, and if I would have ignored her, she would have started whining. I mean, even the female dogs are like that. They kind of behave cat like, so when they want to go off and roam, you just let them roam. Rocky and I just stayed here and hung out because it’s just us dudes, right? And Ocean came back just like a kitty cat. Even though she’s a dog, she acts like a female kitty cat because she is a female. So when you kind of understand that you’re not bothered, for me it was like, “Oh OK well, this is actually kind of nice.” Now I don’t have to pet one of them. I get an extra hand free here because the goal is to try to keep them calm so they don’t start barking or whatever and being obnoxious. Plus they’re cute as hell. It’s like, who doesn’t love puppies? Who doesn’t love you guys? You guys are amazing! So there are a lot of fun. Man’s best friend. Even better than kitty cats.

Anyways, back to our regularly scheduled email. I hope you enjoyed the little diatribe about the puppies here.

…So she doesn’t have to ignore me or make up an excuse. 

It’s like he didn’t realize he doesn’t understand the cat analogy.

Reconnecting with her was great and effortless at first…

Yeah, you were letting her come to you and she was doing all the pursuing. Where you went wrong is you started pursuing her. Then in 7 Principles To Get An Ex Back, if you’re the one that’s been dumped and you got to let the women come to you at their pace. You don’t pursue even when she backs off because if this was just an ex that you weren’t living with or whatever, this was a girl you were dating and she kind of went cold on you, then what typically happens in those cases is you just let her be and then a couple days later, whereas like say you spent the whole weekend together and by Monday it almost seems like she’s bored and doesn’t want to be around, you might not hear from her for a couple of days. If you’ve gone the whole previous week where she’s reached out multiple times a day, then all of a sudden you don’t hear from her for three days, most guys kind of freak out when that happens.

If you noticed, Ocean just jumped up and she went to roam the neighborhood again. So it’d be interesting to see if she comes back while we’re still filming this.

So when that happens, you don’t get upset, you don’t go, “Hey, where are you at? What? Where’d you go? Why aren’t you paying attention to me?” You don’t go and chase after her, because if I was to go pick her up and put her back in the chair, she wouldn’t like that. She might be acting a little cranky and then she’ll get up again and leave. So that’s why you must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.

Well, look who’s back. Look who came back. Come on up! See how that works? She just came back. Oh, thank you! She just came back of her own accord. That’s just the way they are. Rocky didn’t get up and leave and go anywhere, but she did because she’s a chick. That’s just the way they are. So when that happens, you can’t become bothered. Feminine energy comes and goes. Masculine energy pretty much always stays at your side for the most part. So that’s what happened. If you notice, she left a couple of times, and like the last five minutes as I’ve been filming, she comes, she goes. That’s just the way women are. Guys that don’t understand that when she leaves, they’re like, “Oh, something’s wrong. I gotta fix that.” Like, no you don’t. There’s nothing to fix. It’s just feminine energy. It’s the beauty of it. You should be enchanted and amused by that and just let it happen. Now she’s licking my computer. Thanks a lot. Thanks for cleaning. I really needed that.

…But I’ve spent the last two months trying to figure out what happened to the woman who jumped my bones that first night. 

It’s like you chased after the kitty cat. That’s where you went wrong.

Maybe she was just kicking the tires.

What happened was she came back, and then when she backed off, you went chasing after her. Then you chased after her and gave her all the leverage and the power and communicated that you were way more into her than she was into you, because if I was to go and chase Ocean down each of the two times she left and then pick her back up, she’ll start squirming, she’ll be a little cranky and then she’ll want to squirm out of my arms and go run away. That’s just the way they are. You can’t be bothered, right? You can’t be bothered by that, can you baby? So that’s where you went wrong, is not understanding the cat analogy.

I was happy when we were just co-parents and I am OK going back to that.  I don’t feel like it’s appropriate for me to suggest any more dates and I feel that if she were to invite me out, I’d only be comfortable taking it as far as my front door.

Exactly! If she says, “Hey, let’s meet out. Let’s do this. Let’s do that.” I say, “Hey, why don’t you come over? It’s been a long week. Let’s just to hang at my place. If you don’t want to come over and do that, then give me a call in a couple of weeks and maybe I’ll be up for meeting you out.” Then you got to let women come to you at their pace. It’s nice to read the book, but if you’re not actually applying it, when the furry kitty cat acts like a furry kitty cat, you don’t freak out and chase, because that’s the wrong thing to do. You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free. So thank you Ocean, for the demonstration of feminine energy when I’m filming a video!

I am interested in your assessment here, Coach.

I believe I have followed 7 Principles To Get An Ex Back (Adjusting for the hotel incident)…

You didn’t back off. Dating is like tennis. I say it all the time.

…And I did give her the space to reach out to me first before setting dates, however that is complicated because we co-parent.

Meanwhile, because we never re-entered the “exclusive” territory, so there is another bus coming along in 15 minutes.

Thanks,

Bob

Your job is just to create the opportunity for sex to happen. So like Ocean leaves, I’m like, “Hey, baby.” I pick her up or she comes back, “Hey, baby.” I pick her up. If she leaves, it’s like, “See you later. You’ll be back.” Not even two minutes later, she’s back. After she went and roamed the living room and came back, said hello to Jade and she came back. That’s the way girls are. Don’t take it personally. It has nothing to do with you. Feminine energy is kind of chaos like that. She leaves, then she misses daddy and she comes back. That’s just how it works. It’s beautiful when you understand it. It makes it easy and effortless when you understand it, but when you violate the principles like this guy did, you experience pain. You have to let women come to you at their pace, and she came and went at her pace and here she is, even though she spent most of the video sitting on the chair with me, so she wasn’t gone very long. If you chase her, then she’s not going to feel safe with you and then it’s going to take her longer to come back. So you see how that works.

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 on any page, and book a coaching session with yours truly. Until next time, I will talk to you soon.