Girlfriend is a bit of an attention w**** problem

[Anonymous]

Greetings

I have been in a relationship with my girlfriend (she is 19) for over a year now. Now at the beginning she was a party girl. She would go out every friday with her friend to party in pubs etc, I did the exact same.
However as time went by she stopped doing it so frequently. Truth be told she stopped doing it at all. At some point she even made an argument that I am still going out (less frequently than before but still) and if she can stop partying for me why can't I do the same. However about 3 weeks ago she went to a party because some friend of hers asked her to, she told me everything about that evening. The thing is though she met a guy there and he started writing to her via Facebook. Now she didn't tell him that she has a bf , she clearly enjoyed the attention and wanted to drag it. At some point the guy made it crystal clear what his intentions were so she told him about me. The contact stopped.....for a while. Then all over sudden he invited her to the concert, she initially agreed but after talking to me (I made a big argument about it) she didn't go. Now for one thing I know she was testing me, because it never happened before. During this weekend though she went on a trip with her friends (female only), to chill out by the sea etc. Now yesterday I smsed with her and she was telling me how awesome it is etc. And also that she meets many people here (mainly guys I presume). One in particular wanted to stay for her while his friends were leaving in the morning. She told him to go back home though, but as she expressed he was very cool, he liked the same music she liked etc. Now the thing is even though I didn't express it via sms it totally pissed me off. And I am always irritated when she talks to some other guys via sms / facebook you name it. Telling me that he was cool also didn't make my day any better. Now she is going to tell me everything about the trip (including guys she met etc) on our next meeting - monday. Now I would like to ask you guys here, what do you think about this situation ? What should I do if my girlfirend is an attention wh*** and it totally pisses me off ? Should I treat her with her own medicine: go out flirt with some girls and tell her about it - that would make a WW III though but its very tempting at this point ? Now the fact is with her telling me everything that happened there and being rather honest (or am I just being naive ?) it might no be a big thing, however I do feel like I am getting the Whirlwind of chaos syndrome (about which Chase wrote in his article regarding going out with party girls) and I know its not good. Now am I overreacting ? Should I tell her/ make an argument about it ? What would you guys do in my situation ?

Regards
Skagi

 

[Rowen]

Skagi,

I don't think you're overreacting. Like you said, your girl is obviously pushing you to see how you'll react. I've experienced situations like this before, and I always use something that I found on the pick-up webs a few years back:

The Brad Pitt Rule.

Basically, whenever I run into a sticky situation where the girl is trying to throw me off balance, I think about how Brad Pitt would react. Usually, this results in me playing it a lot cooler than I normally would. As a result, the situation typically resolves itself.

If your girl was in a relationship with Brad Pitt, and started talking about other guys, do you think he would get mad and show his insecurity? No. He would laugh it off, knowing full well that there is no other man that she could get that would be better than him.

Also, I'm still learning from this site, but a thing I've come to realize is that whenever a girl is doing things that are making you feel insecure, its probably a reactionary response. In other words, she's acting out because she feels insecure about your feelings towards her and wants you to either notice she's upset or save herself from getting burned too bad.

So, before you say anything to your girl, I would look at the quality of the relationship. Are you still using all the tools that Chase and the team have written about in their relationship series? Have you locked down your fundamentals and made yourself into a sexy, masculine, dominant man? Are you treating her in a way that shows you appreciate her?

If you've done all that, then you can start thinking of some other options.

--Rowen

 

[Chase]

Skagi-

Sorry you're running into this; never any fun.

So, you've got a couple of options with this:

• Make it an open relationship. She's likely cheating, but you don't really know for sure, and she's going to keep telling you she isn't until she decides she wants to break up with you or you break into her devices or hire a private eye to follow her around and get incontrovertible evidence, and until then you're going to be yanking your hair out and going crazy. To set yourself free, if you're going to keep seeing her, just tell her it's now an open relationship so she can sleep with whoever she likes and you will sleep with whoever YOU like, and you'll both just be smart about protection and make sure neither of you is picking up anything you'll pass to the other. This is the sanest way to set up a relationship like this where you think she might be... but not, you don't want to think about it, surely she would never do that to YOU... but wait, now you're thinking about it again... just put it all off your plate and say you know what, you're going to do it, and I still want to see you, but I don't want to be obsessing about this, so let's just say it's okay for both of us to do it and neither of us worries about it anymore.

• Break up with her. She doesn't listen to you, repeatedly disrespects you, and either WILL cheat on you, or already IS or HAS, while you stay monogamous to her. Not a relationship most men want to be a part of, and assuming you're the same, exit out of it - the sooner the better, as the longer you let it drag out, the more of a drubbing your ego takes while you watch her out galavanting around with other men and wonder, "Is she or isn't she?" but never can really know.

Other "options" are to become a controlling jerk and try to lord over her life and prevent her from doing the things she wants to do, but she's either going to resent you and hate your guts and try to get back at you any chance she gets if you do that, or just accept it and change nothing and continue to suffer in silence while she goes and parties her heart out with strange men. I don't know I'd really consider those "options", though.

There's also the "option" of "Okay, if SHE is going to go party with other dudes without me and flirt with them and take trips with them and hookup(?) with them, I can do the SAME THING with girls!" but that will only sink your ego any more, because even if you're the world's finest seducer, a pretty girl can rack up more fresh new lays faster and more reliably than you can any day, so you'll quickly find yourself in a competition you stand a snowball's chance in hell of ever winning.

Think of it as priorities. You'd really like to date a girl who's monogamous to you and only you; she'd really like to party, club, get tons of attention from cute guys, and probably do the things you do with cute, sexy guys who are giving you tons of attention and making you feel good and plying you with drinks. It's a giant mismatch on what you want out of her (monogamy) vs. what she wants for herself (to party!!!!).

So those are your realistic options - make it an open relationship, or get out. Everything else with a woman like this who wants something very different for herself than what YOU want with her is misery, I assure you.

And next time, if you want to avoid this - don't date party girls!

Chase