You can’t force someone to love you. The progression of a romantic relationship cannot be forced.
It must evolve naturally over time.
Impatient, insecure, or damaged people try to force a relationship to develop quickly. However, these things are essentially on a pre-determined course.
The perfect example: those posts you see on Facebook where someone celebrates every month they’ve been in a relationship. There’s a major post for every 2-month, 4-month, 8-month anniversary.
By definition, you can only have an anniversary once a year.
They’re trying to take a year’s worth of time and compress it. Relationships and time don’t work that way. You have to put the actual time in and then a year assumes its proper significance.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: “The people who do this are just happy to make it to 6 months because their other relationships failed.” You’re right.
But they don’t realize their selection process is the problem. They don’t take the proper to time to get over someone (if this sounds like you then read what you can do to get over someone). Rather, they feel lucky when something works and they make it into a big deal.
This is a person trying to use emotions to change facts, rather than facts to change emotions. Rather than changing themselves or adjusting their approach, they try to force feelings in an attempt to change reality.
This pushes away anyone with options and a sense of normalcy.
We also see this flawed concept of forced development at play with people who are blunt and upfront with their intentions and expect you to be the same way.
This is another attempt to compress time.
It’s also lazy. It attempts to remove the work of seduction and skips the risky process of mutually falling in love.
The Biggest Red Flag
The single biggest indicator that you’re dealing with a low-quality person is when they start the relationship off with declarations.
Generally speaking, a major red flag in a man is when he’s explicit early on and a major red flag in women is when she’s “tired of playing games”. These declarations are made by a person who lacks either the skill or the patience for proper seduction. By the way, check out the rest of the red flags you should avoid here.
We see this often on dating sites when a girl says “She’s not here for hook-ups, only for something serious”. Seasoned players and students of human nature recognize this for what it is:
A preemptive justification for anything they do or undesirable behavior they display in an attempt to skip the vital process of developing a relationship, If she’s demanding, aggressive, or quick to jump into bed, then it’s all because she’s looking for something serious.
The reality is that she is–for whatever reason–not serious about falling for someone. Only in being with someone.
The masculine equivalent of this behavior are guys who send unsolicited dick pics and lead the interaction with over the top, overly sexualized messages.
Rather than take the time to patiently seduce, they try to jump right to sex without displaying value or making the girl comfortable.
A guy once told me that before any girl comes over, he tells them he expects them to hook up.
This might work for some extremely high-value men (just as the female equivalent may work for some high-value women), but high-value people don’t resort to tactics like this. It’s one of the 4 unmistakable taits all high value men have.
They understand something thieves and negotiators know too well: it’s better to pick a lock with finesse than knock the door down battering ram. It’s better to use persuasion than it is to make an ultimatum.
They don’t want to do the work of self-development to become more attractive. They’re lazy. Since they also lack patience, they try to circumvent and break the rules of seduction.
The rules set forth by society and biology.
A Poker Metaphor For Relationships
Getting into relationships is like high-stakes games of poker.
By making the best legal plays over time, you give yourself the best chance to win.
There are different phases—the deal, pre-flop, the flop, the turn, and the river. The stakes go up as you progress through each stage. You can’t go backward and you can’t skip around to different stages.
- “The deal” is your genetics. You can’t do anything about your height, facial structure, or intelligence. Those are about the only things you can’t change about yourself.
- “The pre-flop” is where you do the work on yourself. Some hands don’t need that much work to compete (Being born rich or good looking is “pocket aces” of dating). Some of us will need to develop our personality, grooming, style, and physique to the max. You should always play with skill, but some starting hands simply have a greater margin of error than others.
- “The flop” and “The turn” is when you start a courtship. Now you’re in the game. Things can go wrong, but if you’re playing well, you should be getting huge value here. You should feel so confident in your play that unless an obvious sign shows up, you shouldn’t do anything to make the person fold out of the hand.
- “The River” is where the truth is revealed. If you played well, you should “win” most of the time. If you didn’t, you learn from the experience, tighten up your game, and come back for another day. Or sometimes, you simply have to “charge it to the game”.
You can’t get the benefits of winning without playing the game.
We all want it to come easy, The problem is when you try to skip the process and just have the outcome.
That’s the biggest red flag there is.
You can’t win on the river if you don’t play through the flop and the turn.
Each section demands different skills and has different objectives. If you make a bad play, you’re punished, but it’s not the end of the world.
There’s always another game.
If you’re not sure where to start, then read up on how to get into a relationship here.
What Happens If You Keep Trying To Force People To Love You?
You should learn something from each play in order to better yourself.
The problem comes when you keep losing and playing and losing.
Instead of learning why you lost, you move out of turn (force development). Or you force the opponent to do what you want so the win looks natural (forced intentions).
This behavior will get you kicked out (dumped) and banned from most other games (your reputation precedes you).
Eventually, only the worst players (low-quality people)—skill and morals wise—will let you in the game.
