What To Do When A Girl Signals She’s Back On The Market

If a girl tells you she’s having boyfriend troubles, what message should you take from that? How would you proceed?

A reader provides blog fodder,

I have a hot personal trainer, obviously I’m interested. She has a boyfriend, but the other day she sent me a text telling me the boyfriend might be cheating on her.

Got any Personal Trainer Game tips?

First of all, you don’t see hot female personal trainers with male clients very often, unless she works as a class instructor. One-on-one? Rare. I wonder if the reader is a minor celebrity. Now male personal trainers giving hands-on guidance to hot chicks in yoga pants? That harassment is everywhere.

This is a relevant game scenario that could involve any girl, regardless of her occupation. Sometimes a girl will drop a hint, subtle or otherwise, that she’s back on the market. These signals of market reintroduction should rarely be taken at face value. Unfortunately, beta males will typically leap on this female availability bait and immediately interview themselves for the replacement job.

There are various reasons why a girl would volunteer information to a third party man about her fraying relationship. If the information is of the “my man is cheating on me” sort, you’ve got to be extra careful handling that ho potato. First you’ll need to untangle penumbras and emanations of meaning.

A girl will announce to a platonic male friend (or, in this case, client) that her BF is cheating for any of the following reasons:

1. He really is cheating, and she wants to find a new man to alleviate the pain of rejection. This is your classic rebound offer.

2. He really is cheating, but she still loves him and wants to stay with him. Her actions then can best be interpreted as trawling for sympathy and flattery from another man so she can feel attractive again.

3. He isn’t cheating, and she’s a slutty sociopath fishing for a handy rationalization to start cheating on him.

4. She’s the one cheating (but not with you), and logic has been hamsterspun to suit her glowing self-conception. By lying to you, the third party man, about the source of infidelity, she transfers some of her incipient guilt to the ether known affectionately as “men are pigs”.

5. No one’s cheating. She’s just an attention whore who may or may not want to sleep with you.

If you were to actively pursue a girl who signaled her market availability by throwing her boyfriend under the bus, one of the following rom-com endings are likely to be your fate:

1. She makes endless promises to leave her BF. This result isn’t so bad, if sex and good times is all you want with her. Essentially, you’ll be entering a three-way relationship as the interloper who cucks her boyfriend. You are her Ovulation Lover. Just don’t make the mistake of committing to her, unless you enjoy the prospect of hearing her come up with new excuses every week why she’s still with him. If you aren’t fucking her, then in this scenario, by default, you’re her beta male orbiter. Don’t be a beta male orbiter.

2. She insists she has left her BF, but hasn’t. You are now a bug in her web of lies. Why does she lie? She doesn’t trust you to be a full replacement, she doesn’t want to leave her boyfriend, or surreptitious love triangles featuring her in the starring role make her horny. Alpha fux, beta bux is definitely in play here. If you discover her lie, she’ll find some way to spin it as an act of human kindness or as a breach of agreed-upon terms (terms which were elucidated only in her head). “I still have feelings for him.” “I didn’t want to hurt him.” “He needs me.” “I figured you’d understand.” “I thought you knew what this was about?” This scenario can be benign, but only if all of the below apply:

– the boyfriend isn’t a crazy mofo who’ll come after you

– you are fucking her, but not dating her with long-term goals in mind

– she isn’t a vector for venereal disease

– she isn’t a vector for surprise pregnancy

– she doesn’t occupy too much of your free time.

When it turns malign:

You aren’t fucking her but are being used as an aural pincushion for her self-pitying stabs of romantic discontent.

3. She really has left her boyfriend, and she’s left him for you. Lotto! Not so fast, young pat-a-twat. If you’re rebound material, the strength of novel passion might not be there to fortify a deep love in her. Don’t expect her to become your girlfriend. Again, not a big dealio if feelio is all you want. If, otoh, she has excommunicated her boyfriend and you and her alight on a voyage of priapic discovery, there will always be that cloud of deception trailing her wake. Did she lie about who really cheated on whom? Why did she even volunteer that information, unless it was to relieve her guilt or encourage your premature sexual intercession? Will she pull the same stunt on you? Bottom line: You can never trust girls who air their dirty laundry.

4. She really has left her boyfriend, but not necessarily for you. Now you’re in the danger zone. You start to fill with fantasies of lust and love for your newly-freed girl-friend. She, knowingly or not, fuels your excitement and neediness with tales of her empowered but simultaneously cloyingly vulnerable decision to leave her BF, and your internal frenzy betrays your efforts at external aloofness. Since you don’t know for sure whether she considers you a worthy substitute, (and she has, as nature intended, played her part in stoking your uncertainty), your game abandons you as the finish line fades in and out of your view. You think, not illogically, that she’s romantically interested in you, because why else would she admit her relationship failings to you unless her intention was to incite you to swoop in for the rescue? Damn logic, trips up so many men. Like so many female shit tests, the “my BF is cheating on me woe is me thanks for being there” ruse is a plate of prime id that betaboys can’t resist chomping. This scenario is a recipe for drawn-out heartache.

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So what should the reader do? His personal trainer sent him a text announcing her boyfriend was cheating on her. That the news was delivered via text and not face-to-face is interesting in itself, especially considering that personal trainers and their clients share a lot of quasi-intimate time together when bedroom secrets could find multiple routes of escape.

I suspect she sent the text because she’s feeling some guilt for her role in whatever her relationship drama is supposed to signify. There’s nothing quite like an electronic middleman layer to hide revealing facial expressions. There is more danger in sending a text, too, as the risk of discovery is higher than if she confessed her desire to sin in evaporative vocal mists.

Reader: Given these premises, my diagnosis is that she is clumsily hinting she wants you to personally train her vagina. (Premises subject to change if additional info is released. For instance, the length of the reader’s platonic textual relationship with his tart trainer.)

You proceed like you would with any girl texting her market availability: You embrace the zen of amused indifference, proffer your heartfelt condolences (“dat sux”), and suggest a place where she could meet you, privately, if she “needs your company to take her mind off things”. Then you give her an evening when you might be available, reminding her to check with you first. DO NOT, under whatever scrotal or psychological duress, entertain her tacit aspiration for an asexual therapist. You have balls to drain, and women should always be aware of that on some level.

That final warning means, “don’t chomp on her beta bait”. The next time you have a session with her (following on the heels of her plaintive text wail), you’ll be tempted to bring up the subject of her text and suggest an immediate post-training drink. I say you should lay off for a bit. Pretend like you didn’t even read her text, or forgot about it. Let her bring it up at your next IRL meeting. (Refusing beta bait is a huge DHV. Alphas rarely have time to commiserate with distressed women lamenting cheating boyfriends.)

If she brings it up first, then you’ll have your platform to a) swiftly dismiss any possibility that you’ll listen to an endless stream of her dramatic renderings (a teasing neg helps here) and b) offer an opportunity for a post-session private session at a logistically favorable public venue. “Well, I’m free for a bit after our next workout if you want to grab a drink and talk about happier things.” Cat string theory. Pull away a little bit, make her chase. Don’t go rushing to her with arms open in affection and sympathy; like a cat, she’ll hiss and run for cover.

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Reader Tilikum adds an important caveat,

that said, I’d never even get close to any type of trainer/meathead/gymrat either female as the object of my desire, or her male meathead BF. loads of insecurity and “lets you and him fight” drama IMO. almost worse than cops and soldiers. and i’v banged a ton of attached chicks from all three.

“Let’s you and him fight” is an urge in most women, as most women crave, to a lesser or greater degree, manufactured romance drama. The best kind of drama, from women’s POV, is that which pits men in acts of valor (or stupidity) for a faire maiden’s hand. Gym rats and exercise fiends are, I agree, especially susceptible to this kind of female drama whoring. Maybe because they’re surrounded by so much testosterone all day that their estrogenic alter egos get pushed into overdrive and the thought of gladiators duking it out sends tremors ripping through their dilated wombs.

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Heywood Jablome goes for the kill,

Reply text:

“8:00 at joes bar on 5th st”

The bold reply right after she texts you about her “cheating boyfriend” is the right strategy IF

1. She has a history of dropping indicators of interest your way. Then her “bad boyfriend” text could be considered an escalation of her sexual intent toward you.

2. Your behavior in her company to date has left no impression that you’d be the sort of man who’d volunteer a shoulder for her to cry on.

If these apply, then go right ahead and push for an insta-date (although in this case, it’d more precisely be called “foreplay”).