Balancing Comfort With Unease

Lurking_Gorilla asks,

I have a game question. Where is the balance between her being nervous around you versus her being comfortable around you (to open up sexually)?

CH Maxim #44: “Women can’t feel impassioned without also feeling a little unease.”

No doubt. It’s better she feels a little nervous around you, and afraid to say the wrong thing, than to have the kind of lazy comfort you see in long-term couples.

But what’s the right mindset for keeping her in that state of butterflies and excited nervousness (different from the infamous “dread”) long term, while also getting her comfortable and feeling a connection to you? Comfort is especially important when going for the bang. But beyond that, too much comfort is a passion killer.

A smart game question. The comfort phase of pickup gets short shrift compared to the attraction stage, but the reality for most men is that if they blow it with a woman, they will likely blow it at some point during the seduction when a woman needs to feel emotional connection and trust. Typically, this “blow it” point will fall somewhere between one hour after meeting and the third date. (You’ll know you blew it on the second date when she greets you with a hug instead of a kiss on the third date.)

We’ll talk more about the comfort phase for getting the bang in future posts, but for now let’s focus on striking that balance between comfort and unease in LTRs, because it is true that women respond most delightfully to men who can at once arouse and soothe their anxieties.

In order to pull off this feat effectively with a woman you have known for a while, you have to be just a little bit sociopathic. A rom-com sociopath. The grist is push-pull (or hot-cold): You say one thing one minute, and it’s seeming opposite the next. Or, your words and behavior don’t match. In an LTR, what this means is that you’ll want to acquire a patina of unpredictability. Just a patina, though. Too much comfort is a passion killer, but too little comfort is a relationship killer.

My go-to hot beef injection of exquisite unease usually takes the form of flirting with other women at social events I’m attending with my girl. Plausible deniability, a bit of earshot-buffering room space, and a good sense for timing the exit of an illicit conversation are all valued skills in the art of keeping your woman hanging on those tempting tenterhooks.

If you have some natural social grace and charm, you won’t even have to seek out the attention. As a pre-selected man feeling no particular urge to GET LAID NOW, other women will gravitate to your side. Don’t underestimate how villainously competitive women can be when naughty thoughts of stealing away a taken man intrude. There’s a reason a woman fearful of abandonment with save her sharpest claws for the other woman casting eyes upon her man.

Naturally, you will abide these mischievous trollops. You are a man, after all, who enjoys the company of women after 5 PM. That such company might simultaneously inflame distress and lust in your main mama is a quirk of the female sex which you have no moral duty to police.

Later, when you are tasked by your stressed-out girlfriend to describe “who” it was you were talking to, and “what” it was you were saying (and all the while she will attempt, O wonderfully frail and transparent creature!, to hide her concern under a facial smear of detached inquisition), you will by no means readily disabuse her of the notion that another woman, heaven forbid!, was interested in your scintillating presence. Instead, you will smartly express feigned naivete as you gleefully, even recklessly, recount how interested the interloper seemed in your goings-on and your collegiate sense of humor. Or, if you’re the sly type, you might just shrug off your girlfriend’s questioning with an opaque, and slightly distracted, “She’s a nice girl.”

If your girlfriend is a sensitive Susie, you’ll have to pull back on the reins a bit more than you’d at first like. The sensitive girl can easily let her imagination, or nightmares, get the best of her. In that case, a gentle, but masculinity-affirming, “You have nothing to worry about, baby”, will suffice.

If your girlfriend is a real tough nut (i.e., a road-worn slut), you might happily upbraid her when she slips on her inquisitrix robe. “Somebody’s jealous.” Or, “This insecurity doesn’t sit well on you.” For added punch, don’t leaven your words with a chuckle of camaraderie; speak them with a poker face.

This is the end of Lesson One in How To Balance Comfort and Unease in Your Woman. The next lesson will publish precisely one month after the first commenter bitches about there being too many politics posts too many game posts.