#119 How Do You Date A Girl Who Is Not Over Her Ex?

[Angel Donovan]: Hey Guys! Welcome to another episode of the DSR podcast. If you have a unique question or something that you really need answered, maybe it's about one specific girl or one specific challenge you have, then you can just call me on (323) 747-5006. That's of course a U.S. number. So if you're outside the U.S., you can still call that number and leave me a voice mail. Just add a +1 in front of it. There, you just leave me a voicemail. Let me know what your question is. You don't have to leave your name if you don't want to, and we'll get it answered in one of the future episodes of the podcast for you.

We got a question from one of you guys in the audience today. It's from Colin. He's 31 and he lives in Denver, Colorado. This is his question… let's dive straight into it.

"Essentially, my question is this: How do you date a girl who is not over her ex? I got out of serious LTR two years last year in September. I've tried dating since then without any girlfriend-material success. I'm met a girl about 1.5 months ago. We dated. Then, a few weeks into it, we made it official. This was a big deal to me as I had not called any girl my girlfriend since my last relationship. I was very excited for the title, label but immediately, I could sense she wasn't as enthusiastic about it."

So, this is a relatively long question. I'm going to read it all out though because, I think this is something that we see pretty often. It's the more emotionally invested you are in a situation, (and this tends to be when the situations aren't going your way) the more you're going to write about it, the more details you're going to give us. A lot of it isn't really that important but, it's just something that you can notice that, the longer the email, probably the worse the situation and there's going to be a lot of unnecessary details in it.

So nothing against you Collin. It's just just saying that out loud to kind of give guys a little bit of instruction there, a little of ideas of what they're own level of emotional engagement in something, if it's appropriate or not.

He continues. "All along, I had a suspicion that maybe she was not over her ex. She would talk about him a lot; more than any girl I've dated at least. At first, I thought it was okay but eventually, it got on my nerves and I confronted her about it."

"She denied every time and told me I just needed to be patient with her and in time, she'll open up to me more. Finally, last week, it came to a head and we broke up, I guess. She admitted that she's hesitant with me because, she's not over her ex.

She said it's weird to her because, they've been broken up for a year now and she dated a guy for two months prior to me. She even said her friends and sister told her, 'He's a really nice guy and treats you very well. If he meets all your checkboxes for a boyfriend, what is the problem?' To which she replied, 'I don't know, I just feel some resistance.'"

So, she said to Collin here, "She said, she needed time to think. Our last conversation concluded with her saying, 'Just let me reach out to you.'" He hasn't heard anything in over a week at this time. I know, having spoken to him, it's been longer than that now.

He says, "I know. I also made a dumb choice (I know) to send her a stuffed animal gift in the mail with a little note, 'Thinking about you. Miss you,' and she still never replied to me at all."

"I just don't get it. Don't get her. Was that her way of just letting me down slowly. Did she just not want to hurt my feelings? Too late and thought, if she told me she needed space and time that eventually, I'd get the hint."

"Why did you go through all the effort to go on and online paid dating website, go through with meeting guys, having sex with them, agreeing to being their girlfriend and take down their dating profile and then, go act like this. It doesn't appear to be about any resolution or is one week not that long and I'm just freaking out for nothing? I don't like feeling ignored or left in the dark."

That's his whole question there. I think the first thing that's interesting to talk about here is understanding women and why they do things, right because, there's a lot frustration coming from this email. "Why do girls do this? Why? Are they just trying to let me down slowly? What are they doing?"

So, I think the first thing is to look at it from your perspective also but... because, I think even if you look at it from your perspective, you got to kind of understand what she's going and also look at like this how girls tend to do things in general. As a general rule, they prefer to avoid conflict and they prefer to take the more comfortable approach a lot of the time.

I'd also say that that's a trend which I think is accelerating. You've probably heard of the term "ghosting" which has become more popular and I think that's becoming more popular because, people are doing it more because, we're in this information overloaded planet. Literally like, we're getting so many texts that you can just not see someone's message and not reply to it, when we'll have time to reply to it.

You see it especially with the dating apps. It seems like when you are on a dating app or dating website but even more so... if people are getting lots of emails and there's lots of flow and there's a lot of flow between different people, of different texts and it's much more likely that you're going to get ghosting now going on. So, I think it's something that happens more and more.

I know, I do it myself. I don't do it on purpose. Ghosting is just disappearing and not replying to people but sometimes, you're just too busy and just don't have time and you can see that you perhaps aren't kind of up to speed on this and I know in your situation, you felt that you were girlfriend/boyfriend and so on but, it was early days in it and she did have a conversation with you and then, she kind of disappeared when you pushed a bit harder because, you started pushing. You sent her the teddy bear and the note and so on.

So, Jackson is here on the call of course as well as me. I'm sorry. I thought I'd switch to Jackson now to see what his thoughts are on the whole, "how girls are" and with this frustration aspect.

[Jackson]: Hey, Collin. First of all, I'd say that your situation is fairly common. Like Angel said, it's something that we do hear a lot. So, there are some things here that you've done wrong and you've could have done better but, don't think that you're the only guy that's made this mistake and nobody else can relate to this. We're actually dealing with quite a few of our students who are going through similar issue.

So, one thing that I would say is important to understand what a girl is trying to communicate to you. As guys, we tend to focus on the words that a woman uses and throughout your question, I've seen a lot of situations where the woman is trying to communicate to you what she means and you're not really hearing that. You're focusing on the words.

In that situation where she says she wants some space and you're saying, "Why is she doing this? Why does she want to go through all of this just to like let me down gently?" Like Angel is saying generally, women don't like confrontation. They would prefer to avoid that if at all possible.

There's some women out there who will happily tell you to your face exactly where you stand, what they're thinking and those women are great but unfortunately, not everybody is like that. I've talked to a few women about this and they've told me that one potential problem they worry about is how a guy's going to react. So, you have to understand from a woman's point of view, she can feel very vulnerable if she does something that makes you go, "I'm really upset."

A lot of women have told me that either themselves or one of their friends has said something to a guy that's caused confrontation. Like maybe, you've broken up with him or said something else to make him upset and the guy's reacted by getting physically violent with her, like becoming very aggressive by hitting the woman, even becoming like verbally aggressive and just calling all sorts of names, every name under the sun.

So, women have generally had an experience where they or one of their friends have been in a situation where they've learned it's not always a good thing to say exactly what they mean and if they can avoid confrontation where ever possible, a lot of them will generally choose to do that. So that's one thing to keep in mind. It's not because women are all liars or they're nasty or they're doing anything where they're trying to do anything to hurt you. They're just trying to do what they think is best in that situation to avoid anything that is uncomfortable.

It comes to what Angel was saying, understanding women, understanding why they do things, why they communicate the way they do, why they make the choices that they do. I think once you understand that and understand the way that they communicate, that will really help you going forward. To be able to understand where she's coming from and what you can do to make her feel more comfortable.

I think we'll talk more about some things that you've done here. There are certainly some things you've done that are not making her feel comfortable and that have pushed her away even further. That's what I would say on that aspect but, yeah I think Angel's got some more things you're going cover and then, I'll give my thoughts on those as well.

[Angel Donovan]:Yeah absolutely. Kind of to round off the understanding women, I think a good rule is to just look at women's behaviors, especially when you're learning this stuff and you can't read in between the lines. You just look at what she does, her actions, right? Is she pulling away from you? Is she kind of coming towards you? Is she engaging more?

It's simple. Is she texting you more? Is she texting really quickly? These simple things, does she meet you out for dates on your terms, fitting with your schedule or is it difficult to meet up with them? It's pretty obvious whether someone's coming towards you or moving away and so, if you just look at their actions, it's a really easy place to start understanding women without having to like interpret all of the psychology behind it. So that's definitely the simple rule to stick with at first: if you don't know what's going on, just look at her actions and coming towards you or moving away.

You did a few things wrong which actually helped to create this situation. I think Jackson's going to be bringing up the same items. The first is that you created the exact situation you wanted to avoid and this is very common. Often in our lives, (and it's not just in dating) we create these situations we're trying to avoid.

So, we're scared of something happening. We think about it and we start to kind of create that situation by focusing on it and bringing up the subject with people, causing aggravation around it and eventually, you create it.

The situation you didn't want was that she was really into her ex-boyfriend, right? By you bringing it up and focusing the topic of conversation on it, it's a conflictual conversation, (i's not going to go down easy) it's putting more focus on it. It's going to have her starting to think about it more as well. Rationally, she has to start defending herself about it. So, it creates a bit of a riff between you too.

There's many reasons that you don't want to start focusing on that type of situation and if you think about also, you could have kind of recognized the reality of relationships. Say I've been with a girlfriend for two years and we had a whole bunch of very emotional great experiences together.

I come along after that. I break up for whatever reason. It could have been me who did it but, you can't deny that there's still this emotional attachment inside to that previous girlfriend who spent two years, you spent a whole bunch of time with, you had a lot of highly emotional experiences. Perhaps, you had a strong emotional breakup and this happens to guys as well. Often they find it difficult to let go of the past relationship.

This doesn't mean that they don't try to get out there and start moving on. In fact, they often get pressured by their friends or they think it's the right thing to do. We actually tell guys in programs that this one of the things that they have to do. They have to pretty quickly start getting out there even if they've broken up a girl and start moving on.

Now we know that emotionally, they're still thinking of the girl in the last relationship and this is what girls do as well. If you just think about your own responses to things, they way you're thinking about this girl. Now, you can understand that she may have some feelings to a previous relationship but, it doesn't mean that she's not trying to move on or, it's just actually a normal aspect of behavior and sometimes, you don't even want to be with someone. You could be divorced from someone and you could have divorced someone but, they're still in your head sometimes because, you had this strong emotional connection and a long relationship.

So I think it's that aspect of reality you just have to understand about people. It's not as black and white as we'd like it to be. That when you break up with someone, all of a sudden, you feel nothing for them. Depending on the person, that would be different. Like some people find it a lot harder to let go than others. I think there's that just looking at the reality of the situation and then, being cool with it and not creating a situation out of it, right?

So jealousy's always a bad thing and this comes across as a little bit of a jealous situation. You're jealous about the ex-boyfriend and it's actually something pretty, pretty common that girls... I'll talk with girls about this and I know from my perspective, it's one of the things that they really respect me for and they feel more comfortable with me because, I'm able to talk about ex-boyfriends and I really don't care. They've had a lot of boyfriends who weren't able to talk about these topics and it just means that you have less of a connection with a girl because, she doesn't feel comfortable about talking about those things because, she thinks you're going to get jealous and you're cool with that stuff and you make a big deal out of it.

So, you were overly sensitive on this light and you probably created it. You could have probably been with the girl still and have no problems if you just hadn't focused on the ex and you'd focus on just making the relationship great and just enjoying yourself. At this point, I'll pass the mic back to Jackson and see what he thinks about that situation.

[Jackson]:Yeah, I think that's some good points there. I think for me the thing that stood out was, "Why is she so hung up on this guy still? I'm imaging what the guy is probably like and I'm guessing that he's probably done a lot of things that have been the opposite of what you have done, Collin. So, it kind of sounds like you're almost pressuring her to be in a relationship. You've put this tag on things very quickly and logically, that should make sense.

She's like, "Yeah, my friends and my sister said, 'Yeah, this guy's nice. You should like him. You should be with him.'" She's like, "Oh, I don't know. I feel some resistance." So to me, it sort of comes down to like your behavior and how you're acting when you're with her versus what the ex-boyfriend is doing.

So, I imagine that he's probably having a lot of fun when he's with her. He's not putting pressure on her. He's not like making her feel like he's a jealous. He's doing all of these things where he's being an attractive guy and that's what she likes about him. That's what she's attracted to and that's what she's missing because, a lot of guys don't do this. So when a woman is in a relationship with a really great guy and then, they break up and she goes and dates some other guys who may be not as attractive or who haven't developed themselves as much, they tend to notice what they're missing about their past relationships.

So, one thing that I would have done if it was me, like Angel's saying, not being jealous about it but, just talk about it and say, "Okay, that guy sounds like really cool. What was it about him that you really liked?" Kind of get an idea of what are the attractive things that she found about this guy that sounds like she's still kind of perhaps in love with in a way or has very strong feelings for and just talk about it. Get her to express those things rather than like shutting her down and feeling like, "Well, this is something that we can't talk about it," where she feels like a part of her life is off limits because, you're getting very jealous about it.

I always want to make a woman feel like she can talk to me about anything and if she brings something up in conversation, I'm going to get very emotional. I'm going to react to it and make her feel bad for it because, that's when it starts to kill that connection and she thinks, "Oh, I can't talk to my boyfriend about this type of stuff." So, she starts to close off to you and to me, that's like generally one of the first stages where she thinks, "Oh, maybe this isn't the guy for me," because girls, they want to be in a relationship with a guy that they can completely open up to and talk to anything about and not to be made to feel bad about different things

In this situation, that sounds like perhaps it's not the case that anytime she talked about something, she would see you get visibly upset and I think you said, it came to a head and you said you "broke up, I guess." So, that would have come across to her as you not being able to handle things, not being able to handle things like a man in a masculine way and you get upset about things in her past. That's not really a good sign. It's not something that she'll be looking for.

So, that's something just to remember going forward. You want to make a girl feel that she can talk about anything with you and you're not going to be emotionally reactive to her. You're going to be one of these guys who kind of sulks or gets upset when she's talking about her past experiences. That's one thing I would definitely keep in mind going forward.

[Angel Donovan]:The main thing also that stands out, even if a girl is like still thinking about her ex-boyfriend, (which as I said is completely normal) in good situation, what's going to happen is you're going to be a guy like Jackson said is attractive and basically, you're giving her a new emotional experience. I talk about emotions a lot because, an experience with a guy, if it's not emotionally laden, it doesn't take on a lot of power in her mind, right?

So basically if her mind's going to be able to move on from her ex, she has to find something more emotionally enticing in her life and in the relationship, right? That just comes down to you being attractive, being masculine, doing things right but also, like making the relationship something... a real experience, like doing new things, testing the waters, new things. It's like making it a really awesome relationship and having a lot of fun in it, giving it a lot of good emotions all the time.

It's pretty obvious from the discussion that you just didn't compare to the ex-boyfriend and the experience that she got with him. So, that's something I would always kind of refer back to. If the girl is always talking about her ex-boyfriend and she may do it a little bit depending on how like into him she was before, it might just come up or depending on how tightly integrated he is into her existing social circles because, if they've both have the same social circles and stuff, it's normal for his name to come up. So, there's nothing to get upset about.

So, your goal is to really create a much stronger emotional and deeper and more unique experience in that relationship and then, any ex-boyfriend is kind of just going to fade away over time as she gets more into you. I've seen situations with friends and so one where, one of my friends had an amazing, very long-term relationship with a girl that was extremely emotional and intense as well. They had many arguments. I had to kind of like help them with that sometimes and it was emotional and it was great in many ways and he was actually very good with women also. He had a lot of drama.

So, it was incredibly difficult for her to get out of the relationship because, it had been such a great relationship but, also a very emotional relationship as well. There was some negativity and so, she started dating another guy after a while. She was into him a bit but, she was still talking with my friend because, he still had this very strong emotional connection with her which the other guy was not able to replicate, especially within a short amount of time.

What happened was, as the new guy was really cool and he was able to give her really good emotional feelings, as their relationship developed, she was able to let go more and more. She stopped thinking about my friend, reduced the contact and so on. Now, she's extremely happy with this new guy and obviously, way more in love and it's a better, stronger and more stable relationship and everything.

So, it didn't happen in a day. I think that's a relatively normal process depending on the intensity of the relationship before. Now, I'm not saying that her ex was actually this amazing. It's all relative. It's compared to you. So what kind of emotional experience you're giving and the thing I see is the response...

I know you said it was the wrong thing to do to send the teddy bear and to send, "I'm thinking of you." That was obviously very badly calibrated. She was pulling away from you and you sent something which is saying, "I'm thinking about you," and so on. So, it wasn't the thing to do at that point. If anything, it might freak her out a little bit. It's like, "I think I made it pretty clear to this guy that I wasn't interested and I wanted to move away" and then, you send the teddy bear and it feels a little bit creepy.

I'm sure you can get that now but, that's also like sending a teddy bear and a little thank you note, it's kind of sweet but, it's not like a really strong emotional movement or thanks. I'm guessing that in your relationship with her, the experiences weren't that spectacular. They weren't that amazing. They weren't that unique. I mean, it was probably a more run of the mill kind of interaction with you guys and it had no chance of kind of overcoming her existing emotions for the other guy because, it just didn't measure up at all. This is basically what Jackson was referring to. So, that's a bit of different take on how to look at that.

[Jackson]:Yeah, I think that's really important. Talking about the emotional experiences because, at the end of the day, that's what's it's going to come down to. Like the woman is going to choose to be in the relationship with the guy that gives her the best emotional experience. That's what she wants and one thing that sticks out to me throughout this emails is, I'm getting the impression Collin that you probably don't have a lot of experience with women or dating different women.

It could be that you've been in a relationship for a quite a while. I think you said, you were in a relationship for two years. So, you might be a guy that's been in a longer-term relationships and hasn't been out dating many different and sometimes, guys in that situation, they don't have a great understanding of what to do with girls in the early stages of relationships and they really miss being in a long-term exclusive relationship and they move too soon to try and make that happen.

It stands out throughout that you're being kind of needy with this girl, being very emotional needy with a lot of different things that you've done here and that's a massive turnoff to women. It kills attraction very quickly. So you talked about you dated and then, a few weeks into it, "We made it official." You said, "This was a big deal to me as I had not called any girl my girlfriend since my last relationship and I was very excited for the title, label."

That's not a great sign. You don't want to be a guy who is rushing to get into a relationship with a girl that you've known for a couple of weeks. It's generally not a very attractive thing to do and a guy who is very successful with women is probably not going to be doing that. Now, I don't know how often you were going out with her. You said you were dating for a few weeks. Whether that was going out once a week, twice a week or whether you're going out more often than that.

My rule of thumb is; I'm not going to see a girl more than once a week. So for me, if I'm dating a girl for a few weeks, I've really only seen her probably like three or four times and I'm no where near getting to the stage where I'm thinking about getting into an exclusive relationship with her and the fact that you're wanting to rush into it so quickly, pretty much communicates to women, "This guy doesn't have a lot of options. He doesn't have like other women that could be dating, that he barely knows me and we've only been out a few times but, he really wants to make me his girlfriend."

That kind of communicates low status things about you and it's going to be a turnoff to many women and in this case, you said here that, "She seemed very hesitant about it." You were excited to be officially boyfriend and girlfriend but, she didn't seem very enthusiastic about it." So, right away by her actions, she's showing she's not super excited to get into a relationship with you after only knowing each other for a couple of weeks.

So, that's one thing that you want to keep in mind is that generally, women like to pursue guy for a relationship. So at any time that I'm dating a girl, I never bring up the topic of us being in an exclusive relationship because, that's something that she will do and she will do that on her own terms when she's ready. In the meantime, as long as I'm going out, having fun with her, getting into these different emotional experiences like Angel was talking about and just enjoying being with her and doing all of these attractive things, it's not going to be an issue. It's not going to be a case where I feel like, "Well, if I'm not officially her boyfriend, she's going to go out and find some other guy," because I know that we're having fun together.

At the end of the day, labels and titles don't mean anything, especially in this day and age. People get married all time, where it's legally binding. "We have to stay with each other until death," but then 50% of them break up and you see a lot of people break up with in a couple years. So, that title, that label really doesn't mean anything. What matters is how a woman feels when she's with you. So, you're getting that right, you don't need the labels. I don't need a girl to think of me as her boyfriend. It's how I make her feel.

So, the more that you're pushing for something that generally is the girl's role to push for, it's going to push her away and that's what's happening in your situation. So, I can't think of any time that I've pursued a girl for a relationship that has really turned out well. That's not to say that you can't pursue to go out on a date and to get together and even to sleep with her. In terms of getting into an exclusive relationship, it always works out better, (at least in my experience) every single time when she's the one who's bringing up that topic.

So, that's just my rule of thumb on it and I would suggest that you do the same. I think you'll have a lot more success doing that and just be in a rush to settle down with one girl. If you're a single guy, you should be having the mindset that there's so many great, amazing women out there and the more of them that you go out and meet and go on dates with, the more you're going to find the girl who's going to be right for you, the more you're going to have a lot of options and a lot of fun along the way.

It sounds like you're coming from a place of scarcity which is, "If I don't lock this girl down and get her into a relationship where she feels that we're boyfriend and girlfriend, I'm going to lose her and I'm going to be able to find another woman. That I'm going to miss out on something," and that was the case where she said she needed space and you pursuing again by sending her these gifts which, it's a good thing that you know that was bad but clearly, that's going to push her away even more.

This is another example of you being very needy and it's just very unattractive to her and in that situation, it's probably making her think, "Man, I really do miss my ex-boyfriend because, he did a lot of things the opposite way of what Collin is doing and did things in a much more attractive way." That's what she's missing about the guy. So, yours actions are kind of reinforcing to her the very things that she's missing about her ex-boyfriend. Angel?

[Angel Donovan]:Yep, excellent. Excellent points. My last point just on this is that there is a question also of selecting women. So, some women are going to be less able to let go of past relationships, right? So, if you think in terms of neediness...This is a concept you probably understand and we've talked a little about that here. There's obviously women that are needy as well. There's guys that are needy and clingy and they want to cling to the last relationship and they don't let go of them easily and there's women who do the same.

So, there is this element that you should understand in this situation also. So for any guys listening to this, if you come across a girl and she does seem to be really into her ex and not able to let go of that depending on how long ago and everything, part of that is your responsibility, as we've said but, there are some people who will have more difficulty letting go of things in their lives. Let's put it that way.

That's just something to be aware of. I would take responsibility for yourself first and give the girl the best emotional experience, the best experience with you possibly and that, within a month, any situation any girl should be in, you should be progressing very well. If it's not, then potentially, it's another issue. I have had personal experience with this myself. That's why I can talk about it because, I've had a few less than ideal girlfriends in my travels who, great relationships, very exciting and everything however, when I finish with those girls, it was extremely hard for them to let go of the relationship and they did certain things that were very annoying, disruptive to my life afterwards. When I look back, I look at those girls and said, "Okay."

It was this type girl (and I know one had a kind of medical issue because, she was bi-polar and so on so, that can be part of it) who have difficulty letting go, right? So, they would follow me around in clubs or try and manipulate me by sending me letters and stuff, getting me jealous about other people, all sorts of anti-social and not so nice behaviors after we've broken up and we should be moving on which is presenting an annoyance in my life afterwards.

So, you can see that that would happen with some specific people, right? All people aren't exactly the same. I think that's maybe a 5% of cases or less. Mostly, it's going to be your responsibility but, it's just to keep this idea in your head also that there is this important factor of you should be selecting women appropriate for you as well that have the ability to let go of relationships or whatever they've been doing.

I don't want to give you an out so you can blame it on the girl because, as I say, this doesn't happen all the time. I just want to give you an overview of the whole situation and what could have been occurring. It sounds like this girl's kind of normal. Like she's not too outrageous or anything. So, I would actually think that she's just a typical girl and this doesn't apply to her. Okay, is there anything else you wanted to mention, Jackson?

[Jackson]: I think that's it. I think we've covered everything.

[Angel Donovan]:Excellent. So Collin, thanks for sending in the question. I hope you've got a lot out of this. If you want to send a follow up question, please do. Happy to help with a follow up if we've presented more queries for you. Just to leave you with a few takeaways.

The first one is don't get frustrated with the way women are in reality because, it's a losing battle. If you go through and listen to what we've been talking about, we've been talking about how the way things are and how you've been looking at the world differently and a lot of guys do. It's very common. So, the first point is to like stop banging your head against the wall because, reality's not going to change. People are not going to change. This is the way they are. I think obviously movies and things like that which have given us the wrong ideas are partially to blame for that or maybe our parents. So, let go of the old ideas and accept the realities, you're going to find everything goes a lot better.

As Jackson's pointed out, also I think you've probably need more experience in dating. So, I would date for a while. It comes across that you're a little bit naive and you're not, how you would say, relaxed with dating. Jumping into a relationship in two weeks is a really tight time table. If Jackson or I met the most amazing girl in the world, we're like, "She's awesome," we wouldn't be in a relationship within two weeks with her. It's a very tight timeline. You can't get to know the girl. She can't get to know you. So, it just doesn't make sense at all.

There's the other part which is make sure you're giving the girl the best emotional experience. You're being the best guy you can in the relationship and to learn more about what that is versus what you thought it was like sending teddy bears and stuff like that. Those are the three takeaways I'd give. Is there anything you would add in terms of a final takeaway Jackson just to round off?

[Jackson]:No, I would agree with that. If you do all those things, I think it's definitely going see you get better results in the future with the next that you're dating.

[Angel Donovan]:Awesome. Alright, we're going switch out here. Thanks, Collin.