Category: Q & A

How will you deal with your girlfriend turning 40?

Change in relationships are pretty much the only constant in relationships*.

The best way to deal with changes in your partner over which you have no control is:

• Introspection – figuring out why the change upsets you
• Communication – using Nonviolent Communication techniques to explain your feelings to your partner
• Negotiation – finding a good "middle road" that allows you both your personal freedom to grow as individuals, while walking the same path together
• Resignation – letting go of the need to "win" the negotiation phase, and to not only tolerate, but move on from whatever outcome you can both agree on.

If you can do those four things effectively, you should be well on your way to resolving just about any issue you'll face. Just how to establish and conduct these four steps is the subject of a much longer post, though there is literally a few metric tons of information available in the printed literature: http://amzn.to/g3iD71

*Also, be open to exploring the other constant of relationships – the ending. If you can see how you'd like it to look in order to be considered a "success", and see how different/how far off that looks, you should have a much easier time weathering whatever immediate storms stand in your path.

How do I deal with my girlfriend turning religious?

Honestly and compassionately. Covers all three scenarios, and makes you a #winner regardless of the outcome.

If you want a specific "go to" script, then you're overestimating the ability of preparation to save the day. Rather, work on "being present/ready" in the moment, and being thoughtfully responsive instead of reactive.

How might one respond when a girl tells you that she likes you?

What's it like to be the gym partner of a hotdog eating champion?

In both cases, despite an apparent correlation, they are two entirely different, mostly-unrelated things.

Too absurd? Let's take the original question, and modify it only slightly:

What's it like to be in a long-term relationship with a Chinese person?

Certainly a bit presumptive, if not offensive, no?

Pickup artists utilize a set of skills and talents to hyper-condense the initial introduction/attraction phase of getting to know someone, largely in the hopes that that knowledge can become biblical at some point. That's it.

While very few "pickup routines" would be useful in a long term relationship, the overall strategies of "be the best you possible" and "fulfillment comes from within" are certainly great cores for long term relationships… So long as one is able to both retain an independent identity and respectfully communicate and negotiate with someone else at the same time. It's harder than it looks, but no harder for pickup artists than the rest of us…

What's it like to be in a long-term relationship with a pick-up artist?

It's often related to their feeling that attractive and compatible women are a "scarce resource" that must be mined to exhaustion, rather than that they need to expand their search, and perhaps change their own perceptions of who might make an appropriate romantic partner.

Another common cause is even simpler: there are many "additively attracted" men – those who, once drawn to someone romantically, will never lose that feeling (at least until it is acted upon/consummated).

Even if they later happily marry or become involved with someone else, the feeling may never diminish in intensity, though it may become less urgent or otherwise easier to suppress.

Why do some men keep coming back to a woman they were romantically interested in, but did not have an affair with?

I have it on pretty good authority that it's the pubococcygeus that is the most universally appealing when properly and fully developed.

Which muscles do women find most aesthetically attractive?