Most guys seem to think that they are the victims of whatever a woman decides she wants. Be honest, when you are interested in a woman, is your natural tendency to cross your fingers and hope she likes you too?
If you approach dating with the mindset of waiting to see what position a woman will grant you in her life, then you are going to end up in the Friend Zone… or worse, you’ll end up being what I affectionately call “the unpaid personal assistant.”
Most guys who play friend and personal assistant to women end up bitter because of all the ways in which
“She toyed with me, strung me along, made me her plaything…”
Oh really? Did she put a gun to your head and say, “Pick up my dry cleaning or I’ll shoot you.”?
The fact is you chose to be that guy in her life.
Yeah, I know, she chose to treat you that way too—more on why that happens in a minute.
First, I want you to get really clear on the fact that you are the one choosing to hang around as her go-to guy for when she needs a favor or two. If you don’t want to be that guy, then don’t.
The magical world where a woman feels compelled to have sex with you because you fixed her flat tire or helped her assemble that book shelf does not exist, ok?
If someone is a true friend, he or she will give you friendship regardless of whether or not you do stuff for him or her.
If a woman is sexually attracted to you, she will sleep with you regardless of whether or not you do stuff for her (unless she uses sex as a bartering tool, in which case, she’s useless anyway unless you’re looking for some high-maintenance dating drama).
The bottom line is: you should be doing favors for people to help them out, not to get sex/friendship/approval/validation from them.
Now, some guys who have played the role of personal assistant to women in the past, once they learn a thing or two about pick-up, will often swing to the other extreme. Suddenly, they won’t do anything for anybody.
I actually remember hanging out with a guy at his place, and I asked him for a glass of water. He got super defensive and barked,
“Oh, so now I’m your personal assistant? You know where the kitchen is.” Totally unnecessary.
Remember, it is always your choice whether or not you do something for someone—especially a woman, so if you are going to do a woman a favor, do it to genuinely help her out and for no other reason.
If you’re wondering why women make “friend zone” guys their personal assistants some times, it’s because you let us. Come on, can you honestly tell me that you wouldn’t do the same thing if the tables were turned?
The truth is, though, most women don’t have any manipulative intent. What really happens is that women naturally look to a man to lead the interaction. If you interact with a woman in a way that says to her, “Hi, I’m here to do your bidding,” she will unconsciously think, “Oh, I guess he’s here to do my bidding, and that’s the nature of our relationship.” When I’ve been in this situation, it’s only in hindsight that I realized he was a “personal assistant.”
The main issue is that most guys give all the power to women, then get mad when we take it.
What you need to realize is that the main reason why a woman takes the power is because you gave it away, and since we are looking to you as the leader, there’s an assumption that you must want us to have it. This happens very unconsciously of course, but this is what’s under the surface of the majority of “personal assistant” male-female interactions.
It’s like this: imagine you see a guy give a homeless person a dollar. The next day, you see the same guy yelling at the homeless person for stealing his money. That would be ridiculous, right? But this is exactly how most men act when it comes to doing favors for women.
If you don’t want to end up as her personal assistant, then don’t do anything you don’t want to do!
There’s a funny thing that happens with guys who only do the favors that they actually want to do—with no agenda—and don’t do what they don’t want to do. These are the ones that attract women.
For example, let’s say you are out at a club.
A woman asks you to buy her a drink and you comply. She sees that you are a pushover and leaves with her free drink.
Or, let’s say you are out at a club and you meet a woman you find attractive. You offer to buy her a drink in the hopes that you will impress her into sleeping with you. She senses that you feel like the only way she will sleep with you is if you get her drunk or buy her stuff, and she’s turned off by your neediness. She leaves with her free drink.
Contrast this with a woman asking you to buy her a drink and you tell her no. She senses that you aren’t a pushover that’s willing to do anything for her just because she’s hot, and she’ll be interested.
Or, if you offer to buy her a drink just because you decided to get the next round for everyone (even if everyone includes just you and her) and there’s no agenda, she’ll see that you are a confident, generous, cool guy, and she’ll be interested.
So, next time you are in a position to do a woman a favor, stop and ask yourself, “What’s my intention for doing this for her?” If you realize you are only doing it to get sex and/or approval from her, stop, and say no. She might pout and she might even leave you, but that’s better than you being her unpaid personal assistant.
