Ladies Listen Up: Your New Dating Manifesto — 12 Principles To Actually Make a Man Want to Marry You
The problem in your relationship is that you act transactional without knowing it.
And I’m not calling out a side here, both men and women play this subconscious game that’s been programmed into us to be pressured into marriage.
It’s not love if he’s looking to marry someone to please his mom.
It’s not ‘love’ if you won’t ‘sleep with him’ unless he takes you out four times or vice versa.
It’s not love if over time it becomes a transactional game of give and take to get toward a commitment to marry — which is a security commitment.
A loving relationship should be optimized for pure desire and wanting, with no societal, family and financial motivations which tend to drive the decision points to get married. This mostly happens without us realizing it — calling it love when it’s a different motivation.
This requires high emotional intelligence, self esteem, feeling deserved of love and most importantly, actually believing it’s the best way to attract someone, and most importantly, keep them attracted over the course of a life time.
I was chatting with my prudish girl pal about her mid thirties singledom and I half jokingly told her ‘why don’t you just sleep with him and see what happens’?
And no, I’m not on some quest to get women to sleep with men more. Hear me out.
She said: ‘no way I don’t want to give up my self respect’. There are a few other context points that I won’t mention, but she was definitely of the thought process: “I’ll sleep with him if he gives me what I want.”
That right there signals that she perceives the relationship as transactional which isn’t about genuine desire and want which then just ultimately becomes this long game of ‘s/he who cares less wins’.
That’s not the best precedent to set in a relationship, especially early on.
Genuine desire and inner want, for it’s own sake and for your own self is how you take action with your man.
Here are 12 principles, which if you choose to adapt, live by, that will make him want to lock you down.
*side note, I’m not a doctor though have seen many good ones :) Though you can judge for yourself ultimately, I’d bet most psychiatrists/philosophers/psychologists/therapists would agree with most of these principles with some case by case nuance.
1. Your Framework Needs to Be To Get Him Hooked On You, Not ‘Give In To Me’ Like So Many Relationships
So many of you are waiting and pushing him to give in. This isn’t attractive to him and it doesn’t make you feel attractive.
Remember the relationship only starts at marriage and people and relationships evolve a heck of a whole lot over time.
You want him to want to lock you down because he really likes your company, and ultimately, given marriage is still the goal here, needs to be inspired (convince himself) he needs to come to a decision point.
You want him to arrive at this decision point on his own. They rarely do if you push.
It’s about how you take action and behave which leads to your unconscious signaling which illicits behavior and attraction back — which we’ll get to later.
But for now, you want him to get addicted to you.
And if applicable, get over the negative association or belief that that’s bad.
Everything you do each day can arguably be an addiction.
Addicted to your laptop or smart phone? Brushing your teeth (every day) You get the point.
2. Do What You Want, When You Want, For Yourself, and Unapologetically
Live for yourself and say what’s on your mind for yourself. This signals you’re a prize to be won.
You never say this directly, ever.
You need to indirectly communicate in the way you handle yourself, take action and invest emotionally etc.
A general attitude of ‘not giving a f — k’ is helpful.
3. Acknowledge and Establishing Clear Roles Helps But Isn’t Mandatory (please read before yelling about this)
Distinguishing clear lines just make things simple.
Do you like being the follower or being the boss?
There are plenty of men who want one or the other (whether they know it or not).
Not mandatory but it’s always a bit more complicated to walk the line between the two if there’s overlap in roles.
It’s like business partners on a large team who’s roles overlap.
If there are two finance guys, naturally they’ll compete and have different opinions on things.
Case in point, my business partner and I get a long great because I’m a start up/marketing/revenue man and he’s a private equity/finance operations man.
Same principle different context.
This is basically the cost/benefit of having one person be significantly older than the other.
The new male French president who’s 39, has his 64 year old wife.
Do you think they’d have the same communication on the same issues if they were the same age?
It’s clear what she’s better at and what he’s better at. This makes communicating simple and smoother.
Again, not required, but if there’s a tide, I always take it.
4. Live In Your Own World, Not His by ‘Owning Your Frame’
Own your frame (also see principle 1 and 2) and have him ‘live in your world’.
Owning your frame is about setting the tone and controlling reactions/responses. If you’re reacting to him, you’re in his frame.
If he’s reacting to you, you own the frame. This is why being ‘non-reactive’ drives people crazy. It’s a loss of local power (within that conversation).
Owning your frame signals that you’re on your own ride, and are looking for someone awesome to come on it.
This skill is hard to master and work on it as if you’re life depended on it. I do myself. It’s one of the keystones to high self-esteem and overall control of one’s communication and emotions.
You can still be nice, lady like (or however you want to be) and maintain your frame. Again it’s about action and indirect signaling.
Case in point you call him and ask: “what are you up to?”
Him: “oh nothing I think I’m going out with a buddy tonight”
You: “Join me for this show it’s my favorite and it would be fun if we went (emphasis and focus on the experience itself).
Him 2: “Oh, cool. Thanks. Yea let me think about it.”
You scenario 1: “Um, yea let me think about it (fun slight neg). Haha ok it’s not a big decision just think about it now for 10 seconds and decide. (depending on timeline here it’s tonight).”
or
You scenario 2: “Ok text me yes or no in the next 15 minutes (or day etc) because I’d like to go with someone.
Don’t do the meek “ok yea no worries just let me know anytime” thing.
Frame it in a way that it’s a great opportunity to have fun.
The way you say it will communicate the belief, confidence and level of self esteem you have in yourself.
Try increasing your energy and learn how to harness emotion.
These are the main skills these principles are trying to teach.
You’re doing what you want, and want him because you genuinely want and desire his company and presence, in that moment in time.
You appreciate the experience for it’s own sake. This is powerful and takes transformation of yourself to embrace and own.
It’s not transactional by any means.
5. Eliminate Pride (This is harder than you think)
Pride is a relationship killer. How often have you not taken action out of pride. I did a ton and am getting closer to mastering this with a lot of work.
I like Dr. David Hawkins’ book on Pride called ‘Letting Go’.
You can say anything to anyone in the right way and not lose pride no matter whatever the outcome if you own it and let go of your pride.
Pride and ego make us super sensitive. The best know how to roll with rejection like it’s nothing which is hard.
The moment you find yourself completely comfortable asking him out or pushing him for sex or basically doing whatever you want without flinching about the response, you’ve won the battle of ‘self’ and are a master of your emotions.
Getting this done effectively requires playing the field and having a lot of options to create the mindset of abundance and control of tone and emotional investment to effectively communicate.
Read Robert Greene’s Mastery, The Art of Seduction and the 48 Laws of Power. Greene is a genius in dissecting all these topics and these three books are great perspectives.
Here’s one of my favorite quotes in the context of mastering your work:
Per the above Greene quote, you need to master yourself and live this to make it successful.
That very well may be the most profound goal you should strive to hit and take away from this whole article.
6. Don’t Act, Become
Principles for anything are meaningless if they aren’t applied.
Applying principals takes serious discipline and work.
It helps if you’re already a disciplined knowledge athlete, but it’s a total transformation that requires sacrifice and internal changes and a lot of mental work.
You basically need to change how you think, what you believe and how you act (if you want to do this stuff and it isn’t you yet).
It’s not going to appear by reading an article, it takes work.
7. Change Who Your Friends Are
I’ll likely get slack for this but the point isn’t to ditch your friends. The point is that your environment affects what you become.
Hangout with women who are confident and don’t complain about not finding the right man etc. Everyone can find someone. It’s not even about finding ‘the one’.
There is no ‘one’. It’s finding one of the millions who want to make it work at the right time.
It’s thinking about it as a practical problem that needs to get solved so just do it.
As with everything else, the devils in the execution, which requires fierce discipline and commitment but is surprisingly simple if believed in and applied.
There’s a reason why there are happily married couples that work.
They’re confident and practical about who they match with and ask for what they want.
Hangout with them and notice what they have in common.
Ask me in the comments if you need more clarification.
8. Don’t Be Prude — Have Sex Because You Want To, For Yourself
It’s not attractive ‘giving up sex’. It is attractive to have sex because you want to, do what you want after and keep on moving about your day and life as though it’s not a big deal.
Emotional investing too much is what hurts people in the short term on both sides.
If marriage is your goal, ask yourself who among your friends is married?
Is it the experienced girl in college, or the more ‘prude’ one.
I’ve found the experienced one in college wins every time at least from what I’ve seen.
Not to say you were one or the other always but it’s the women who have experience with men who know what makes them tick.
An ex from college who was known to date around had no problem getting married and fast even after several engagements didn’t work.
Mindset was never ‘they never work out’.
She would bounce right back and go after her men with confidence. I knew she’d never have a problem.
She was ‘hot’ because she believed in herself.
Meanwhile, her sister who was more prude/transactional about it, and didn’t experience any boyfriends in college, can’t find a husband (I know she wants to get married) now and still wants to be married (and is still a prude and single).
My advice to her, go out and experience men but most importantly, the mental work required to change belief systems around ‘giving up’ sex etc. and transaction in relationships is a hard one to break.
9. S/he Who Cares Less Wins — So Do The Things That Naturally Make You Care Less
Date more people.
Don’t emotionally invest so much at the beginning and acknowledge the game get’s played well beyond even when you get into the ‘comfort zone’ of a relationship.
Behavior and reactions are mostly instinctual and unconscious.
Naturally, if you believe you have more options and tons of abundance, you’ll invest attention and energy accordingly.
It’s not about ‘not getting emotional’ or ‘not committing’ in the way many will likely mis-read the piece and get pissed from the line.
It’s about recognizing we illicit behavior from one another based on our thoughts/energy invested and taking ownership and responsibility in illiciting the behavior we want to illicit.
If he says or acts a certain way you don’t like, don’t let him off the hook, but also recognize you played a role in bringing that out of him.
You’re training each other.
This is subtle and in every day conversation.
10. Acknowledge That Even In A Long Term Relationships, The Game Always ‘Gets Played’ Because It’s Invisible
95% of behavior is the result of your subconscious programming. Your programming is basically you’re deeply held beliefs and our primal wiring that’s evolved over the course of time (long long time).
This is why many of the ‘old world’ things that we’ve intellectually accepted today aren’t actually acted out and decisions are still made in an old world fashion.
Confident we’ll make this progress we all want in generations to come. But for now, old primal forces are very much alive.
11. Think In Terms of Market Frameworks
Not in terms of money markets of course but the fact is, people matching based on geography, age etc. has market forcing effects to contend with.
It’s matching needs like anything else.
This isn’t some backward way of thinking, it’s practical and even your most liberal feminist probably does it without knowing it (I know many who do).
For the people who are balking at this, dig deep and ask yourself why you’ve chosen your mate. Then ask why on the same question five times.
Ie. I’ve chosen Steve because he’s nice and I love him. Ok, why?
Because he’s a happy person and treats me well. Ok, why?
Because he’s successful and was raised by good parents. Ok, why?
Because he’s happy with his job and his health and his family is proud of him and that satisfies him.
Ok, but why? Because he’s able to realize his potential financially, physically and emotionally — thereby able to attract the life partner that he wants.
Then think about the last time you got in a fight, then consider if you would have put up with that if he was an employed janitor in lieu of an engineer.
Or if whatever story you told yourself about him (‘cool artist’ etc.) that gave him enough status (you probably don’t consider it status) to make his value reach your expectations and that of your family.
Would that change anything? If so, what?
It’s less of a financial status thing but more about values/beliefs aligning so not so much focused on the job titles.
I know millionaire janitors and broke engineers who work too hard and live scarce lives.
But you get the point and ask me in the comments if need further clarification.
12. Another Unconscious Force — Realize Sex Is About Power, Not Sex
Everything in the world is about sex, except sex. — Oscar Wilde
Isn’t it crazy that basically every action we take outside of relationships is to get sex to pro-create, but then getting to sex and the act itself isn’t at all about pro-creation?
“The thing women must do to rise to power is to redefine their femininity. Once, power was considered a masculine attribute. In fact, power has no sex” — Katherine Graham
Adopting these principles may require an internal revolution for many of you.
Don’t be scared of it! In fact, your willingness to embrace it for growth determines how close/far away you are to taking on the challenge.
What’s your overall willingness on a scale of 1–10 to make game changing changes? Working on that number (whether it’s for relationships or anything else in life) is a great place to start and perhaps some of these principles can help you get there.
Thanks for reading. Please recommend the post if you got this far. My mission is to help all with the learning and experience I learn. Wrote this piece for fun after an interesting conversation at dinner last night! Warmly, Aram PS — ask me anything in the comments I’d love to hear.
