LTR and MLTR tips: do you want a relationship or a few?

Over the past year, I've gathered a lot of knowledge and experience with relationships. It's the F phase of the ABCs. It's the skill that requires your mastery most if you want long-term happiness. I'll be posting all my tips and notes here. It will take me a long time to type this all out. I'll continue adding topics to write about. And I have many, many topics to discuss. Although I'm still learning myself, I definitely feel like I have a ton to share. Hope you enjoy!

Please feel free to discuss or suggest topics to discuss. If you feel like you have content to share yourself, please feel free to write it out! I reserve the right to paraphrase or summarize your post for readability's sake, I will add it to the Table of Contents, and I will credit you with the post.

Table of Contents
Go to the annotated page number of the thread to find the post. Topics with a page number are completed posts. Topics without page numbers have yet to be written, but are in my queue. Queued topics will be continuously added to my Table of Contents.

Rule #1 of relationships
Page 1

Most prevalent phenomenon of relationships
Page 1

Breakups

Dating perspectives
Being the relationship gatekeeper, and why women think men are assholes: Page 1
Knowing what you want and what the girl wants: Page 2
Priorities: Page 1
What makes you or doesn't make you a slut

Defining the relationship (DTR)
DTR: being specific
DTR: timing

Exclusivity
Exclusivity before sex, or sex before exclusivity: Page 1
How to tell a girl you don't want to be exclusive: Page 1
How to approach exclusivity like an alpha male

Expectations

Red flags and bad signs
Drama queens
Gold diggers
Heavy compromisers: Page 2
Man-eaters
Psycho-bitches
Serial monogamists: Page 2
Virgins: Page 1

Sex
Becoming good at sex: Page 2
Increasing a girl's sex drive
Sex in the long run: Page 2
Why you need to be good at sex: Page 2

Trust
Actions speak louder than words
Earn or deserve

Types of relationships and dating statuses
Casual girlfriend
Coasting: Page 2
Friend with benefits
Friend with "some" benefits
Fuck buddy
Inexclusive girlfriend
Serious girlfriend

What not to do

Rule #1 of relationships

NEVER LIE. EVER. ALWAYS TELL THE TRUTH. ALWAYS.

That is the number one rule of relationships in its simplest form.

The reason: The foundation of relationships consists of trust primarily. It also includes attraction and compatibility, others too. But the main foundation is trust. You can carry out a relationship without attraction. You can also do it without compatibility. You can even potentially do it without sex. None of those last hypothetical relationships are ideal. But they're possibilities. But a relationship without trust? Impossible. Trust is the only absolute requirement in a relationship.

Ideal form of trust: You should volunteer all information that an impartial jury would think is important for the girl to know. Do you want to be inexclusive? The girl should know. Did your last STD screen turn out poorly? The girl should know. Do you want to take your relationship further? The girl should know. Do you think the relationship can't escalate further, though the girl would like it to? The girl should know. In all these situations, you should be willing to VOLUNTEER that information to the girl. In other words, you should be willing to tell her this information without her prompting you. But keep in mind: an impartial jury (a group of people, with varied opinions, from an impartial third party) should agree that the information is important for the girl to know.

What the ideal form of trust is NOT: Ideal trust is NOT the "truth, whole truth, and nothing but the truth." It should be the truth and nothing but the truth. But the whole truth isn't always necessary. Let's say you have three MLTRs. All three of the girls should already know that you're inexclusive, and they should agree. However, you don't need to feel compelled to update them all on what's going on with your other girls. You can if you want. But the girl probably doesn't want to know. My rule of thumb to see which parts of the truth are unnecessary to volunteer to the girl is simple: if the girl probably doesn't want to know, then do not volunteer it.

However, if the girl asks, you should be ready to tell her!

I've talked a lot about earning the girl's trust. But the girl needs to earn your trust too. The girl needs to know that you hold her to the same standards of trust and responsible voluntary disclosure to which you hold yourself. If you ask a girl an important question and she refuses to answer, then she needs to be punished in some way. Punishment is a different but equally important post (as of this writing, it hasn't been written yet).

Remember these things about trust:
- Trust takes a long time to build
- Trust can be broken in a very short amount of time
- If trust is broken, trust takes even longer to rebuild
- Trust is not given or exchanged or deserved -- it is earned
- A girl's trust is your privilege, not your right; your trust is a girl's privilege, not her right

Most prevalent phenomenon of relationships

Mutual attraction is easy. Mutual compatibility is hard.

As popularly accepted by the pickup community and taught by pickup instructors, attraction for males is something which can be improved over time. It's the reason we took bootcamps. However, attraction is the easy part. And unfortunately, it's among the least influential things to determine how far a relationship can go.

Attraction includes things like confidence, dominance, being a good conversationalist, having a sense of humor, and grooming. It's all the things you learn in a bootcamp.

Compatibility includes things like anger management, conflict resolution, life goals, short-term desires, maturity, personal interests, values, and lifestyle. Some of these things are mentioned in bootcamps. Many are not.

Relationships almost all start because of attraction. But they typically end because of incompatibility, not lack of attraction. In my unqualified opinion, most American marriages are driven by attraction. Then, 50% of marriages in America will end in divorce, probably driven by incompatibility.

So successful relationships have not only attraction, but compatibility. A girl who is compatible will have long-term potential.

Unfortunately, the only way to tell if a girl has long-term potential is to be with her for a long time. Put simply, you can gauge compatibility only after a long time with the girl. First impressions will never tell you anything meaningful about compatibility.

I'll leave it up to you to decide what you want to consider for compatibility. But to give you an example, here are some things that I find to see if a girl is compatible with me:
- Does she want the same thing out of me as I want out of her?
- Does she have her own job and live at her own apartment?
- Does she have some of the same core values that I have?
- Will she be in my city for the foreseeable future?
- Do we like doing similar things for fun? Do we have similar interests?
- Will she prioritize me at the same level that I prioritize her?

How to tell a girl you don't want to be exclusive

This is for those of you who want MLTRs, or to be able to continue sarging while seeing at least one girl regularly.

I want to discuss two things here: timing and the message. Timing is when in the dating process you tell the girl you don't want to be exclusive. The message is what exactly you'll say to the girl when you say you don't want to be exclusive.

Timing: Generally, soon after the first time you have sex with the girl. There are some exceptions, and those girls will make themselves known. Otherwise, I personally feel that we're both most comfortable doing this shortly after the first hookup. This is "defining the relationship," or DTR-ing. "Shortly after" can mean the next date or two, maybe three. It's your call. Whatever feels comfortable. Or rather, whatever feels least uncomfortable, since it's never a fun discussion. But it should be relatively early in the dating process. The point is to manage her expectations as well as your own, so that neither of you are deceived or hurt. The point is also to establish trust and to waste nobody's time, in case post-DTR you find that you're incompatible.

Alternatively, you can just not bring up exclusivity at all. You can let the girl bring it up. Personally, I suggest you never do this for girls whom you believe might potentially be your girlfriend. [EDIT] If you opt to not bring it up, then the proper assumption on both sides is that the other person is allowed to see other people. If the girl is upset about you seeing other girls but you haven't discussed exclusivity, say something along the lines of, "Oh, I didn't realize we were going steady..." Credit to William for this line. Remember: exclusivity is something that must be discussed and earned. If a girl assumes exclusivity from the beginning, she's an idiot or inexperienced.

The message: Generally, just tell her the real reason why you don't want to be exclusive. Sounds simple, but it's not. You need to think about this thoroughly. You need to explain the reasoning behind why you don't want to be exclusive. If a girl asks to be exclusive, and you say no, but you fumble on the reasoning, then the girl will lose a lot of trust, and you might lose her when you didn't have to.

Be honest with her. If you only want sex, tell her, but tell her why. Don't be ashamed. If the girl isn't down, then that's fine. Part ways and be accepting like a true alpha male.

Currently, when I tell a girl I don't want to be exclusive, I tell her the truth: I don't know you well enough to make that kind of commitment or investment. Exclusivity is a big deal. The next time I'm exclusive with a girl, she will be my exclusive girlfriend, somebody I can potentially and realistically see myself marrying, and hopefully the girl will look at me the same way. We need to get to know each other extremely well. I need to know that you'll prioritize me the same way I prioritize you. We need to have had at least one very major argument and resolved it in a way that we both liked. We need to trust one another a lot. I need to trust that you won't wake up one morning and randomly decide that you don't want to be with me anymore.

Thumbs up. My seal of approval.

Thanks, JT!

Priorities

Let's say your girlfriend is your top priority. But you are not your girlfriend's top priority. This will lead to your own unhappiness. It might even lead to the end of the relationship. For a relationship to be satisfying for both parties, the man and woman must prioritize one another at comparable levels. The relationship must be at the same priority level for both parties.

If you care more about the relationship than the girl, watch out. You are positioning yourself to be a beta male. It's not a bad thing to care about the relationship. But you'll be more easily manipulated. And allowing yourself to be manipulated or stepped on is what would make you a beta male. Be careful if you're in this situation.

If the girl cares more about the relationship than you, be sure to manage her expectations. Don't just string her along. That makes you an asshole. A truly confident alpha male will not be ashamed to tell a girl where she stands with him.

The most sustainable relationships are also ones where both sides prioritize each other equally. A serious relationship works out well when the girl is the guy's top priority and vice versa. A casual fuck buddy relationship works out well when the girl is willing to hook up with the guy ever week or two and otherwise doesn't want to think about or talk with the guy, and vice versa.

Be cognizant of how you and the girl prioritize one another. You can avoid a lot of conflict, heartbreak, and trauma by doing so. You'll know exactly how to act for yourself, the girl, and the relationship.

Being the relationship gatekeeper, and why women think men are assholes

The natural order of dating is that women are the gatekeepers to sex, but men are the gatekeepers to relationships. Women are biologically engineered to be very selective with sex. Men are biologically engineered to be very selective with relationships. This clash between male and female biological engineering leads to men and women becoming famously and constantly misunderstanding of one another.

With a pickup bootcamp, you learn how to satisfy the gatekeepers of sex, the women. You chase the women. Once you've moved beyond sex, the next step is the relationship. This is no longer the woman's domain. This is your domain. Now, they are chasing you. At this point, if the woman wants a relationship with you, she must prove that she's worth your time, your energy, or even your exclusivity.

The woman is no longer the one sitting back and being chased. You are.

If you're a true alpha male, then you should have high standards for your women. If you're a true alpha male, then you've earned the privilege to have such high standards in the first place. If the women don't meet your standards, ditch them. Find new ones. The paucity of competing alpha males means that you can always find more options without much issue.

This is why women tend to think men are assholes.

They sit back and allow themselves to be chased. They know men want sex. Eventually, maybe they'll reward men with sex. The stronger the male, the higher the attraction that she'll have for the male. And when I say stronger, I mean strength in all ways, not just physical. The thing is, a small minority of strong guys get the large majority of the pussy. These guys always have options and high standards.

When women find these high-quality men, they sometimes decide they want an exclusive relationship with them. However, they don't always realize that they are in fact the ones who must chase now. They must prove they're worth the relationship for the men.

Women are not accustomed to chasing. They spend 99% of their time with men being chased rather than chasing. So they fuck up. They haven't done as much work to make themselves as desirable as an alpha male probably has. They usually don't have to anyway. They fuck up, lose the guy, then get pissed off. It's the guy's fault. He only wanted sex. All men only want sex. They all suck. Men! Fucking men!

So, women tend to think men are assholes because they usually haven't earned exclusivity or otherwise serious feelings from men. Honestly, it could be the man's fault. Maybe he was immature or a liar. But if it happens consistently with the woman, it's probably her fault for not proving that she's a worthy girlfriend.

Keep this in mind. You, the man, are the gatekeeper to the relationship.

Exclusivity before sex, or sex before exclusivity

Sex comes before exclusivity always.

Some girls will require you to be exclusive with her before they permit sex. That's bullshit. Here are a few reasons why:

(1) Exclusivity is your reward to a girl for being proven girlfriend material. It's up to you to decide what "proven girlfriend material" means. But if you have higher standards in your girlfriend, that means your standards for exclusivity should be proportionately higher as well.

(2) The girl hasn't proven that she'll give you satisfying sex. Hypothetically let's say you enter an exclusive relationship because the girl wouldn't permit sex otherwise. In the less preferable cases, she could be terrible in bed. She could have a bad sex drive and never want to have sex with you. She could withhold sex while she's angry with you. She could withhold sex to passive aggressively send you a message. She could withhold sex to manipulate you in any way. The girl needs to prove that she cares to sexually satisfy you consistently.

(3) You are the gatekeeper to the relationship, not her. By submitting to her wishes here, you set the tone to allow yourself to be stepped on and walked over.

Virgins

Virgins are dangerous not because they are inexperienced or have never had sex. They are dangerous for the REASONS why they've never had sex.

Admittedly, some girls are virgins for reasons beyond their control, and they regret their virginities. They're a little socially awkward and can't encourage a guy to close the deal. Or they're not pretty. Or they've been unlucky and only dated extremely pathetic beta males. These girls WANT to have sex. But they've just been incredibly unlucky.

However, in my wild, unsubstantiated estimation, the above cases of virgins are uncommon. The virgins which raise red flags fastest are the ones which are attractive, socially lubricated, and actively pursued by men. To date, I've briefly dated two virgins of this type. I'm proud to say that I'm the first to finger Virgin #1, and the first to give an orgasm to Virgin #2. However, these girls were otherwise huge wastes of time. They both were virgins because of a combination of a sexually conservative upbringing (destructive sexual programming in their heads) and a phobia of commitment. Both these girls never had serious relationships in their entire lives.

If a girl tells you she's a virgin, you might want to consider finding out why. If she's DTF for a ONS, then there's no need to ask. If you're okay with it, then go for it. But if you're interested in an actual exclusive relationship with one, as I was with both virgins mentioned above, then you'll likely be disappointed.

They're virgins for a good reason. They choose to be. They don't like commitment. And they're incapable of harboring deep feelings for a guy. They need to grow up a bit if you want a relationship. Watch out and manage your expectations.