Whenever I come across dating/relationship advice from the “How to date/sleep with beautiful women” I want to hurl. Not because I think “This is so effective it’s unfair”. No, if it was effective that would mean more money and sex for me, but no, it’s just crap. The triggers that are used rely on poor self-esteem, a need for validation, and a need to fill one’s head with fantasies when reality is TOO SCARY. The triggers manosphere advice you to use are purposefully designed to trigger a narcissistic response. They won’t work on healthy women, and won’t lead into healthy relationships.

Narcissistic people, men, and women, cannot handle reality. AT ALL. They live in a fantasy world that they craft to fool themselves into believing they’re doing OK/well/great/amazing depending on how good directors they are. The better they direct, (manipulate) the better they’re doing. The difference to a healthy person is the lack of awareness of how much they are HIDING. A narcissist doesn’t feel like they’re hiding anything – their true feelings don’t mean anything to them, and they don’t believe feelings matter to anyone else, either. If they hear you think your feelings matter, they laugh at you thinking you think they are naive and stupid enough to buy that kinda crap.

Now. Let’s break down why this dating advice from the manosphere works, and why it does not:

Playing hard-to-get.

Narcissists want a status hike in their relationships. If they feel they are already high-status enough, they believe they must coach themselves a spouse. (Normal people want to find their equal, their perfect match.) When you play hard to get, you signal to a narcissist that you consider yourself better than them, and that’s why they should be interested in you and you coach-you-while-I-fuck-you -program. They also respond to real rejection in the same way, but if you’re faking it, they’re also seeing that as a positive thing; you can control yourself around them, which means you’re at least a little better than them, and that means you’re an opportunity.

To healthy women, being rejected is not a good sign. If they have any two-way feelings about you, they’re going to decide you’re too much trouble to pin down and let you be. Even if they were head over heels in love with you, this will certainly put them on pause, and consider whether you like them at all, and again, they may test the ice for a while before deciding nah, you’re not interested and move onto someone who is.

Not answering calls or texts for a while “to build intrigue”

Narcissists love silent and quiet people. LOVE THEM. The less you talk, the more room you leave for their fantasies about you. The more you talk, the harder you make it for them to control the narrative of your personality.

When you don’t get back to them for a day or two, that gives them the opportunity to create a fantasy about what you do when you’re not there. When you explain where you were, they can imagine you’re lying, because you know, they like their version better.

Fitness and finances

While both normal women and narcissistic women prefer men who are fit and financially stable, these things do not come as the FIRST qualifier for a normal woman. A normal woman will qualify you by your character and sex appeal, your sense of humor and conversation, NOT by your finances or fitness level, and to a normal woman your finances and fitness is only a MINOR boost to your sex appeal. MINOR. Dispensable even. A normal woman who is financially capable of taking care of the man who she loves will do it without hesitation.

Out of the two, fitness is more important to a normal woman. Finances need to be MANAGEABLE for most women, but normal women don’t need more than to be reliably off the street and have their kids be fed.

Be the leader, the prize, the qualifier

Normal women look for an equal partner. Narcissistic women look for a hierarchy. Narcissistic people DO NOT UNDERSTAND the concept of an equal relationship. They want a leader in parenting, in families, in friendships, and definitely in love relationships.

Normal women want equality – there may be a difference in WHERE you rule and where I rule, but they do “switch.” “You rule the night, I rule the day,” if you catch my meaning. A normal woman IS CONCERNED about you getting what you want and need out of the relationship, not just her. To a narcissistic woman, what you want or need is irrelevant if she can have you without contemplating your happiness she’s more than satisfied with that arrangement; a normal woman is not. She needs to know she has the ability to make you happy.

Play the numbers game.

It is a very narcissistic approach to relationships to have as many as you can and hope that something sticks. No. While you can rake up any number you NEED TO to find the right one, there is a difference to finding one that you can coax to stay and finding the Right One. (The latter will need a higher body count I figure.)

A narcissist has NO IDEA what it means to look for a soulmate or Mr. Right. If you ask a woman to describe Mr. Right, a narcissist will include an income figure or some other irrelevant factor. A normal woman will maybe stutter something about “sexy” and maybe even tell you what that means, getting a bit more elaborate in a chat or email.

Be emotionally stable.

LOL. Being in a relationship with a narcissist one of you has to be an adult, and she certainly cannot manage that feat…

Narcissists are truly children in an adult body, ranging from emotional maturity from 3 (severe narcissism) to 15 (mild narcissism) by my gut. So prepping yourself to be in a relationship with a narcissist it’s much like prepping to be a father with a fuck right. And like with all adolescents, all sex should be done between them, not between adults and children. The responsible thing is to avoid sexual relationships with narcissistic women at all costs.

Avoid Simping

This is actually a good piece of advice. Still, simping is something normal men do to avoid narcissistic women’s rage and wrath. Mind you, normal women can simp a man a bit at times. That’s no more abnormal than when normal men do it, but if you want a normal woman, simping is a better approach than aggression and dominance. Simping turns women off, but if a woman can see your worth despite you simping to them, you must be Mr. Right.

(And don’t worry. Even Brad Pitt simps to narcissistic bitches sometimes. Well. Ange.)

Pay attention to these truths.

A narcissistic woman thinks all people want is to look acceptable/admirable.

Narcissistic people are concerned about the look of the relationship rather than the contents of it. They want to know you enough to know what to hide from the outside world and what to flaunt. They don’t care what you feel, they believe that if they help you look right, they’ve fulfilled their duty toward you. Narcissists believe a front is all anyone wants out of a public (my mom and dad know of it) relationship.

(If you want some good sex, make sure a narcissistic woman has the opportunity to go wild where someone she wants to “top” can hear her, you know? At least she’ll put in the work… Even if the connection is non-existent as always.)

Narcissists are conformists. They conform to an ideal whether they understand it or not.

Narcissists are eager to please in a lot of ways. If you have good self-esteem and especially if you have a lot of admirers or friends or both, they will believe you are the holder of the ideal, the secret. If they believe you will share the secret with them, they will conform to anything you want 50 Shades of Gray style. They don’t need to understand what you want, the reasons why you want it, they don’t need to understand your moral code or your value system, if you explain the technicalities of your expectations to them.

Try to explain the actual values and why you hold them important, and they believe you’re bullshitting them. They do not believe in authentic virtue. Therefore, just because a woman is maybe a stand-up, good Christian, and a great member of society in every measurable way doesn’t mean she’s not a narcissist.

Does she understand virtue? If not, she’s a narcissist. Does she ever watch public self-help videos or tutorials? No? Why? Because she doesn’t believe the secret is ever publically shared. You need to fuck for it.

Narcissists want emotions, just not any of the real ones.

There’s a lot of negative feelings that narcissists want to avoid. They resort to fantasy all the time. That also includes drama and creating drama for the sake of drama because that’s emotional and BIG. They pick a fight, cause relationship breakups and upset, just for the sake of drama, and avoid ever stepping into what is actually real.

They want stuff that makes them look virtuous and admirable and are not above twisting your view on reality to make their illusions seem real to you, too.

Narcissists cannot handle real emotions – particularly their own.

Narcissistic people will do anything to handle their real emotions. They’ll work their butt off to create drama to replace any real emotions that try to bubble up – in you, but themselves in particular. To a narcissist, emotions are merely a sign of being “mentally disturbed”, you know, because you have emotions sometimes that disturb you, so therefore, your emotions signal the “fact” you’re “mentally disturbed.”

When you talk to them about your emotions, it’s like giving them a laundry list of shit they need to manage. MANAGE. Not understand, but to help you bottle back up and especially hide from outsiders. IF THEY LOVE YOU, which is possible, they believe that the loving thing to do is to help you never to bring up your emotions and feelings again, and to make sure outsiders will never see you as an emotional being ever again.

In turn, you should never bring up their real emotions to them. That would be very unkind of you.

Love bombing.

Normal people, when they fall in love, will love to bomb you. They will do this because they’re RELIEVED to find someone who understands them. What a narcissist does, however, is that they try to lift you to a pedestal or help you put them on a pedestal by signaling to you why you should love bomb them AS YOUR SUPERIOR. Narcissists CAN, however, fall in love with someone better than them and frequently do, and now YOUR JOB is to make them your equal. In fact, narcissists may see relationships only worthy if there is an inequality in it; it’s a way to socially climb… Learn, if you’re being kind about it. One way or another.

Because normal people love to bomb each other when they fall in love, it works as a way to lure in a normal person. This is why your advice on manosphere advice you NOT TO DO THIS, because to a narcissistic woman, being love-bombed means that they are about to become THE TEACHER, not the student they wish to be. They don’t want to take care of YOU, they want to optimally find a man who will make them better.

However, NORMAL WOMEN want you to be excited about having met them because you’ve found someone you can authentically love. If you avoid love bombing them, they’ll conclude you’re not interested and they should probably find someone else.

Blank slate.

Avoid beautiful women who do not have a laundry list of “this is what I want” in a relationship.

Yes. People ARE complicated. Blank-slate people are easy. The problem with blank slate (blank dating profile) people is that they don’t want to sign up to anything before they meet the person they want to pretend to be alike. They are not “private” they are ready to become a fake version of whatever you wish them to be.

“Me too” is a very sexy, romantic pair of words, but it is also the EASIEST thing to fake in a new relationship as long as you remember what you me tooed. (Having a chat log helps, tho.) Therefore, you WANT a woman with a long list of “stop expecting this” and “stop doing this” who have annoyances and reasons to reject you, and accept another… But only if you already neatly fit the description of the man she’s looking for.

Their list may seem narcissistic to those who are used to ball-busting women, but no. They want a man who ALREADY FITS the description. Narcissists want someone who is easy to mold or willing to mold them into their ideal woman… On the VERY surface level, being the problem, considering you cannot ever alter someone’s feelings, particularly someone who doesn’t want to admit they exist out of fear of that meaning they’re mentally disturbed.

Dark Empath

Just because someone understands you and your problems isn’t necessarily a good sign unless it’s accompanied by “me too!” A narcissist will often gleefully accept your plea for help; because they will be able to use that as a way to remind you how you got to the point you are now and how you owe them. Empathy isn’t really for romantic relationships – sympathy is: “we’re alike, we understand each other” not “I am superior to you, I am the healthy one, but I feel empathy toward you.”

Sympathy: we’re alike, we’re similar, we’re in the same boat.

Empathy: we’re nothing alike, we’re dissimilar, we’re not in the same situation, but I feel your pain.

While empathy is the more highly advanced relationship skill, it can also be ‘dark empathy’, used to invalidate you, manipulate you, and to enslave you.

What they say behind your back.

Narcissists do not play fair.

Have you ever seen two women you’re interested in talking to each other? YOU CAN BET YOUR LUCKY UNDERPANTS on a narcissist using this connection to invalidate the other woman as a competitor for your affection.

Unattractive narcissistic women will try to paint attractive women as morally corrupt or manipulative, even when they are not. Attractive narcissists will play whatever angle they can: “She’s mean to me, she’s cruel…” perhaps blowing something minor way out of proportion, adding drama, flaring up situations purposefully and when the shit hits the fan, act all innocent like they have no idea what that crazy bitch is talking about.

NORMALLY women are not super eager to meet the women in your life too soon into the relationship. A narcissist, however, wants to get their hands on your friends as fast as they can – your female friends especially so they can start leashing them to their use, or eliminating them as problems. They will appear super friendly at first… Honey is sweet to them, but it’s only the buttering up stage.

They seem attractively self-confident.

Narcissists come off very self-confident without fail. This is because they are not playing as themselves, they’re playing a character and they are also free to use underhanded methods which usually work in their favor. They believe they are good at relationships because they have a skill of manipulation down pat.

NORMAL PEOPLE, no matter who they are, are not 100% self-confident. They worry about what other people might think of them. Does he love me or does he just want sex with me? To a narcissist, your feelings make 0 difference. What they care about is are they going to be able to make you say your lines in the play that they’re directing. In fact, if they EVER use the phrase: “how do I make you/men/my friend do X” you’re talking to a narcissist.

Do they accept a non-factual or poorly researched compliment or directions?

You know “women” like compliments. Normal women don’t like fake compliments, however. Women like men who take control, but they don’t like men who direct them in random places. (Narcissistic women will give you a destination and expect you to drive them, figuratively speaking.)

Now. If you compliment a woman in a way that is OBVIOUSLY false, will she accept it? If she looks like rubbish when she wakes up or has migraines or whatever, and you tell her she looks amazing, will she accept it with pleasure or laugh or roll her eyes? A normal woman might find it funny that a man would see her as beautiful in that state, but a narcissistic woman might praise you for “knowing what to say.”

Healthy beautiful women can have (ugly) narcissistic friends. Don’t confuse the two.

If you are interested in a woman, don’t go asking her friends what she’s like. There’s a good chance a good woman has narcissistic friends especially if she’s smart and beautiful. Smart, beautiful women are like narcissistic cat nip for other women, without them being narcissistic. It may take a woman forever to realize this.

Also, an average-looking woman doesn’t even believe in the existence of narcissistic women, or they believe they’re all gorgeous. Why? They do not bother the narcissistic woman, and they are used only as a way to make the narcissist look virtuous; they don’t need to be competed against, they just need to be recipients of charitable attention.

Also, just because a woman is modest-looking doesn’t AT ALL mean she can’t be a narcissist. It also doesn’t mean that she’s not glued to the side of a hot healthy woman. (Logic? The hot one reels in the men. The modest-looking one waits for the surplus to land in her lap. While the men are hoping for the good-looking one to make up her mind about who she wants, the unattractive narcissist can play them against the good-looking women by lies and poorly quoted things they say, convincing you you’d be happier with them than the “obviously narcissistic” hottie.)

He says “the right thing.”

Now, this is something narcissistic women will mean in a very different sense than normal women do. A narcissistic woman wants you to be like a character in a romantic comedy or a drama, and say your lines perfectly. A normal woman wishes, but doesn’t expect, you to know what to say when she’s upset or having a bad day and you know exactly how to uplift her mood.

If you take a woman out on a date and act like the biggest load of stereotypical rom-com hero characters, especially if she knows you pretty well by now, what is the reaction? A narcissistic woman will be gleefully pleased when a normal woman would ask you why you’re acting so weird demanding you to relax and bring back the guy she loves.

Narcissists tend to have a public face-saving relationship and something more real on the side.

Narcissistic people need the front to be in place. They work hard to establish something they can be publically proud of, THEN they start working on finding the right side dick or the side chick. A narcissist may well be in love with the side dick, while they hold you as the cuckold.

If someone has managed to sink it into their sculls that secondary relationships are not socially acceptable (anymore) they’ll keep the public relationship and sacrifice their true feelings to it, but if they think a person has ANY right to be a real human being, they’ll have the side dick on the side while you are there to hold up the front.

We’re all affected by relationship instructions by narcissists.

Everyone in the world who isn’t a narcissist suffers from a degree of trauma caused by narcissistic abuse. The question is HOW MUCH TRAUMA are we talking about? Literally EVERYONE is to a degree traumatized by narcissistic thinking. It comes from parents, siblings, friends, teachers, coaches, priests, monks, nuns, bosses, and romantic partners. Wherever there is a group of people, there’s also a group of narcissists in them… And they are VERY EAGER to manage everyone around them, their life goals, priorities, needs, and emotional expression.

Narcissists don’t advise, they instruct.

Narcissists give and want pretty crude “fit for all situations” instructions in everything. They don’t like nuances or personal differences. Therefore, their dating advice is also “one size fits all” where it simply doesn’t. It is void of nuance, and it is void of situational variety. It pays no mind to what kind of a person you’re talking to. Subcultures are non-existent. Personality is seen as something to exploit maybe, but not something to match yours to.

Men are like this, women are like that. (Nope.)

Narcissists also want to keep people in easily definable boxes. They want men to be this and women to be that, and this whole “men can be women” thing has turned a lot of them downright mental because they can’t fit into a stereotype anymore, which means they’re trying to conform to non-conformity which will make anyone spin into madness but that’s another story.

No. A normal man has more in common with a normal woman than a normal man has with a narcissistic woman. Whether you’re narcissistic or not, treat women the way you wish to be treated.

ANY DESCRIPTION that states “men are like this” and “women are like that” is more likely to be describing a narcissist, not a member of their gender.

DO:

Expect to be free to express your true thoughts, interests, and feelings.

This is vital in avoiding ALL narcissistic relationships: Expect yourself to be free to express your real thoughts, interests, and feelings with people you consider friends or lovers. If you feel your person is not met as you are, you are in the company of a narcissist.

Love bomb.

Eagerly express your feelings toward a woman you love. Be as wordy, as open as you want, but also BE ACCURATE. A normal person needs to know you see them in a realistic light and that realism is what got you all excited.

Save ALL human-written emails and texts.

As an absolute priority in self-protection, save chat logs, emails, and texts, everything written by people you can save, save it. (I haven’t deleted a human-written email in 20 years… Except there’s one I can’t find for the life of me that is a very important one but anyway I don’t know what happened.) While spoken communication is often the best, I’d fucking record them too, if it was socially acceptable. XD

The reason is, that narcissists do claim they’ve said things they haven’t, that you meant what you didn’t mean, that communication didn’t happen when it did or happened when it didn’t.

Avoid:

Avoid getting paranoid.

If you see one or two small narcissistic traits, ignore it. What makes you feel good is good. However, pay attention to drama and upset in people you’ve known in a long time. Do not buy the “she/he’s just jealous” explanation without scrutiny – the chances are they’re warning you about something real the narcissist has made DAMNED SURE NOBODY has any evidence of at this stage.

WHEN YOUR FRIENDS COME TO YOU WITH CONCERNS, LISTEN TO THEM!!!! At least try not to ruin your relationship with long-term friends over some hot bitch you’ve only just met no matter how fucking in love you think you are. (That said, if it FEELS GOOD to leave some people behind for whatever reason, do it, but ONLY if you feel you’d feel relieved to not have them around even if this relationship fails.)

Avoid feeling safe with people who are willing to love you despite your flaws.

I do preach radical acceptance, too; when you truly love someone, don’t protect yourself from their shit. If you love someone, their problems are your problems.

That said if someone accepts praise for being the kind of good person who would love a piece of shit like yourself… RUN. They shouldn’t agree you’re a piece of shit or such, they should insist they love you for a very specific reason and be able to list all the wonderful traits that make you the object of their adoration.

Avoid women who tell you how to express your love for them.

Imagine a woman who tells you how to propose to her. That’s a narcissist.

Normal people want genuine expressions of love and desire. They’re not going to hand a script to you and expect you to play along.

Avoid people whose emotions only ever describe a survival story or heroism.

There are survivors in this world, obviously. A narcissistic survival story, however, always seems a little… Weird. They paint themselves as a special kind of human to survive what they have suffered, and it’s always someone else’s fault when they have wound up in situations that they need to survive… Even when they clearly begged for trouble.

It is not always easy to spot, because genuine survival is also someone else’s fault but what I mean is they NEVER admit to having had a bad attitude, having got something wrong, having taken or followed bad advice, they NEVER had ANYTHING to do with what happened to them. Ever. They are always innocent victims and admirable heroes coming out the other end.

And also, they’re singled out as the ONLY sexy one… (I am tempted to link to me, a narcissistic woman describes how she was sexually abused during a war in her country but she was always the only woman ever targetted as a sexual object in the story that she tries to pass off as truthful but to me sounds like pure fantasy.)

Note that their problems are the admirable kind.

Avoid people who seem willing to be the scapegoat in your life’s story to keep you.

I’ll share this personal story as a glaring example of what I mean.

My mom is a narcissist, hence my obsessive need to understand the condition. She’s undiagnosed as most of them are. (They would never set foot into a shrinking office to BE diagnosed. The only way you’ll ever diagnose a narcissist is a court’s order.) Now… Me being obsessed with the truth, feelings, romance, emotions, psychology, spirituality, and philosophy, I make her nervous every single day. My dad’s like me. The way we cope is to SHUT THE FUCK UP.

Now, when I started unraveling my own issues, I realized I needed to talk to mom about certain things, without yet realizing how scary it was for her to speak about such matters. Eventually, things spiraled to the point where I decided I needed to clear out and stop all communication with her (which is good way to deal with people you’re willing to cut loose, but the downside is that you also need to cut off their court…) So. I send her in a state of panic: “My daughter has shamed me.”

“OK, you can tell them I sexually abused you, honey.”

So… About a year later, she sent me a birthday card and with it a letter. The first paragraph includes this sentence: “Why have you told people (or was it why do you believe) I have sexually abused you?” There is a problem with that. A) I have never said such a thing and I would never say such a thing as the thought of it makes me fucking hurl. B) She has never sexually abused me.

Obviously, I cracked the shits. What this was supposed to do is: Share the blame for our problems without revealing the real ones. As a narcissist, she believes I would never want to discuss my “problems” with anyone but her, and she doesn’t want to be known as the mother who failed to help me. (Ironically I didn’t ASK for help, I tried to help her understand my perspective as a person “why I am OK even though my life looks weird.”) She can claim I’m a person with a false memory of childhood trauma, and I present her as a child abuser. Everyone around us can believe who and what they want but we’ll continue as mother and daughter, both suffering from each other, but we both have a plausible deniability.  Narcissistic equality. To be honest, that’s probably the height of narcissistic love, but you know…

She offered me this narrative to explain our breakup, one that I instantly worked to debunk, but not successfully.

Narcissists will view you as a narcissist (it’s the only way they can cope)

Narcissists don’t try to “twist it around” by the way. They GENUINELY FEEL that you are the narcissist for REFUSING to help them keep their performance on track. They see you as a person who tries to DERAIL THEM and claim ALL VIRTUE to yourself.

Narcissists don’t see things from the perspective of TRUTH, as they believe EVERYONE LIES, everyone cheats, and everyone is a performance artist. Therefore, if you scream “But bloody hell, you bitch, I’ve never put a foot wrong in my life, why the fuck do you ask me to take the blame for shit I am not guilty of?!” they believe you’re claiming NONEXISTENT VIRTUE as they don’t BELIEVE in virtue. They believe in lies.

Believing in lies makes it easier for them to see themselves in a positive light: Everyone is doing it, some people are just better at it. And people who lie the best (are never caught of ill-doing) MUST BE the biggest narcissists there are.

Looking for true love?

Trust me, true love exists. Getting to it can be a trick and a half. If you think getting a woman for yourself is hard, finding true love is even harder – but knowing how to avoid narcissistic traps is a good first step to it… And the first step nobody taught you before. (I know because we’re all victims of narcissists to an extent.)