Make A Move, Or Wait For Her To Make One?

Reader:  Athol, I have a question for you and or your readers.  You have stated that a guy shouldn’t be concerned about being the one to initiate sex most of the time.  Does this go for flirting and texting an so forth too?  You’ve had some good posts about sending texts to get things pointed in the right direction for the day, leading to bedtime later. In all these examples its always they guy doing the initiating.  Many of the Alpha moves, even though Alpha, are still with the guy initiating the attention.  Do you do most of the initiating in your relationship (affection, flirting, sex)?

It seems Beta in a way for the guy to do too much initiating of attention.  It can come off as needy which we all know is a huge beta turn off.  I also feel like if I’m giving out more attention than I’m getting from my wife, then I am in some way lowering her attraction (and her attention) to me.  What do you think?

Athol:  That’s a good question.

I think the key is to not get hung up on the outcome of the flirting / request for sex. If she reacts positively, cool. If she reacts negatively, move on with your day. But don’t just hang around her looking like a sad panda. Also by making a move on her and not hovering around her when she doesn’t want it, her shields don’t go up nearly as quickly. Constant hovering and circling around her and she’ll go to red alert every time she sees you.

The frame is that you are asking for attention and she either gives it or doesn’t give it. But you don’t wait on her giving her a ton of attention for no reason or return of attention.

There’s quite a bit of difference here between dating and being married with instigation and attention. If you’re dating and trying to create a relationship with someone, then Roissy’s rule of only contacting her twice for every three contacts she makes with you, is the way to go. It creates a sense of uncertainty and a sense that you’re in more demand than she is.

But in a marriage, you’re always going to be seeing each other and there’s always going to be a multitude of things to contact each other about. So it’s vastly harder to set her hamster spinning that another girl might get to you first, if in fact you’re in line of sight in the living room.

Female sexuality is generally responsive to male sexuality. So in a marriage the wife will tend to calibrate to her husband. So you waiting to make a move until she makes one… well you may be in for a very long wait. You’re far better off making multiple moves on her in the hope that her general interest in you perks up based simply on you acting more interested in sex and confident.

In terms of Jennifer and myself, yes I do about 90% of the initiating of things. Whether that comes across as needy or not very much depends on Jennifer’s interest level in me. If she wasn’t that interested in me, she’d say I was needy and it would be a turn off. But because she’s interested in me a lot, she enjoys the attention and my insistence that she pay attention to me. Overall I’m just a force of nature with her and she tries to keep up with me.

The goofy and groping thing is also great for recovery moves too. You can either just laugh things off as “just playing”, or you can up the ante with a recovery line.

“Oh wow that line completely failed didn’t it. I’m so embarrassed at myself. You can feel the awkward in the air can’t you. Oh god the awkward is everywhere. You’ve got some on you actually, let me just brush that off your breasts…”