I wanted to share a recent personal story that indicates perfectly how women engage in ultimately self destructive behavior by trying to manipulate men.

This week I met a woman in business setting, let's call her Jane. Jane came her for a week from far away with a male colleague, let's call him Jake. Jake and Jane work remotely and this week was their face to face crunch intro to the project and team they will be working with. Me and Jane are working in collaboration, sitting next to each other all this time, although we are from different companies. I should note that I am several levels of seniority above Jane and she is basically dependent on my mentorship. Jane is also very attractive and possibly married, although I don't bother to ask and she never brings it up.

Monday. Whenever Jake is not around, Jane is doing some light flirting with me. I play along, but don't engage too much or escalate.

Tuesday. Jane is a bit more restless, cranking up flirting a notch. Eventually when Jake wanders off she starts talking to me how she's excited to see the city, but feels lost and badly needs someone to show her around. I decide to play the game and say sure, I can give her a private tour, which makes her jump out of her chair and basically force her phone number on me. Jane is staying close to where I live, so after work I text her if she wants to come over and discuss what she wants to see in the city. She replies with a bunch of smiles, so I just ignore her.

Wednesday. More of the same, more flirting, getting a little bit old now.

Thursday. In the morning I decide I've had enough of Jane's bullshit, put on my noise cancelling headphones and reduce our interaction to bare minimum. Jane immediately picks up on it and gets restless, keeps trying to attract my attention, but I just ignore her. Every lunch I go for a walk, so Jane ambushes me as I'm about to leave and asks if she could go with. I say sure. We're walking and flirting is back full force and now there's also kino. I want to see how this plays out, so I repeat my invite for her to come over to my place, this time verbally. She puts on very little resistance and agrees while blushing.

Friday. At noon I tell Jane I'll meet her at X couple of hours after work. She immediately appears squirmy and suggests we just go for a walk in the city (I'm basically 100% certain Jake would join us). I say that's not what we agreed, but if she has changed her mind it's OK, let's just leave it at that. I put my headphones back on. Jane is back to restless, only now a lot more stressed. She tries to interrupt me with bullshit questions that I answer in seconds and get back to ignoring her. She knows that her continuous involvement in the project basically depends on my decision and at this point realizes she fucked up.

What is the moral of this story? If Jane had behaved professionally and not engaged in all the bullshit I would have responded the same way. She's actually not even very good at what she does. It's Friday, the end of work and I'm about to close the book on Jane. Will she learn her lesson? I doubt it.