Most of us have at least one female friend who keeps getting played and mistreated by men over and over again. Whenever it happens, they’ll come to us in tears, wondering what it was they did wrong, but they rarely want to listen to the feedback we offer. Unfortunately, people who don’t learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them. Below are nine of the most common mistakes that women make in relationships that result in them getting played by men every time.
1. Cultivating relationships online instead of in person.
A lot of women feel safer getting to know men online instead of meeting them face to face, but this can be detrimental in the long run. This is because you don’t know what kind of chemistry you’ll have with someone until you’ve spent a fair bit of time with them in person.
Women will meet men through online dating apps and then spend weeks — if not months — cultivating a relationship with someone they’ve never met in person. As a result, they’ll fall for their idea of what this man must be like, instead of who he really is. Then they’ll be devastated when they discover they’ve been played by someone they never truly knew at all.
According to relationship experts, it’s of course sensible to text for a few days first to get an idea of safety, but not for so long that you get to know important things about them via text rather than in person. And when you do take the conversation offline and meet them face to face, there are some golden rules to follow to reduce the safety risks, such as meeting in a public place.
2. Rushing into something serious before doing recon.
Countless women have experienced frustration and heartbreak due to men who have misrepresented themselves in the early stages of dating. Many men lie about who they are and what they do to get close to a woman, which can yield devastating results once the truth comes out (which it inevitably does).
This is where the “trust, yet verify” technique comes in, according to expert therapist, Dr. Natalie Jones, such as checking out their social media accounts to find out whether they’re actually married when they claim to be single, if they have kids to whom they haven’t paid child support in years, or any other number of details they may have lied about. Don’t be fooled into moving too fast. When it comes to potentially sharing your time (and your body) with another person, doing a background check isn’t intrusive: it’s imperative.
3. Believing in “future faking” without concrete evidence.
A lot of men engage in something called “future faking” when trying to get close to a woman they want. If you’re not familiar with this term, it’s when someone lures you into thinking that they’re sincerely planning a wonderful life and future with you, according to Psychology Today. It’s a type of “love-bombing,” and women who fall for it take the manipulative man’s pretty words and promises at face value instead of waiting to see real results.
For example, a woman might truly believe a man who says that he’s going to take her on vacation to Amalfi or Dubai, and is very understanding when things “keep coming up” that prevent him from doing so. She’ll keep sleeping with him and doing nice things for him because of the promise of something lovely in the future, which never actually comes to fruition.
4. Being overly giving without equal and fair reciprocation.
A lot of women want little more than to love a good man, and be loved by him in turn. As a result, when they have the opportunity to cultivate a relationship, they go above and beyond to pour love into the guy. Some do this because they truly love to be kind to those they care about, while others give love in the hope that it will be returned to them in equal measure.
But it rarely is. You’ll find thousands of posts online about women who have lavished love, attention, and even money on the men they love, only to be given the tiniest fraction of it in return. Worst of all is that these men will often take full advantage of your kindness and generosity if their poor behavior isn’t checked the first time it’s exhibited. It’ll just worsen over time, with them taking and taking until she has nothing left to give, and then moving on to their next target.
5. Trying to fix past relationships with an unknown present.
Just about every woman you meet will have at least one poor relationship in her past, whether it was with a former partner or a parent. Unfortunately, many of them end up dating men who remind them of the people they had strained relationships with in the past, in the hope of fixing what went wrong back then by re-creating those dynamics in the present.
It’s why you’ll often see women date the exact same type of man and repeat the same relationship pattern over and over again in the hope of getting things “right” this time, only she never does. This is because in her mind, she isn’t dating different individuals: she’s overlaying her past trauma onto male templates instead of seeing them for the people they actually are.
6. Lack of awareness of their physically driven behavioral patterns.
It’s an eye-opening truth that a great deal of women’s behavior is dictated by hormonal fluctuations. We deal with rollercoaster spikes of estrogen and progesterone every month, and may behave like completely different people throughout our cycles. Many women are much more flirtatious and sexually aggressive during ovulation, for example, and may take action during that time that they’d never dream of during their follicular or luteal phases.
If a woman isn’t aware of how she behaves when she’s feeling lonely and fertile, she may put herself into the same types of detrimental situations over and over again. For example, studies show that women tend to be attracted to more masculine and assertive men during ovulation, but then softer and gentler ones during the luteal and menstrual phases. If a woman searches for mates when she’s feeling frisky, she’s likely to keep attracting men who are only interested in a one-night stand, and will ghost her afterwards rather than pursuing a real relationship.
7. Falling in love with someone’s potential.
It’s great to want to see the best in someone, but it’s something else entirely when the reality of what a person is like is overlooked in favor of the potential that could possibly be nurtured beneath the surface. It’s a common problem in women with savior complexes who repeatedly attract “broken” people. For example, many women will meet a man who’s “rough around the edges”, but whom they feel they can change into a better version of himself.
This is falling for a concept rather than a person, and will only yield terrible results every time. These women will hold to the best possible outcome of who this person could be, and thus ignore the fields of waving red flags warning them about who they’re actually involved with right now. Before they know it, they’ll be single mothers wondering what went wrong, and why the toad they chose didn’t turn into a prince as they’d hoped.
8. Acquiescing to things due to low self-esteem.
Women who lack self-esteem and courage may keep doing things with men that they don’t really want to do because they don’t want to hurt the man’s feelings, or are afraid of what he might do to punish them for saying “no”. These men might not cause them physical harm, but they may threaten to leave the woman if she doesn’t do the things he wants.
A woman who’s terrified of being alone may find herself miserably agreeing to things that make her seriously uncomfortable just so she doesn’t lose the man she thinks she loves. Meanwhile, the guy is using her insecurity to get his needs and wants met, with no thought of her well-being at all.
9. Not learning from past experiences.
It’s a sad truth that countless people keep repeating the same patterns instead of learning from past mistakes. Furthermore, they’ll get terribly angry at well-meaning people in their lives who try to bring attention to their unhealthy patterns, only to go crying to them again and again as history keeps repeating itself.
When relationships fail, it’s usually a good idea for a woman to take some personal time to determine what went wrong and what part each person played in its downfall. In doing so, she can cross-reference that with other past relationships to determine whether there’s a pattern to break.
Final thoughts…
As the saying goes, actions speak far louder than words ever will. If a woman has been played by men repeatedly because she keeps believing their empty promises or giving too much of herself without reciprocation, she needs to take a big step back from dating in general.
Only when a man has shown her with real action that his intentions towards her are sincere should she let her guard down and allow him into her life. To do otherwise is a naive approach that will only result in her getting hurt again and again.
