 The following is a clip from my popular YouTube live streams answering your questions. If you're brand new to my channel, don't forget to hit the subscribe button. Hit the bell so you could be notified of new videos. And if any time this video resonates with you, please hit that like button so I can be seen in the YouTube algorithms. Really quickly, my coaching is what I call heart-centered radical honesty. It's direct, a little tough love, and a lot of heart. And occasionally I use expletives to enhance a sentence. So if an F-bomb or two isn't your cup of tea, I suggest logging off right now. Lastly, these are my thoughts, my perceptions, my opinions. By no means do I suggest this is the truth. You have to decide the truth for yourself. I'm a bit of a contrarian. So my advice goes contrary to public opinion and traditional expectations. All right, take it away, Jonathan. You know, there is this belief that this pain, the fear of a man losing you, will cause him to come up and claim you if he feels like he's going to lose you. This is a narrative I hear over and over and over again by many of my contemporaries. And I think this was brought on by the book, The Rules, which basically talks about playing hard to get, to pander to his fear of losing you. And if there's this fear of losing you, he's going to step up to be in relationship. And I've heard some wacky things like you shouldn't contact a guy for five days and make sure you don't post anything on his social media account so he doesn't know what's going on in your life. And that way, that will create all kinds of anxiety for him. And he's going to just want to come up and claim you, you know, because he's got this fear of losing you, this pain of losing you. I've even heard from one dating coach that suggests to women that they should create conflict even before a first date. I'm going to repeat that, to create conflict before a first date, like actually canceling at the last minute, just to see how the guy responds to conflict. And well, I could see the merits of that on one level just to see how someone, but to do something intentionally, to intentionally not contact someone for days, to intentionally not post things on your social media, and to intentionally play hard to get. What's the real benefit of doing that? Because if you're doing it from an intentional place, if you're intentionally trying to create some anxiety, trying to create some fear, some pain in this man, how can he ever really trust you? And I want you to think about it. Let's just put this in reverse for a second. How do you ladies feel when a man disappears for five days? How does that feel? You get, become anxious. You start oftentimes chasing someone. And that's, and you almost act in a desperate place. Do you really want a man to come back to you out of a place of desperation? Is that what you really want? I hope to God that's not what you want. I really hope to God. Because that's not what's going to create long lasting love. All of this game playing rhetoric you hear over and over again isn't going to create long lasting love. Because ultimately, there is a pain that can, that will actually create more connection with him. However, what I really want to stress in this moment is how to avoid playing the games. How to avoid to, so you don't even have to play any of these games. How can you get to a place with a man that you don't have to play these stupid games to actually get him to really want to be in a relationship with you? Well, I think it's really important to understand the, it's really important to understand the importance of developing the friendship early on in the dating process to develop the friendship because friendship builds trust. I'm gonna repeat that, friendship builds trust. And the problem to date is most people are spending more time on their phones texting and communicating over their phone instead of actually doing things together to build the friendship. But Jonathan, I'm in a long distance situation. Well, let me tell you something. All of that cumulative time on the telephone isn't really building trust. It's not building real intimacy because it's not a real relationship. And it's not real friendship. It's a cyber friendship. It's an internet friendship. It's a virtual friendship. It's a electronic friendship, but it's not a friendship of actually being there for one another. And that's where trust comes by building the actual friendship in the relationship. And I'm talking about all the long lines of also being physically intimate with someone. Well, let me reframe that, rewind. Physically intimate meaning I'm just talking about kissing. I'm not talking about penis and the vagina yet. I'll get to that in a second. So how do you avoid even getting to a point where you have to play these games where you have to make a man feel pain to actually wanna be with you? Well, then it's gonna require doing social activities, hobbies, mutual interests together, spending time with family and friends. That's how you build the deeper roots of trust in a relationship. The deep roots of trust isn't built because the two of you like sushi and the two of you like stand up paddle board and the two of you like the rolling stones. That's not going to build trust that certainly feels familiar when they like the same things but what's gonna cause building trust? It's actually doing things together. And yet sadly, people today spend so little time doing things together. And worse, you're meeting total strangers today. You're meeting total strangers as soon as why you're buying into a lot of this bullshit advice because the bottom line is this. If you play the no contact game for five days, here's the thing, if he's just not that into you, he's already moved on. If you're kind of, or maybe even if you're a maybe to him or maybe you're a conquest to him, men that are in their egoic state, they're okay playing the games because you're just simply a conquest to them. The real men who want a fully committed relationship and I gotta tell you, this is becoming fewer and far between for men because ladies, you've made it so easy to have sex with you. You've made it so easier. The barrier to entry is almost a couple dates and the guy can easily get in bed with you. And by the way, if you're in a long distance situation, it's, I mean, a guy could talk to you for months and he's almost guaranteed to get laid when he meets you. This is why I repeatedly say over and over again before the penis goes inside the vagina, read the book, eight dates by Drs. John and Julie Gottman. This is, it's so important to understand the mechanics to a healthy, happy relationship. And many of you ladies are effing clueless out there because most humans operate from a place of ego when it comes to shopping for a mate and not from a place of your heart. And if you really wanna connect with your heart because this is what love would do and this is how love would respond is I highly recommend checking out my book, What the Heck Is Self Love Anyway? By the way, there's a link below to get all the books I recommend. This is a journey of personal development, self-help and spiritual work. So you can actually start leaning into a more compassionate way of approaching the process instead of this insane way with all these stupid rules. And please understand the online dating world is so, it's a shit show. It's become so bastardized. And yet people are still meeting this way. So, but it's gonna require a lot more intentionality in the process and ladies, you oftentimes just give your power away to men. You are in charge of your relationship, destiny, not a guy. So I'm inviting you to be more intentional in the process and not leave it up to the man because here's the thing, all this game playing isn't going to work. It's gonna require actually building the roots, building the threads together, the roots to deeper trust. And I'm here to say, if you wanna make that happen, listen, you better hold out having sex and you better start not insisting but recommending that you do shit together and that's better served when you two live near each other because the farther apart you are, the greater chance of relationship mishap. So, how are you going to avoid this? Build the friendship. You know, when you build the friendship, you don't need to use pain to actually get a man addicted to you.