We all make blunders in dating and relationships. You probably recall the precise moment when you stopped being interested in some of the males you used to date. The poor fool probably didn't have a chance to process what he said or did that one time that got him kicked to the curb because it happened so quickly. On the other hand, it can have happened gradually over time as a result of a string of occurrences or consistent actions that gradually turned you off of him...permanently.
If anything like this can happen to men, it can also happen to women. And it does a lot.
Sometimes a woman does things early in a new relationship that may cause a man to grow distant from her, lose interest almost immediately, or worse, and drive him to label her as "friends with benefits." These are the kinds of errors that frequently occur in the early stages of dating, long before a committed relationship has a chance to take root.
However, there are some dating mistakes that women do that great males recognize as huge red flags, even after a committed relationship has developed. These kinds of errors lead to men ending relationships with women or even demoting them, making them once more nothing more than friends with benefits. Situations like this are actually more dangerous than when it happens during those first few weeks because you would have wasted so much of your time and affection on a man who either didn't deserve it or who wasn't right for you to begin with.
The problem is that if a man doesn't regard you seriously, he can feel under pressure to enjoy yourself with you. And this fun will continue until either you understand you're being played or he meets the right woman. Personally, I think it would be preferable for a woman not to wait for the latter to happen if she loves her dignity (and sanity).
In situations like this, a woman truly needs two things: a healthy dose of self-respect and a set of dating rules that will enable her to make difficult, sensible choices as she navigates the perilous terrain of finding Mr. Right.
Strong Boundaries vs. Game-Playing
Many books on dating and relationships for women promote the idea that if you want to be taken seriously and get what you want when dealing with men, you must have a high level of confidence. I wholeheartedly concur, but with one qualification: Having confidence is useless if you don't know how to use it while interacting with guys, at least in terms of getting them to pursue you.
What a woman stands for and what she doesn't stand for tells a man how confident she is. Having confident body language, being able to socialize with guys with confidence, and displaying confidence in your femininity by the way you carry yourself and dress will only go you so far if you still let men control your emotions, time, affections, body, and anything else for that matter. Self-confidence makes a woman more attractive, but unless it effects how she enforces her personal boundaries it won't do anything to keep a man interested in her for the long-term.
The second issue with teaching women to "be confident" is that having a high level of confidence does not automatically translate into dating discernment. In other words, when dealing with men, confidence does not always equate to wisdom. Even if you had the same level of confidence as Kanye West on Grammy night, a man with both confidence and cunning may still trick you unfortunately, a woman can only become as judicious with men as she becomes experienced.
