This is how and why your girl switched from caring and loving to distant and dismissive.

The reality is that women often appreciate social dynamics unconsciously better than you and are usually many steps ahead of you. Some will do it consciously to gain leverage, some will be a result of their ever-changing emotions driven by your response to them.

They will understand and be very perceptive of the nuances in your behaviour and will operate covert manipulations. At the same time, guys will have a hard time understanding why communicating openly to address issues does not work, due to their bias in fixing problems.

By the time men realise the issue, they are already way behind the curve, because they did not heed the signals from her.

1. When you drop your guard

The first step happens when you drop your guard and you become soft. We all love comfort and routines; however, this is when the trap occurs, and when it is taken away from you, you feel that gap, and this is where clinginess and neediness arise.

Women seek leverage, and she can reach that from an emotional standpoint. We say women are driven by their emotions; however, she will want you to join the dance. She will be contaminating you with her chaos once you fall for it.

This is how guys who have their shit together and the objective leverage end up being the puppet of their girlfriends or wives because they emotionally depend on them.

Before getting control and leverage from you, she will try to gain control of the circumstances and the situation; this is how she gets ownership of your mind. One of the early telltale signs is when you start to give her the benefit of the doubt over murky matters.

She wants to get you to a weak and emotional state where she wants you to be emotionally dependent towards her. You will feel you have this genuine companionship, when in reality, she has got you by the balls.

Her game is to make you reveal your interest level and let your guard down. Although she claims she needs emotional reassurance, she wants to flip the switch and make you be the one who seeks emotional reassurance from her.

A lot of the time, they don't know (they don't understand 2nd second-order effect) that when they achieve their goals, you will turn them off. The same way when they say they want a man who is emotionally available or vulnerable, but when they find him, they drop him.

2. The Usual Sequencing

When you meet a woman, you are generally grounded in who you are, so you are emotionally centred. She is attracted to your masculinity or your sense of identity.

There is obviously little investment in one another, as you are both strangers to each other, and you are not willing to expose much of yourself. This is not a game; it is natural, as it takes time to trust an individual entirely.

This is where mystery arises, as she does not fully understand who you are. You are setting up a narrative for her to uncover. She will fill in the blanks with what she ideally wants in you. So it is less about you being mysterious, but you leaving enough space for her to invest herself in.

This is why, for her to get invested, you have to unravel yourself slowly rather than blurt it all out in one go. You don't want to have the whole story in the trailer. And when the story is over, there is another story (read: man) to find out about.

It is when she can't read you that she gets turned on. This is why they always complain about "emotionally unavailable" men or "avoidant". The fool will think complain=bad; the wise will know complain=emotionally engaged.

Her emotions will then control her mind; this is when she gets fully invested, as you will have created uncertainty loops in her head that she will want to solve.

That is why in the beginning of the relationship, you are that guy, the shining new object syndrome, she is invested in you, and she wants to get to know the whole story, that is why she behaves in a way to get to that ending.

She is actually moved less by your personality than by the idea of what she makes of it. She will only truly connect with your genuine personality the more time you spend together. Not that you have been purposely hiding it, but you did not have all the opportunity to show it.

As you spend more time with her, you will become more comfortable, and this is where the slip-ups occur. What happens is you start to get lazy, which is the start of the mismatch between the image she had of you and the reality of what is.

You feel that you have gone beyond the surface level of early dating, and she accepts you like one of your close friends, so you don't need to be as much on your guard. The trust and appreciation have been established.

3. The Bait

When she can't figure you out, and she is invested and interested in learning more about you, she will be very friendly and attentive to you. She will be leading the interactions because she wants to clear her uncertainty loop: "Does he like me or does he not?".

It is her anxiety, rather than her benevolence, that leads her to behave the right way. In the same way, when you use dread, it is her fear of loss that makes her come good. If benevolence is what she responds to, overt communication and conscious problem-solving would do the job. Except that she is not a man, but a woman, her emotions are her only loyalty.

She will be all over you to the point where you think she is clingy af trying to see whatever is happening in your life. It can be quite intoxicating for men because they don't receive this level of attention and care anywhere else, except perhaps from their mothers.

She will want to see you often. You will get a lot of sex and/or affection, and you will think to yourself: "Alright, girlfriend sorted" (feet on the desk). The projection here is to believe that women feel the same way about it. The way you will behave with her is the same way you behave with your friends. If your boy does something good for you, you should mirror it at the same level. This is a trap. However, this is not for you to ignore her completely, but it is for you to acknowledge and reward her with attention, but to a relatively minor degree.

Otherwise, that uncertainty loop will get closed on her end, the anxiety will drop to 0, and there is no reason for her to be nice anymore to you. As with everything, we want the best deal possible. And by giving that certainty to her cheaply, you make yourself cheap in her eyes, and you become the manufacturer of your own demise, as you will start to feel the shift on her end.

This is where you disclose more of yourself, and what happens is that the blanks you left at the beginning end up getting filled by yourself, and it will often act as a distortion to the original image she has of you, which she will deem incongruent. That is when you have not shown any weakness, and things start to go awry.

You will notice at first that they will complain that you don't give many compliments, and she is not satisfied with them. Then, as you get more comfortable, you give her too much reassurance, and she starts acting like a brat. It is the same way in early dating, when you show too much of your interest level, there is nothing for her to work towards, you rid her of the investment or even the temptation of getting to know you more. You are the trailer that showed too much too quickly. In relationships, it is the same; it is about keeping a healthy level of distance so that she feels like she has to work towards something.

This is an example of benevolent manipulation for the good of the relationship, not to punish her. Still, it is your way of leading because you know better than her what is good for her, without telling her what you are doing.

Other signs that her efforts are working on you are that you will start getting anxious about what she will think if you say something to her, you will finish your sentence with an upward tone, or you will babble because you are afraid of what she might think. You will also start to explain yourself. You have subconsciously made her the judge of you, and she conditioned you into becoming her puppy because you have become emotionally dependent on her.

This happens because you value what she provides you with. Whoever controls what you value owns you. If you reach that stage, she has got what she wanted from you. You think that is good, happy wife, happy life... I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

4. The Switch

This stage will usually be her showing contempt and dismissiveness towards you. Avoid initiating contact or spacing the time when she is seeing you. This is usually when guys start to realise something is off (often too late).

There are two types of switches:

The natural and unconscious switch, where the woman mirrors the incongruence or what she perceives to be the incongruence of her man. Either because the image she had of him during the mystery phase is different from what she had pictured, or when her efforts towards communicating attention and affection eventually lowered his guard, he became approval-seeking and needy.

The other switch is the conscious and manipulative switch, which is when a woman purposely looks to manipulate a guy and rug pull him to get him invested, creating a withdrawal effect.

In the same manner, you have two different types of shit-test; these two different types of switches emanate from various places.

There is a good-faith shit-test in a relationship, which is a strength one, a reassuring mechanism that the woman operates unconsciously when a man has shown a chink in the armour, and he can address it the right way, to bring comfort back on her end.

There is a bad-faith shit-test in a relationship, with a dominance-seeking purpose from the woman.

The first switch is a good-faith shit-test, where the man, provided he did not fall too far down the weakness route, can redeem himself by behaving like he used to do. Not after a complete break of frame, but more after an eyebrow-raising moment that could be classed as a potential misunderstanding. In this situation, the man lacked leadership because he did not understand his level of responsibility in contributing to his own demise, and he allowed the woman's emotions to distract him, so he had to take accountability, because he unconsciously let her drive the relationship car.

The second switch is a bad-faith shit-test, where it is Dead On Arrival, the person you are dealing with is operating in an effort to exert power on you, and you did not choose right. She was purposely trying to lure you in to exercise leverage because you had something of interest to her, and the bait was not just her natural way of getting you invested.

There is no recourse for this second switch, so the best you can manage is addressing the conflicts in the right way on a micro level, but instead of eating a shit sandwich, you will eat crumbs. You will pull back and no longer seek her validation, but all her efforts to regain her good standing are only opportunistic and calculated. This usually happens when the exit costs are too heavy a burden to shoulder for the guy. The other option is to get out of that relationship altogether, because you deserve better.

It is easy to confuse the two, as the symptoms are similar, but the causes are different. In both cases, the man made a mistake. On the first switch, he ignored the covert nature of power dynamics, which naturally happens within relationships and the female nature. On the second switch, he got in with the wrong woman for whatever his reasons were.

However, in the first switch, he has a bigger responsibility to bear, as he co-manufactured the break-up by either becoming weak or not appreciating the difference between men and women in relationships.

If you'd like to discuss your situation, you can schedule a call with me here.