An anonymous reader asks:
Le Cheatau in an LTR, what are the signs of a lack of rapport vs a lack of attraction?
Declining rapport can occur while the attraction remains strong, but declining attraction rarely occurs while rapport remains strong. To put it another way, within the context of a relationship, and particularly from the woman’s vantage point, rapport cannot exist without attraction, but attraction can exist without rapport.
(Note that declining rapport can be a function of either the man’s or the woman’s withdrawal, and that the originator matters for the course of action necessary to remedy it.)
When a woman is VERY attracted to her boyfriend, it will seem to her as if there is never enough rapport between them. If rapport DOES start to decline, she will paradoxically feel MORE attracted to him. This is her biology’s way of channeling her emotions toward the pursuit of bringing him “back into the fold”. (Double entendre intended.)
If a woman is losing attraction for her boyfriend (these things happen all the time), she will also lose her desire to maintain rapport with him. When a woman has stopped making efforts at rapport, there is nothing a man can do to reinitiate rapport except through reestablishing his attractiveness to her. The attraction MUST PRECEDE the rapport. Any supplicating efforts to “force rapport” will only result in her losing more attraction for him, and the cycle becomes a negative feedback loop ending in house celibacy (for him, only).
Men think intimacy means physical closeness garnished with pillow talk, but women have a different frame of reference. Intimacy to women means pillow talk garnished with physical closeness. (A general rule that breaks down at the margins, or during the ovulatory window in a woman’s monthly fertility cycle.) Rapport is intimacy in woman-world, so when rapport declines (as measured by frequency, intensity, or both) women start to fret about the stability of their relationships. Men don’t notice as much when rapport declines, as long as the sex is still on tap; to men, less chit chat in the bedroom is a sign of progress. But the reality is that less chit chat usually follows less sex, as most women are incapable of experiencing a closing off of the one without a closing off of the other.
The take-home message for men is that a woman’s declining attraction is more crucial to guard against than is her declining rapport. Low levels of rapport can be quickly mitigated. Just talk to her more, and show a soft side. But lowered levels of attraction cannot be fixed by more rapport, a “solution” so reflexively beloved by cloying betabots that will only make the problem worse. For that, you need to amp the alpha, and re-certify your worth as a challenging man with options.
From an aerial perspective, female lack of rapport is synonymous with female lack of attraction. So when you, as a man, are looking for signs of declining rapport in your girlfriend, you are essentially looking also for signs of declining attraction. But the two deleterious female LTR states have some differences worth highlighting. This is especially true in relationships where the woman reluctantly feels a growing realization that her boyfriend, whom she nevertheless loves very much, will not be there for her over the long term, and doesn’t share her goals.
The signs you should watch for include:
Lack of Rapport
She’s stopped asking you questions. (Women in love question everything, all the time. They are never fully reassured, and their hamsters like it that way.)
She still fucks you, but doesn’t want to cuddle afterwards.
She’s stopped sharing details of her day.
She tentatively broaches topics, as if she’s afraid you won’t reciprocate and she has to test the waters first.
She’s stopped nagging you entirely, or she’s begun nagging you way too much. (There is a minimal amount of nagging in a healthy LTR. Too little, she’s lost interest in fixing your idiosyncrasies; too much, she’s lost the ability or will to connect with you emotionally and behave like a girl who values your desires as a man.)
She’s dropped you as a sounding board in favor of her male eunuch orbiters, female friends, and best gay boyfriends.
She’s stopped discussing future plans with you, preferring instead to chat about trivialities and laugh away her unease.
She perfunctorily agrees with everything you declare because she’s no longer motivated to “hash it out” or “understand each other”.
In contrast to the above, everything she declares seems crafted to be maximally antagonistic to your beliefs and values.
She punctuates every other conversation with a variant of these: “We just don’t see eye to eye anymore” and “You don’t get me like you used to”.
You decide to talk about your relationship, and she eagerly extends it to a five hour marathon discussion.
She is unusually silent during long moments of physical closeness.
She cries a lot for no particular reason.
Lack of Attraction
She’s stopped having sex with you. (A woman can feel an erosion of attraction before she stops fucking you, but the time between her heart shutting down and her vagina shutting down is typically very short.)
She’s begun flirting more with waiters, bartenders and guy friends when you go out together.
She negs you, except that her negs are more backhanded than complimentary, and not meant to put you in the mood.
She scoffs at your idle musings.
She’ll take any excuse to denigrate you.
She looks bored. Especially when you talk.
She winces when you touch her.
She no longer initiates any physical contact. You must do all the work, and it feels like more work than ever.
She’s begun showering her cat with an excessive amount of sloppy affection, while you sit on the sofa wondering if you need to purr and poop in a box to get her to love you like that.
Remember when she used to punch you affectionately? Now she punches you for real.
You try to talk about your relationship, and she hastily changes the subject.
You buy her a gift. She looks at you with pity in her eyes.
She found your browser porn history. She doesn’t care.
You start to feel like the woman in the relationship. Even worse: she’s started to feel like the man.
*****
As you can see, there’s a lot of overlap and similarity between a woman’s declining rapport and her declining attraction. The most obvious distinction is the providing or withholding of sex by her. So, really, if you want a shortcut for determining the health of your LTR, just pay attention to how often and how vigorously she puts out. You won’t be led astray feeling for the tingle of the Telltale Twat.
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