You made your case like a lawyer. Stable job. Good guy. Ready for something real. All true. All irrelevant.
She weighed your points, nodded along, felt nothing — then fell hard for some tattooed bartender with a motorcycle and a gambling problem.
Logic is where attraction goes to die. The "22 Rules" work a level deeper, on the subconscious switches that decide within minutes whether you register as a MAN or as part of the furniture.
Stop presenting evidence. Start flipping switches.
She calls you when her car breaks down. When she needs help moving. When some guy she's actually dating treats her badly.
You're the listener. The reliable one. The guy who would treat her so much better, if she'd just open her eyes.
She won't. You trained her to see you as the low-effort option — the friend who requires zero risk and zero investment. Every favor dug the hole deeper.
The "22 Rules" break the pattern. You'll stop auditioning for a role she already cast and become the man she chases instead. It starts with Rule 1.
Your buddy Dave has been single for three years and thinks "hey u up" is a valid strategy. Your other buddy Mike just got dumped and told you to "just be yourself."
You showed them her text. You asked them to decode the emoji. You drafted four responses and sent the screenshot to the group chat for a vote.
She's been waiting forty minutes.
Put the phone down. Stop crowdsourcing your love life. Type something that sounds like you. Hit send. Then go do literally anything else with your evening.
^^^^This.Mauser96 said:Fisrt of all, we need to distinguish something:
There is a HUGE difference in risk/reward when:
a) Dating a single mother with a career who pays her own bills and has a good job who became one by being married to the same man for 10 years, both kids are his, and things didn't work out - maybe through no fault of hers and
b) Single mother, aged 23, Grade 10 education, works part-time as a cleaner at an office building while her mother watches her kids, just like her mother before her did, 3 kids, 3 different fathers, never a relationship involved,.
Those are two VASTLY different scenarios.
My dad did the same thing when me and my sister were in high school. Married a liberal woman that had been mostly single her whole. Lets just say, it's one terrible decision I will never make lol.MOTU said:^^^^This.
I am a single dad. My kids play an important role in my life. After I divorced their mother, I rebound married a woman with no kids. It created lots of problems for me as she just didn't understand that my kids come first. So, the posters above who said you will come second to her kids - you are correct. If you can't accept that, you are best to avoid the single moms all together.
The theory that the woman won't respect you because you are raising another mans kid has some merit. That's why you don't raise the kids. You can be her partner while she raises her kids, and if you are a single dad, invest in her children to the extent she invests in yours.
As Mauser points out, it's a matter of screening. They need to:
- be educated and have a career
- be financially stable and independent
- have been single for a couple of years
- have kids from only one long marriage
- be a good parent
- not have had a string of boyfriends since their divorce
My GF has an MBA, works as an office manager at a water authority, pays her own way and I am the first guy to meet her kids since she divorced 3.5 years ago. So far so good.
So is she looking for a provider? Of course, to some extent. That would be in the best interest of her kids so how could she not? But is that ALL she is looking for? Is that the most important thing? Hopefully not. Time will tell.
Mauser96 said:Fisrt of all, we need to distinguish something:
There is a HUGE difference in risk/reward when:
a) Dating a single mother with a career who pays her own bills and has a good job who became one by being married to the same man for 10 years, both kids are his, and things didn't work out - maybe through no fault of hers and
b) Single mother, aged 23, Grade 10 education, works part-time as a cleaner at an office building while her mother watches her kids, just like her mother before her did, 3 kids, 3 different fathers, never a relationship involved,.
MOTU said:As Mauser points out, it's a matter of screening. They need to:
- be educated and have a career
- be financially stable and independent
- have been single for a couple of years
- have kids from only one long marriage
- be a good parent
- not have had a string of boyfriends since their divorce