He won’t stop dating other people and be exclusive with me


Texts, coercion, convincing, and cajoling, won’t make your boyfriend agree to relationship exclusivity.

If it is not his idea to be exclusive with you, he won’t be. Coercions and ultimatums rarely work and even if they do work it isn’t going to create the voluntary commitment mentality you‘re seeking from him. Nobody wants to be forced to do something they don’t want to do on their own volition. To a certain extent, you do have to hold on loosely and make your man feel that if he is with you his independence will still be in tact. The problem with constant text messaging is that it will make him think his independence won’t remain in tact. He hasn’t even committed and you are all over him on text message wanting to know what he is up to, where he is going, and what he is thinking about. How is that independence? Sending useless constant text messages and badgering will turn him off to you. He is going to feel like he can’t peel you off his cell phone fast enough. Your own desire to constantly keep in touch with him is going to do you in with him instead of bring you two closer if you aren’t careful. Censure yourself and don’t get carried away messaging him.

Coercions

There are several layers of acceptable behaviors in relationships and stooping to coercion is pretty low on the acceptable behavior pole. It’s even worse than yelling or hurling accusations. One of the first relationship boundary points is the tone of voice you allow someone to use with you. For example if the person screams at you on the phone you might hang up on them and refuse to have a conversation until they are calm and respectful. If they then cross that boundary then they might send angry text rants over text message laced with inappropriate language and accusations in them. They might put you down and insult you which represents another relationship boundary violation. You don’t like your boundaries violated then do you? Well, if you coerce him or try to coerce him into exclusivity he won’t like that boundary violated either.

Worse even than using a bad tone with your partner or hurling accusations, is coercion and threats. A coercion is a pretty serious threat you make to try and persuade a partner to do something. An example of a coercive attack would be something like, if you don’t stop seeing other people I have to assume you are cheating and I am going to do the exact same thing which is, cheat on you with other people. I am sure I can find somebody to be with if you are too busy. That would represent a coercion.

If you think that scaring or trying to intimidate your boyfriend (or girlfriend) into being exclusive is going to work you have another thing coming. Pushing their buttons by threatening to leave them, fooling around on them, dump them, disclose personal information about them, etc, is taking things one step further than yelling and accusations, and one step closer to physical violence. This type of tactic won’t work so you should not try it. It is more likely to grease the way slick for the person to leave the relationship completely than anything else.

You may wonder how coercion relates to text messages well it does because you might start inadvertently send out coercive comments on text without even realizing it. For example, lets say a date with him falls through. You’re upset and start saying fine I have other things to do and maybe I will go find a man that is available to have plans with me tonight. OK you might not realize it but you are threatening and trying to coerce your partner that if they don’t do what you want you’re going to jump in it with someone else. Not a good idea. Coercion is going to drive the person away from you not closer. Even mild coercions like the one I just described are threats on text message and should be avoided.

If you are that angry to make coercive comments stop texting until much, much later after you calm down. Think very carefully about text messages and emails and voice mails you leave when angry or upset. If your partner is not doing what you want or acting how you want you might inadvertently cross into relationship boundary violation territory and threaten them. You aren’t getting your way so you threaten that you are going to do this or that. It’s a bad idea therefore think about all texts and ask yourself if your messages could be construed as coercive and if so, stop texting him.

Ultimatums

Let’s say you have a situation where your guy is still dating other women. But you want him to be exclusive with you. Most men are going to view an ultimatum as a threat. To them, it is an unfeminine attack that accomplishes nothing to make them more into you. If they wanted to be exclusive with you they would have told you so themselves. So what do you do if your boyfriend has been dating you for months and you want to move the thing forward. Would an ultimatum work?

If you’ve been dating for a while and he is still not exclusive nor has he even brought up exclusivity it is pretty clear that he is trying to delay the seriousness of his relationship with you. If he’s had failed relationships before he certainly won’t be jumping at the opportunity to advance the relationship. A man that is shy to commit is going to want to preserve the easy natured early stage of a relationship for as long as he possibly can, if not forever. If he is really commitment phobic for example, still having acting dating profiles and dating other women right under your nose, then he is just lining up better options as he continues to date you indefinitely.

So then after a while you rationalize that it makes sense to give an ultimatum to him. Maybe you have a tiff and then you just send him text saying, Look take your profile down off the dating sites and stop dating other people or I am not going to see you much less be intimate with you again. This type of ultimatum, often delivered by text if you are on the outs about your relationship status, will almost certainly backfire. Not only that, do you really want a boyfriend (or girlfriend) that you literally had to strong arm in order to make him date only you? Forget that!

Ultimatums only work if you are serious about them and they are presented in the right light. In other words, they should be left off of the text air space and they should be followed up on to the letter of the law by you. It should be your choice to make an ultimatum and not a commitment strategy or tactic since that will fail every time. Don’t do it on text message either because it won’t go ever well.

Don’t ever draw an ultimatum line in the sand without being fully prepared to back it up or mean it because if you don’t back it up you have thereby defined yourself as someone who lets their own boundaries they have set for themselves be completely violated. That is why throwing out an ultimatum that you don’t stick to is so very dangerous. Think long and hard. If your plan fails and you don’t stick to your stated consequence then you become the boy who cries wolf. Never will your boyfriend’s respect for you be the same.

Let’s say he won’t stop dating others. Instead of issuing your ultimatum as a threat or as a text threat, try to leave it to when you talk. You tell them honestly the truth as to what you want and where your limits are and be prepared to back it up. You could say nicely, my goal is to date someone exclusively and now we have been dating four months non exclusive. Do we have the same goals here because if we don’t I am moving on for myself. Then, move on. Because odd are, if you have to have this conversation in the first place he won’t go for it. So, when you issue an ultimatum make sure it is for yourself and that in fact you are planning to follow through. Deliver the message nicely and not as a text rant threat because you don’t want the method and tone of delivery to destroy your chances with getting through to him even further. He won’t want to be pushed to a wall.

Because ultimatums usually don’t work you should only use an ultimatum as a last ditch desperate measure and as a way to bail yourself out of a relationship that just isn’t going anywhere. Guys don’t like to be pinned down by a girl so be careful ever going into the ultimatum zone. Text ultimatums are likely to be ignored and downplayed by your boyfriend. If you send a text ultimatum chances are he will call your bluff and you’ll get exactly nowhere. You might even lose some of his respect if you issue one and don’t follow through.

Cajoling

Cajoling is like a synonym for annoying as far as men are concerned. You might think it’s persuasive humor whereas he might view it as noise pollution on his text message airwaves. Too many cutesy text messages that are trying to ignite his interest while meanwhile he is not the one contacting you are going to annoy the daylights out of him. If you feel your guy slip sliding away you might be tempted to invent cute and (to him) annoying ways to contact him. Things like where you are at, what you are doing, jokes, and other obvious attempts to strike up idle chat and conversation with someone who is not reciprocating. These kinds of texts are superfluous and they dilute the real texts that you might send him on occasion.

The more you text him, the less the positive effect and impact of it. If you send him a bunch of garbage it is going to train him that some of the texts you send needn’t be responded to. That’s a bad, bad thing to teach him. Don’t send random texts that don’t require a response, because you may not get one more and more often. If you send him a text saying ha I just saw someone spill their Starbucks all over themself, what in the world is he supposed to say to that? Or, I want to be a couple some day, not. Or, will we ever be more than what we are, etc. Ergo, if the text message can be categorized as useless, don’t send it. Don’t even send it if it was funny. Wait until he texts you asking how your day was, and then send a response. In other words, if he tells you he’s bored and wants to read totally useless text messages, then you can send useless messages. You got the green light. Don’t just send them when they aren’t even requested. That’s running a red light. If he’s busy at work he doesn’t care, trust me.

Try the opposite of texts, coercion, convincing and cajoling to really see where he stands

The way to really see where your boyfriend stands is to do the polar opposite of what you want to do which is bug him all the time. Stop bugging him. Stop texts, ultimatums, cajoling and everything else. Just drop and roll over dead essentially, or pretend that you went out of town without your phone, or seriously go out of town but don’t contact him.

Now, does he call you to check in? If he doesn’t call you does he at least send you a text message to check in? Does he send you an e-mail or note at least to ask if you are having a good time or say he misses you or does he show any kind of human involvement or interest in your life whatsoever? If you can leave or stop pursuing him for a period of time and never ever even hear from him, you have to understand you are dealing with a man that is not interested in being exclusive with you. If he is able to slip and vanish out of sight for weeks on end and have no problem falling out of contact with you for that window of time, you know exactly where your relationship is at which is casual. Very casual indeed.

You might think that not calling him and waiting to see if he calls is a game, or a play hard to get relationship ploy. Men love the chase so it really does not harm you should you decide to give him an opportunity to chase you. I am not suggesting a chase game. It is actually not a game at all. It is an information gathering mission for you to take a real temperature of where you stand with this person, rather than believing a fake temperature reading where you’re the one pursuing and heating everything up before reading the thermometer. Leave him alone and see what he does and that gives you the accurate relationship reading, like it or not.

You have to find out where you stand so you can make a rational informed decision as to whether you want to be indefinitely connected to a boyfriend who isn’t into you enough to be committed or concerned about your dead or alive existence when on vacation, or not ever missing you. If you decide to stick around and wait hoping he will come around at least you are going on real information and not just a one way effort on your part. You have to do your homework so that you can really know where you stand with this person. Then decide, how much more time you want to give it and how you want to proceed for yourself.

           

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