For our parents’ generation, it was taboo for a woman to call
a man. That was considered too pushy and not feminine. Wo-
men were warned by their mothers, Don’t be too easy, too
available, too accommodating, or he will not respect you. Well,
they were not making this up. It was true then and it still is.
Whenever a woman pursues a man more than he is pursuing
her, he will pursue her less. Why should he risk failure when
she is happy to pursue him? Automatically, he will relax more
and become more passive about the relationship. Instead of
thinking what she may want, he begins thinking more about
what he wants. This turnaround is very confusing for a woman
because her assertive approach is successful in the working
world but backfires on a date.
When a woman pursues a man, automatically
he will relax more and become more passive
about the relationship.These women are just not aware that men need to be success-
ful in their pursuit in order to discover whether they really
care for a woman. Certainly a woman who pursues men does
sometimes succeed in getting a man, but often the consequence
is not what she had hoped. When they get married and she
wants to relax and simply be herself, he loses interest.
In some cases, once they settle down and she stops pursuing
him, he finally gets the opportunity to feel his desire to please
her and pursue. In this case his interest in her finally gets a
chance to rise. This is not always the case, though; more often
he just loses interest.
This tendency also shows up in dating. Quite often a woman
will decide to end a relationship and then the man
254 / JOHN GRAY, PH.D.