Don't Date These 7 Types of Men. You Will Be Miserable…

I've coached women on dating since 2013, and I've heard a lot of women describe the man they just stopped seeing.

Different names. Different cities. Different years.

And after enough of them, you start to notice there aren't that many men. There are about seven, and they keep coming back around wearing different faces.

Once you can name them, you'll see them in the first three weeks instead of the sixth month. Let's go through them.

His entire skill is the beginning.

Charming on date one, attentive by week two, intense by week three. He's run this opening on dozens of women and it's genuinely impressive, because it's the only part he's practised.

Around week six the volume drops. Nothing happened, there was no fight. He just reached the end of what he knows how to do.

The tell is speed without substance. Enormous contact, very little actual information about his life.

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He got out of something recently and he'll tell you so, usually in a way that sounds admirably self-aware.

Then he behaves, for weeks at a time, exactly like a man who is ready.

Warm for a fortnight, unreachable for one. Present at dinner and somewhere else entirely by Tuesday.

None of it is aimed at you. He's still finishing something, and you happen to be standing in the room while he does. You can be nothing but wonderful to him and it will change nothing, because what's in the way has nothing to do with you.

He has a situation. The job that's about to turn around, the family thing, the stretch he's going through.

And you're good in a crisis. So you help.

Here's the trap. Being needed feels almost exactly like being wanted, and it's very hard to tell them apart from the inside. A man who needs you will hold on tightly and call it love.

Write this down and keep it somewhere you'll see it. A man who needs you will never have to choose you.

He acts like your boyfriend in every way that costs him nothing.

Most weekends together. You've met two friends. He rings you when work goes badly.

But nothing is ever said out loud about what this is, and every time you get near the question he moves gently away from it.

He isn't confused. He's comfortable. He already has your time, your attention and your loyalty, so naming it would cost him something and get him nothing he doesn't already have.

Nothing he says is unkind, exactly. It's just that you always seem to be slightly on trial.

A comment about what you ordered. A small correction. A compliment that arrives with a hook in it.

And the strange part is how hard you start working. Somewhere in the second month you notice you're performing, and that you feel briefly wonderful whenever he approves.

That's the whole mechanism. He's made his approval scarce, and scarcity feels like value. It isn't. It's just scarcity.

This one is the hardest to leave, because on paper there's nothing wrong with him.

He's kind. He agrees with you. He never causes a problem.

He also never books anything, never pushes for anything, never says what he wants, and quietly leaves every decision with you. Six months in you're still the engine, and you feel guilty for being tired, because he hasn't done anything wrong.

Agreeableness is not the same as investment. A man who never wants anything cannot want you either.

For months he's excellent. Then you have a hard week and something shifts.

He gets busy. He's a bit shorter with you. The warmth goes somewhere for a while and comes back once you're fine again.

You'll probably explain it to yourself, because everyone has a lot on. But watch it happen twice and you have your answer.

He liked the version of you that was easy. That's not the same as liking you, and you'll only find out which one it was at the worst possible moment.

Now Here's The Part That Actually Matters

You probably read one of those and a specific name turned up.

And I'd guess it wasn't a random one. For most women, the same two or three keep arriving, and the other four barely appear at all.

That's the thing worth sitting with. Out of seven, why do you keep getting yours?

It isn't luck, and it isn't the city you live in, and it isn't a shortage of decent men.

There's a pattern in how you date that decides which of the seven gets through. It runs in the first few dates, long before any of this becomes visible, and it's been running for years without anyone naming it for you.

There are four of these patterns. One of them is yours.

I put together a short quiz that names which of the four is running for you. Seven questions, about 60 seconds, and your result comes with what it means and what to do next.

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If you've been on enough first dates to notice the pattern but not enough to explain it, this is where I'd start.

Not with a longer list of men to avoid. With the reason your particular two keep finding you.

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