Yeah, But What's My Motivation? (Part II)

On the abnormal reasons people do the things they do

Photo by James Hunt on Unsplash

This series is a “quick-and-dirty” practical psychology primer aimed at a male reader who is interested in learning social dynamics in order to meet and form romantic relationships with women. It’s not intended to be an in-depth guide to the human heart, nor is it an authoritative clinical text; it’s a set of useful mnemonics purpose-built to help keep the reader safe. For a given value of “true,” these things are always true—while there are exceptions to everything, in the context of dating and relationships, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

In the first part of this series, I discussed the Normal Motivators for behavior. Those apply to everyone.

The Abnormal, or Red-Flag Motivators for behavior are listed in order of how concerned you should be if you discover your paramour is driven by them. Going in order of least to most concern, they are:

Addiction

Compulsion

Obsession

Perversity

Addiction refers to any addiction to a substance or a process. Caffeine is a mostly benign addiction. Tobacco, not so much. Alcohol or heroin…yeah, that’s a hard pass. But process addictions, or addictions to maladaptive behavior, are worth looking out for, too. (A girlfriend with a sex addiction, for example, is one of those little problems that’s super fun for about ten minutes, but another word for sex addiction is “indiscriminate promiscuity.” She will cheat. You don’t want it.)

The tells for addiction are many and various, but they don’t depend on the substance or process. Personally, I look for inexplicable facial expressions indicating guilt, lying about whereabouts and behavior, irregularities in finances, and general instability, but this particular motivator is extremely well-documented, and a Google search will turn up lots of information. Read up on it. More importantly, trust your gut. Plenty of sweet, pretty girls are quietly hooked on shit that helps them cope with stress or trauma, and sweet, pretty girls desperate to come off as innocent will mess you up just as (or more) capably than the tattooed, pierced kind that doesn’t care so much about looking virginal. Do your due diligence and be prepared to drop an addict like a bad habit, immediately. You don’t need it in your life, and there are plenty of mermaids in the sea without needles in their arms.

Compulsion is less well-documented in terms of behavioral tells, and (thankfully) rarer. OCD is what we typically think of in terms of compulsive behavior, but what I’m referring to is more subtle.

People enact behavioral scripts that they learn early in life. If the behavioral script involves self-destructive behavior, or behavior that’s destructive to others, the person with the Compulsion Motivator will find themselves self-sabotaging or, worse, sabotaging you.

There aren’t generalized behavioural tells for this one. The tells are based on personal narrative, and one that is universal is any variation on “this always happens to me!” The drama isn’t her fault, exactly, but somehow it just keeps happening—she’s compelled by the behavioral script to reenact this shit, and she will continue to reenact it until she gets her ass to therapy. If you run across a woman with a hard-luck story (“they’re all assholes!”) that borders on the Myth of Eternal Return; a verified pattern of doing dumb shit, or getting into arguments at work, or fighting with her boyfriends, ask yourself this: Do I really want to play Captain Save-a-Ho? Do I enjoy intense entanglements with chaos engines? Or do I want to have an enjoyable, low-drama, low-stress relationship with someone who does not cause problems in her own life or the lives of others?

Obsession is of particular concern to people in public life (which certainly includes more than a few of the people reading this; if you’ve got a Substack, check your local listings—you may be a public figure by definition), but stalkers happen to ordinary people, too. Involvement with an obsessed partner is one of the most derailing, destructive things that can happen to a person, but in the case of a woman obsessed with a man, society cracks jokes about it.

The only up side to dealing with an Obsession-Motivated person is that it’s not subtle. If a woman is throwing herself at you, there’s always a reason, and it behooves you to ask yourself what that reason is before the blood flow to your little head renders your big head incapable of rational thought. I teach how raw animal magnetism works in terms of method (Autopicking is the on-ramp to that); this is the reason you want to be careful in terms of target selection with regards to smoldering eye contact.

The tells here are moving too fast and acting inappropriately. There are steps to The Dance. It is one thing to be able to hit benchmarks of trust and compatibility quickly, and a very different thing to skip those steps entirely. Women who skip steps to The Dance are by definition not acting in their own best interest. The reason those steps exist is that we’re bigger than they are, and self-preservation dictates that a woman insist on at least going through the motions. For her not to do so indicates a tendency toward self-destructive behavior, which is a red flag of its own. If you didn’t charm your way into her pants (and heart) by doing all the things the book in the homework section tells you you need to do, ask yourself if you want to get involved with a woman who goes out of her way to demonstrate that she’s a bipedal cheeseburger, desperate to be eaten, as opposed to a person with the self-respect to insist that you do your part of The Dance so she can do hers.

Perversity is the nightmare-league motivator. It refers to someone who is motivated primarily by antisocial, malicious, or self-destructive impulses. Women motivated by Perversity are Doing It On Purpose.

Sites like The Female Dating Strategy (and similar subreddits such as r/womensurvivalguide) are premised on the idea that men are not well-intended or motivated to act in good faith. You should give them a read; they’re eye-opening. Women who think about the world in those terms have studied men with the express intention of learning where we are weak; they will use that knowledge to hurt you.

People who are primarily Perversity-Motivated have tells, but the tells are in direct opposition to their personal style, which makes it very difficult to reconcile known facts with the person sitting before you. They are often sweet-natured and gentle in terms of their presentation, so you really can’t tell in conversation with them, even intimate conversation, that they have intentionally internalized a skill set dedicated to messing up your life, and that they participate in social circles in which they trade tips on how best to do so with like-minded women.

Rely on known facts over emotions when vetting girlfriends, and take seriously the things people say about themselves when describing their character; it’s hard for most people to lie about their self-concept. Take seriously what other men say about particular women; reputations happen for a reason. If a woman describes herself as amoral, or evil, or tells you she believes men are fundamentally bad, break up with her immediately. There are no exceptions to this rule.

Do not date women who read Female Dating Strategy or FDS-adjacent literature, or who subscribe to FDS-adjacent ideology. The deeply broken women who subscribe to those ideas are predators, and are an immediate danger to you.

The method for dealing with Perversity-Motivated partners is something that is routinely taught to women, but is rarely (if ever) taught to men. These are some steps to follow that I recommend to anyone who finds himself in such a situation.

1. If you suspect you are involved with such a person, lawyer up, preemptively. It is worth discussing this with an attorney, even if your assets aren’t tied up with hers. Do what s/he tells you to do. If you have electronic communications with this person, bring those records to the meeting with the lawyer.

2. If you conclude that you indeed have become entangled with such a person, you have a genuine safety issue, so get to a safe place. You’re in an abusive relationship, cowboy, and all the rules to abusive relationships that apply to women now apply to you.

3. The primary goal of these women is to “pussy whip” vulnerable but otherwise valuable men; in other words, to psychologically break you so as to make you malleable and tractable. Methodologically, there are a number of ways they do this, but the specifics aren’t important (and Dance Class is not about learning psychological warfare tactics in any case). What is important is that you find a trustworthy therapist. The psychological damage is fixable with therapy and time. A lot of my readers are on the autism spectrum; EMDR therapy works especially well for us because it treats the “elephant” as opposed to the “rider.” Psychological damage translates directly to physical damage, and you need to fix the body as well as the brain. Dealing with a Perversity-Motivated partner is traumatic.

4. Document, document, document, disclose, disclose, disclose. By this I mean document all interactions and do not keep her secrets. Putting romantic partners on blast is a scorched-earth strategy that is inappropriate under normal circumstances, but the most reliable tactic Perversity-Motivated women use to destroy their romantic partners or former romantic partners is social/emotional terraforming, or making the social/emotional environment inhospitable for men. That’s rumor-mongering, the spreading of half-truths and outright lies, and otherwise presenting you as in some way a Bad Person in order to poison your reputation and career prospects. The first line of defense against this tactic is to preemptively tell your story so she can’t do it for you. Tell everyone.

5. Make liberal use of the legal system and institutional protections to protect yourself, with emphasis on understanding stalking and cyberstalking laws, laws relating to impersonating others, and laws relating to false accusations. If you have legal leverage over her, such as electronic communication records that demonstrate that she broke laws or is unfit to work in professions that place employees in a position of trust, use it early and often to protect yourself. Share it with anyone who asks, and present it to her employer, educational institution, or licensing body in accordance with your lawyer and therapist’s instructions if that is what they tell you to do. Sharing hard evidence of dangerous mental instability or outright criminality with the authorities is an entirely appropriate, prosocial thing to do, and you should ignore anyone who tells you otherwise.

6. Remember that most people aren’t like this. The emotional, psychological, and spiritual damage the Perversity Motivator can do is devastating, and it can blind you to what’s good in the world; when someone who purports to love you betrays you, the result is moral injury. Moral injury is destructive to one’s perception of the world as a good place, which is injurious to the soul. Hang on and let others help you. Never forget The Light within you and within others, and don’t worry that it’s gone for good, even if it feels that way. Most everything nonfatal is fixable. Where there’s life, there’s hope.

Next: The Special Motivator, and tying it all together in the real world

---