Handling women’s accusations

Even the best run relationships get sticky from time to time, and even the most stable, emotionally steadfast women occasionally resort to making accusations.

Accusations are themselves a very hazy area � what’s the best way to deal with them? How do you deal with a woman who yesterday was crazy about you today calling you cold? What do you do when a girl lashes out and charges you with not caring about her? How do you handle when a woman accuses you?

First, it’s important to understand what accusations actually are: accusations are expressions of fear and helplessness. People only accuse others when they’re seeking a reaction � we don’t accuse people we don’t want to bother seeking a reaction out of. Possible reactions being sought might include:

��� An apology
��� Compromise or concessions
��� Feeling understood

The problem with accusations is their delivery � making an accusation is not a good way of getting what you want from other people. But men and women use them all the time with each other, more out of desperation than any kind of clear, rational problem-solving effort.

A person making an accusation is acting out of weakness and pain, not strength.

You must keep that in mind. Because our natural instincts at being accused are to recoil, go on the defensive, and feel cornered and put upon, we need to temper those instincts when dealing with accusatory women. Getting defensive in the face of an accusation is the worst way you can react. Unfortunately, that’s also how almost everyone does react.

UNDERSTANDING WHY WOMEN ACCUSE;

It’s no fun being accused. Why do people accuse each other, then?

Accusations are, quite plainly, a very efficient way at shaking things up when one finds oneself in an unhappy situation but doesn’t know how else to move forward. They are a relatively effective way of cornering another person into changing the status quo. For that reason, we can effectively define accusations like this:

Accusations are women’s challenges to the status quo.

Whether that’s the status quo of how often the two of you go out together, or how fast or slow she feels the relationship is moving, or how much time you spend together, or even how you spend the time you spend together, in accusing you a woman is challenging something she doesn’t currently agree with, feel comfortable with, or understand.

Remember that accusations are acts of desperation, not strength. A woman won’t accuse until she feels helpless and not in-control. Now, how often she feels this way depends tremendously on the woman, on you, and on the relationship. You can have a very strong woman who almost never accuses because she almost always feels in-control of her own relationships; similarly, you can have a very weak woman who accuses all the time because she feels like things are always out of control and desperate. Likewise, you can have a man who is talented at helping women to feel in-control, informed, and cherished, whose women almost never accuse, while you can also have men who are outright oafish in their relationships and haphazardly toss women’s feelings about, and who consequently get women accusing habitually.

DEALING WITH ACCUSATIONS;

There are a handful of different approaches to dealing with accusations. Let’s list them out:
*Resisting / going on the defensive.
*Capitulating and giving a woman what. she seems to be asking for
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*Showing her that you understand her concern and want to alleviate it, without capitulating
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*Showing her you understand her concern, then helping her to see things in a different light

Obviously, some of those are superior to others. We weigh the pros and cons of each below.

Resisting / Going on the Defensive

Resisting a woman and getting defensive is the second worst way to react to an accusation (the first is capitulation). It will normally only escalate the level of animosity and resentment, only causing it to build up higher and higher with no resolution in sight.

Occasionally, getting defensive can give a woman what she wants, if what she really wants is an emotional reaction out of you. Particularly if you are adept at handling accusations, occasionally a woman will just want to know that she can get to you, and will press you and get nasty just to see you react, to know that she can affect you. Knowing that she can get to you emotionally is very reassuring to women who normally see you as very strong, unwavering, and in-control. It lets them feel more secure.

Even then, even if a woman is satisfied getting a rise out of you, by getting defensive you sacrifice long-term peace for short-term alleviation of symptoms. Knowing that she has buttons she can push that will throw you off balance emotionally makes a woman feel more secure in the relationship, but at the cost of some of her respect for you.

There are better ways to make her feel secure.

Capitulating and Giving Her What She Wants

Of all the ways a man could possibly respond to an accusation, capitulation, by far, is the worst. Capitulation is the ultimate sacrifice of long-term peace and respect for short-term alleviation of drama.

Sure, it might seem tempting. Just give her what she wants and everything will be better again.

It doesn’t work that way.

Capitulate to a woman and she has your number ever after. She now knows, at least subconsciously, that any time she wants something, all she has to do is make a big stink about it and she’ll get it.

If you’ve ever read the book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, it’s exactly like that. Capitulate to one accusation, and I guarantee you’ll start getting a whole lot more of them. People are constantly testing to see what strategies work for getting their way, and as soon as a woman realizes that accusations and drama work with a man, she’ll start using them as part of her default behavior with him.

Likewise, people abandon behaviors that don’t work. If a woman never gets anything out of accusing you, but does get things out of hashing things out calmly and rationally, she’ll quickly learn that any time she has a problem with you, she needs to keep her head about her and hash things out calmly and rationally and the two of you together will come to a satisfactory conclusion.

If on the other hand she realizes that trying to hash things out with you calmly and rationally doesn’t work, but getting upset and accusatory and causing drama does, she’ll learn to skip the rationale hash-out sessions and go straight to drama. Unfortunately, this is the way things work with a large majority of men. Trying to talk to them rationally gets a woman’s concerns falling on deaf ears (usually because the man doesn’t understand the real concern behind whatever he’s being asked to consider), so she resorts to drama and accusations and the man panics and capitulates and she gets some semblance of what she wants.

Except, it isn’t really what she wants. No woman really wants to have her man break and give in and do as she’s commanded. What she really wants is for him to hear her, and come to a solution on his own, rather than just do whatever she says.

Capitulation is an utter no-no, and should be avoided at all costs. There aren’t a lot of things in the world that you can objectively say �This is bad and will sink you” about, but capitulation is one of those things you can indeed say that about.

Showing You Understand and Will Address Her Concern Without Capitulating.

Now we’re getting somewhere. This is one of the ways that strong men respond to accusations. There are a few reasons why sorting out problems and accusations this way and the next way we’ll talk about are far superior to going on the defensive or capitulating to demands.

Staying calm and in-control in the face of pressure says all kinds of good things about you: confidence, self-assurance in your ability to handle and resolve the situation, experience (inexperienced men panic; experienced men take things in stride), trust that your woman cares about you and is committed to you. Men who aren’t confident in their importance and value to a woman panic and get desperate in the face of their woman’s desperation, fearing losing her. When she sees this though, it makes her lose attraction and respect for these men. We want to be strong � for our and her sakes.

Priority #1 on a woman accusing you:

She wants to feel like you understand her.

Making a woman feel understood should be your first order of business whenever she begins acting desperate or launching accusations your way. The problem with men who get defensive is that they communicate to women that they aren’t really listening, and they are going to fight back and try to unilaterally impose their views without giving hers consideration. And the problem with men who capitulate is that they are meekly doing whatever she’s asked them to do, without taking the time to actually understand the core sentiment that’s behind it. When men fight back or capitulate, they communicate to women that they are not trying to understand.

So, you want to help her understand that you understand; that’s priority number one. How do you get her to see you understand?
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Once you’ve shown her you understand, then, if you like, you can show her how you’ll address her concern, like so:

��� Guy: All right, that’s been my mistake then, babe. You know I’m a very busy guy, but you are a very important girl to me. I can’t promise I’ll make all of them, but when you have things in the future let me know which ones are very important to you and I will try to be there. I want you to know I care.

Much better than capitulating or throwing a wall up, don’t you think? There is still a bit of a problem with this one, though � your girl is still getting results out of accusing you. If capitulating is absolutely terrible for long-term precedence, and getting defensive is also very bad, showing her you understand and will make an effort to be more considerate going forward is about neutral. And neutral is about 1000x better than absolutely terrible or very bad.

But, we can still do better.

Showing You Understand, Then Helping Her to Understand You

So now let’s say you really can’t do what she’s asking you to do at all. Maybe it’s something you just aren’t prepared for yet � like marriage, which you’ll hear about a lot very early on from most girls as you become a higher and higher value guy � or something you really just don’t want to do � like spending the afternoon going purse shopping with her. What do you do there?

Well, you’re going to start off by showing her you understand her concern, same as in our last example. But this time, you’ll address that concern a little differently. Rather than showing her you’ll make an effort to do something differently in the future, you want to change her mind a bit, and show her that what she’s most concerned about should not really be concerning her at all.

Priority #2 on a woman accusing you:

Recognize that all accusations, no matter what they seem to be about on the surface, stem from a fear that you don’t really care about her.

That’s an extremely important realization to have. Once you have that realization, everything else starts making a lot more sense.

So, when you’re taking this tack, the second part of your response (after first showing her you understand) is going to be a bit different. Like so:

Guy: Babe, you’re important to me. You’re one of the most important things and one of the most important people in my life. I’m not always going to be able to make every event you have, but you know I support you 100%. I’m the one who’s got your back, whether I make it to one particular event or not. Now, I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to your dance � but let’s watch the movie of it you have.

Even though the guy here has made no promises to change his behavior, not capitulated, not offered anything tangible, his girl is going to end up feeling more satisfied than any of the previous guys’ girls.

Why? She feels more satisfied with this man’s reply because he shows her that he understands her, and he shows her he cares.
�And that’s really all a woman wants from a man (well… that and some really good sex!).

article written by:
PRINC3TON
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