| There's a somewhat controversial idea called "soft nexting" which is where your girlfriend displays behaviour that you consider unacceptable and you make yourself unavailable for a time and don't respond to her calls, texts etc. When you do return you don't mention anything about the behaviour but just act like nothing happened. Although I can believe this works, it's a little bit scummy to treat someone you're supposed to be in a relationship with in this way. If they won't act right because you've told them to then trying to manipulate them into it seems a bit pointless...
However, I do want to testify to the power of withholding attention. I've seen a few threads about workplace situations and unlike personal/social situations, these are interactions you don't particularly choose, with people you haven't chosen. This can be challenging, so I just wanted to share some experiences I've had and what I've learned from them.
At a previous workplace, a woman (receptionist essentially although she preferred to be called PA to a director) called me and said "If I ask you to do something, will you actually do it this time?" Flagrant disrespect to be sure (although perhaps I'd dropped the ball previously for her to be saying this). I was taken aback at the time although I didn't assert myself. I should really have said something like "I'll be happy to help when you're willing to speak to me right". But anyway, having let it go on the phone I decided this wasn't cool and decided to confront her about it.
I went and spoke to her and told her I felt this wasn't okay, that she shouldn't speak to colleagues this way and blah blah blah. She didn't respond well at the time, clearly didn't appreciate being confronted in this way, and tried to make it about me. She then told my manager that she felt we had a "personality clash", which is office speak for thinking I'm a cunt. I never managed to create any kind of positive interaction with her after that, and neither did I feel I'd really succeeded in confronting the behaviour I'd wanted to confront.
Fast forward to more recently, I had a woman I worked with being disrespectful to me. I think we're chalk and cheese and she didn't much like my style. I don't know specifically what her issue was. I'm an introverted person by nature and can be shy, in contrast to her being a lot more socially dominant (she managed a branch of McDonalds previously to give you an idea, which is my idea of hell). She's also a lesbian, and I've observed her generally not deferring to men in the way that other women might. So this is just to build the picture of her being a tough cookie.
On this occasion, she was blocking the way and I failed to deal with her assertively. Someone else pointed out that I needed to get past and instead of being friendly about it, she commented "oh it's only you" in a scathing tone, and stamped her foot on the floor as if to imply that she wanted to stamp on my foot. Now this disrespect was a great deal more flagrant than the previous example I gave, I'm sure you'll agree. Certainly not acceptable, and I would have been justified in complaining about her. But I didn't say anything. There was then another occasion when she spoke to me in a very offhand way. On both occasions, I felt like shit due to the way she was talking to me, but I swallowed it. I've become aware of family related issues that affect the way I allow women to treat me and so I told myself that ultimately, if I wasn't right internally, that is if I could be affected by such things or didn't have the right standards in mind of how I should be treated, then nothing I did to address the external problem would really help. And as I took this approach, I found that the negative feelings I had in response to her behaviour became less as I owned them.
However, although I decided not to confront her, I certainly didn't want to reward her, so I made a point of avoiding eye contact and friendly conversation with her. I would walk into the office where other women were sitting and talk to them in a perfectly friendly way and not acknowledge her. After a while of me not reacting to her but not giving her the attention I was giving other women, she started trying to get my attention. A couple of times I went in there and asked questions of other people and she chipped in, trying to offer help. Her help wasn't without attitude though, so again I gave the minimum response and didn't act particularly pleased that she was getting involved.
Then I was asked by one of the directors to basically delegate a task to her, and a pretty big one at that. I'm not gonna lie, I was quite nervous about this, but I pulled myself together and didn't let the negative feelings overcome me. I forwarded her an email relating to task without writing anything and then went over to her desk. She was immediately receptive, commented that she had seen I'd sent an email and was more than happy to take on the task, despite it involving quite a bit of work. Her attitude was entirely fine in fact, to the extent that if asked, I would be obliged to compliment her on her helpfulness.
Lesson from this I feel is that even the toughest woman (and one who has nothing to gain from my attention, sexually), will find it hard to be deprived of anybody's attention (the only caveat might be that this applies more to extroverted women), and if you deny them your attention, they will amend their behaviour in order to put things right. Again, I don't think it's cool to do this to women you're in a relationship with, but for those interactions you're forced to engage in and sometimes wish you didn't have to, I think this is a good approach. I will underline the point, I put up with flagrant disrespect and said nothing about it. Some might say you should stand up for yourself, and perhaps that could also have worked, but if you're not naturally that kind of person, if you can have the balls to just not acknowledge someone, then that can work equally well. Women respond to men who are not affected by them. The only way to address bad behaviour is to speak about it decisively, at the time. I would heartily not recommend addressing ANYTHING after the fact. You're communicating that it affected you enough that it took you time to even speak to her about it. This compromises you more than you can possibly gain from whatever you're saying.
_________________
If something's not fun, it's not worth doing
|
CHAT