I got asked this question a bit ago surprisingly not from one of you dear gentlemen, but @sarahjeangosney (follow if you want to see what healthy female self-improvement looks like).
Cutting to the chase… the truth is, I didn’t make my decision as most guys say you should.
I didn’t do a long trial period or test the waters… cohabitate… or anything like that.
It actually all happened very fast.
I’ll explain why…I met my wife at a wedding I decided to spontaneously attend in Poland, summer 2012.
We shared a kiss at the wedding, nothing more.
(this is a fun, illustrative story about game I’ll share another time if you guys are interested)
6 months later, we were facebook friends but that was about it. She blew off any attempts for me to see her again when I was in Poland, and after being back in the states I moved onto other things.
During this time I was dating other girls, though not exclusively.
And after the prior years New Years shenanigans I was DETERMINED to get out of the country.
I tried to get friends to join me… but they kept kicking the can.Before I knew it, it was almost mid-December.
They still thought it was too expensive to go somewhere.
So I decided: fuck it.
I’d go spend New Years on my own.
I looked at prices for places that had caught my interest… Mexico… Budapest… Croatia…
But I had waited too long… and they were all priced unreasonably at this point.
So I decided to check out Poland.
After all, while I had just been there… I only flew into Warsaw, and didn’t have a chance to experience it.
This time, I could go to a hostel, meet some people, and figure out New Years from there.
So I booked a ticket, and posted on facebook: “heading to Warsaw for New Years if anybody is around”
And guess who liked it?
The girl I had kissed at the wedding.
So I sent her a message, asking her if she’d be there.
Understand: she was Polish, but she was from a different city in Poland… and lived in the UK.
There was zero thought she’d be around.
And yet it turned out, a guy I had met at the wedding was having a party in Warsaw and she was going to be there.
All of a sudden, I went from being by myself in a foreign city with no plans… to having a house party with a girl I had a night of chemistry with.
(Guess what? This sort of synchronicity stops being rare if you follow my coaching program)
Anyway, we spent some time together in Warsaw and I so-to-speak rekindled the romantic vibe.
And so after I left Warsaw, we were talking.
Now, we’re going to fast forward quite a bit here because we could be here all night.
Point is, we started having a passionate, international fling-thing going on.
Over the next half year I saw her in London, we went to Istanbul, later Paris…
It wasn’t a relationship, because we lived across the ocean. I was still seeing other girls in the states.
But on the end of the last trip together… I got caught up in a moment.
(Think early summer evening in a garden in Paris)
And I let it slip out that I loved her.
It almost shocked me that I said it.
But it was how I felt.
And it was how she felt too.
But here’s the thing guys…
I was a bit of a shithead back then.
Caught up in the “player world.”
I believed that I could tell a girl I loved her without changing up the dynamic.
(“Free love” and all that bullshit)
So, when I arranged for her to come see me in the States… all of a sudden there was more pressure on things.
I had to deal with things like morality and managing emotions.
No, we weren’t “exclusive.”
We had never had “the talk.”
But I knew deep down she thought we were something more at this point.
And was that something I really wanted?
I didn’t know.
I was immature… I liked to make girls fall for me, to get validation from them.
But once I caught their hearts, they became a burden… a burden I wanted to discard.
(Really — I just hated to be reminded of how I had manipulated them… I was disgusted at their neediness because it made me disgusted with myself)
Anyway, I gradually closed off things with the stateside girls, in anticipation of her arrival.
But took my time… and mostly for the wrong reasons.
I didn’t know how things could even work out with this transatlantic muse of mine.
Which meant that when she got here, I was distant.
It took a bit… but after 2 days of faking it… she called me out.
What was going on? Why was I like this?
I told her — I didn’t know what we were doing.
I lived in the US, she lived in the UK…
And damned if I was going to do long distance just for the hell of it… certainly not exclusively.
My statements were meant to be a poison pill. A way for me to push back real intimacy for a “logical” reason. I expected she’d try to brush that aside, keep me seeing her under my terms (like others had in the past, and which would give me an out of my guilt)
But instead of chasing me like most girls, she told me simply:
She would move to the US to be with me if I was serious. But she wouldn’t talk to me anymore if we didn’t become exclusive.
And that I had to decide what I wanted.
I told her I had to think.
So I took a long walk on the beach…
I remember it vividly, the tide was low… and the waves were breaking thin and long, running up the sand in the moonlight…
When I realized — what was I doing?
I had dated countless girls the prior years, most overlapping with each other.
And the one thing tying them all together was we either didn’t have a deep enough connection to warrant keeping things going… or they didn’t have standards so I could keep it going as long as I liked.
I know, I know.
You’ve heard it from some of the usual suspects in the manosphere.
“Get yourself a girl who will stick around while you bang other girls. Make her prove she’s devoted.”
I’d ask: why not get yourself a slave instead?
Why commit to a girl who lets you treat her as dispensable?
That is not a relationship… that is transactional, sad… choosing that is the definition of settling.
In contrast, for once I had a girl who loved me deeply, honestly, openly.
And yet… she was still ready to lose me.
She’d leave me if it meant treading on her self-respect.
So I came back from the walk and said OK.
Let’s be together Kate.
(Cue passionate lovemaking scene)
2 months later… after looking over immigration details… it hit me.
H1-B wasn’t going to work.
Too many ifs — process took awhile, she might not get the lottery, wouldn’t have job / location choice…
And damned if I was going to do indefinite long distance.
So I told her: let’s get married. It’ll take 8 months and we’ll be done.
And so we did.
With one exception we saw each other every month and I even moved to London for awhile. By the next summer we were “legal” and she was in the states for good.
The end (of the beginning).
Anyway, long story eh?
But I think it helped illustrate the point of why I got married… and how you should know when it’s time for you to get married too:
– She loves you
– She shares the same values with you
– She won’t let you take advantage of her
And yet… I know these women aren’t necessarily easy to find.
Truth is… if I’ve learned an enormous amount about women from my wife. How to have healthy relationships. Dealing with conflict… all that stuff…
But I wouldn’t have attracted her if I didn’t know what I did BEFORE with women.
I won her heart early not only because we had natural chemistry… but because I knew how to approach, how and when to escalate, when to step back…I ALWAYS knew “where we were at” in our dynamic.
Which is why I find it sad when guys who ostensibly want to end up with a great women dismissing the value of all this knowledge.
Look, CAN a good woman fall into your lap?
Of course.
But you’re far more likely to get GAMED by a woman – a woman who pretends to love, you but really just wants things (this is why most marriages end in divorce) if you don’t know what you’re doing.
My wife is beautiful, tall and thin — a classic eastern european.
I would NOT have gotten a girl with her looks, class, and integrity if I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing.
So if you’re actually serious about having a wife and kids someday…
If you want to date GREAT women who make life rewarding…
STOP PLAYING YOURSELF
Get this shit sorted out.
I have spent 10+ years obsessing upon how women work.
You will NOT have to spend that much time with me to learn what matters.
4-8 months is usually enough, in extreme cases a year.
I will teach you the tactics and instill in you the right mindsets.
So you have a choice…
You can spend time being afraid, wasting time and mental energy… festering in the same stagnant place you’ve been stuck at…
Or you can say to yourself: “I’m tired of being a pussy and will actually invest in myself to get my dating life fixed”
Those of you brave enough to get out of you comfort zone and have some fun — because man do I make it fun — go here: www.patstedman.com/application
– Pat
