Hey Doc,

I was recently blindsided by Stacy and left hung out to dry. We dated for three months and things seemed to be going really well, then she just randomly dumped me one day without any real warning or explanation. Although it was only three months, the relationship seemed liked it really had some potential, and the way it ended is eating at me.

I’m 33, and in my 11 years of dating as an adult, there have been three girls I’ve been in relationships with who I really wanted to be with long-term. All three ended the relationship after three to four months. So I’m looking for coaching with the following:

1) Getting dumped after three months is officially a trend now, and I believe I need to make some changes to how I operate. I have a hard time reconciling the idea of being a nice, considerate gentleman with the idea of creating a sense of uncertainty that makes a woman want you. These three women basically walked all over me, and I didn’t even realize it until it was over. I’m just too nice, and it’s not in my nature to be any other way.

2) I’d like to get your take on how to wrap my head around what happened in this most recent relationship with Stacy, and what I could have done differently.

3) I feel like I’m at the age now where most desirable single women are a good bit younger than me, which is a problem. I look younger than 33, but I feel frantic now to try and meet someone and find true love before the gray hairs start popping out.

4) I have a deep insecurity about whether I’ll ever find the right woman because of what I’ve been surrounded with in my family. My father had terrible experiences with women and died alone and bitter. I never even saw him with a woman, but he had children with three different women, none of whom maintained a healthy relationship with him. My mother walks all over my stepdad and treats him like crap -- they haven’t slept in the same room for years. My grandfather has a good marriage, but he’s an old school southern gentleman who thinks I should cater to and spoil women to win them over. I feel like in modern society this would make me even more of a pushover.

I’m going to purchase your book, but would also be interested in hearing about what other options might be available to me.

Tommie - who feels defeated

Hi Tommie,

First of all, you never talk about Stacy’s Interest Level – or lack of it – in you. What really happened was that you made a lot of mistakes in your relationship, and that’s why she dropped you. You might have gotten her number and gone out with her a few times, but after a month or so, her Interest Level began to drop from 90%…to 85%…to 70%…to 65%, then it hit 49% and you know what that meant — adios, Tomas!

So what you have now is a pattern. You keep getting dumped by different women but what you don’t realize is that it’s for the SAME REASON. Either you’re an uptight Macho Boy or a wimpus americanus, and being either will guarantee you failure with women.

Tommie, you might want to have it both ways – you want to be seen as both a Nice Guy and a Challenge – but the problem is that you AREN’T being a Challenge, and that’s the most important thing. If you know that women are walking all over you, you’re nothing but a WIMP. You don’t know how to say no to them, you wear your heart on your sleeve, you’re an open book, and she’s not sitting there and wondering how many women are chasing you. In other words, she knows all she needs to know about you, pal!

It might be in your nature to be nice, dude, but “nice” is a euphemism for WEAK, and you’re weak. And like my cousin General Love says, “Women can’t stand weak men.”

Now let’s look at your questions.

Regarding what happened between you and Stacy, if you had “The System” under your belt, this babe would be begging you to get married right now! That’s the beginning and end of the story.

Tommie, you already found true love with three women and you couldn’t hold onto any of them. You have a problem, buddy. You can get a woman’s number and persuade her to go out with you, but in three short months, you’re history. These women burn out on you very quickly, once they realize what a wimp you are. When they realize that you have no backbone, they want nothing more to do with you.

Your problem, Tommie, is that you never had a role model.

You watch the women in your family treat the men like garbage and then you turn around and allow the same thing to happen to you. You shouldn’t cater to women or spoil them to win them over or play kowtow to their whims. To you Psych majors, you win women over by using HUMOR and being a CHALLENGE.

Your only option now is to stop wasting time and get hold of and MEMORIZE MY BOOK. You should have done this a long time ago, after your first girlfriend dumped you. Can you imagine how much time and money and pain you would have saved yourself if you’d just invested $99 in “The System” as soon as you started running into trouble?

If you’re thinking about dating girls in their twenties now, forget it. Like my cousin Fast Eddie Love from East L.A. says, “You’ll get eaten alive.”

Remember, guys: without realizing it, most men repeat the same mistakes from woman to woman.