Some people loose themselves when they enter a relationship. They are so hell bent on changing the other person they end up changing themselves. I completely understand compromise and taking one for the team but loosing yourself in the midst of satisfying your mate is unacceptable. Therefore, if one is not emotionally independent they are more likely to become clingy, jealous, angry, Nagy, unattractive due to attitude and ignorant actions. Man, I can go on and on with this one. but I wont! Lastly, I hate someone who says irritating things like “Baby, I need you right now”, NO…what they mean is I want to F*** right now. And that’s fine, but say that…NEED is a strong word and I don’t want anyone who NEEDS me. Desire yes, Need…No thanks!

Having a platonic relationship with the opposite sex benefits each party as it enables them to better understand the opposite sex. If not understand, receive a non-biased opinion of actions, emotions and desires!

How does the closeness with your Male BFF make you better in your relationship?

Example.. (of course this is from my perspective)

If a guy tells a girl, her friends, etc. that if a person makes a move on his girlfriend he’ll go and fuck that guy up it comes across as insecure, nervous, not confident that the female desires only him. If I do this I think it is counterproductive.

If, conversationally, you can navigate to the position of saying, “I don’t have problems like that, people who know anything about me don’t try to undermine my relationships, and anyone can see that (insert girls name here) and her happiness are very important to me” It communicates an air of confidence and an assertiveness which is almost a warning of violence.

Of course it should be short and unimportant/not emphasized. I did a very similar statement while making red sauce at the a friends house of one of my girlfriends. Her girlfriend of hers asked how I felt about the fact that my gal had a lot of guy friends and I answered very shortly, never looked up and tried to address it as if she had asked a very normal question. About few weeks later it came back through the grapevine that these guys were “afraid” of me. While I really don’t know what they meant by the word afraid I’d assume that they were shooting the bull over drinks one afternoon and someone mentioned that they wouldn’t fuck around with Patrick. This may or may not prove true but I’m a believer.

A further note on this concept. I recall during some unique military the instructors saying that if we didn’t accomplish “X” that we wouldn’t like what happens next. We had no idea what “X” was but mentally the fear of it was worse than the actual punishment if we failed…much worse. That lesson led me to believe that if another person is allowed to perceive a threat, he will shape it to what is scary to him. If I tell him I’m going to break his jaw he thinks about countering, legal action, all kinds of things that remove my threat.

Sorry…here is another military example. I recall fondly the lessons of cover and concealment. Cover is analogous to standing behind a concrete wall while concealment is standing behind a canvas wall. Your opponent is not likely to shoot at you when your are concealed or have cover. With concealment you aren’t really protected but he perceives you as protected…usually of course. My lack of displaying violent tendencies could be cover or concealment but it may be too costly to find out so it is about as effective as cover.

I’m very open to and would love to hear opposing points of view here.