Women with Low Self Esteem

Tags: Inner Game, Relationship Management
Couple interesting comments came up to the “Advice of the Day” from a few days ago (if you missed it, the advice was: “The only way to deal with a woman with low self esteem is to NOT deal with a woman with low self esteem”). One commenter asked how to you spot a “low self-esteem” (LSE) woman early on and the other mentioned that perhaps PUA tactics work better on LSE women.

First, I’d like to address what low self-esteem is, since I think that it’s misunderstood a lot of times.

What most guys perceive self-esteem to be is how touchy a woman is about certain topics. For instance, she may be confident in her looks, but if you make fun of her checkbook, she’ll get incredibly insecure.

I think these are just natural levels of security and confidence that everybody has, low self-esteem or not. There are very high self-esteem people who are socially anxious and very low self-esteem people who are confidence with their bank accounts.

Self esteem is a much deeper concept. I think it’s a deep, sub-conscious perception of one’s value.

For instance, a girl could be very confident in her work and with her friends, but continues to be manipulative in her relationships, date guys who treat her like shit and consistently depressed.

At the same time, you could have a girl who can’t manage money to save her life, is very nervous and awkward around other people, but is consistently happy, has happy and loving relationships and friendships, a healthy family life and a generally very positive outlook on life.

As a commenter pointed out, we all have our flaws and insecurities… the question of self esteem is how many of us ACCEPT our own flaws and insecurities. Generally, those of us who were raised in a healthy and loving environment do because our family accepted us, warts and all.

This is why women with low self esteem seek out men who treat them like shit and sabotage relationships with men who treat them well.

It’s because they believe they are shit. They believe, deep down and sub-consciously, that they’re shitty human beings.

So the guy who treats her like a queen has to either a) not realize how shitty she is or b) be shit himself. So she sabotages her relationship with him.

But a man who treats her like shit must see her for who she is… in fact, deep down she secretly believes she deserves to be treated like this, so she sticks with him.

I honestly don’t think PUA tactics have much effect on this, as PUA tactics are very-much a surface-level component of the interaction.

Negs and teases don’t ever really touch a girl’s self esteem, they just manipulate the perception of social value. You teasing her on her checkbook makes you seem like you have a little bit more value in that department, but it doesn’t ever change how she feels about herself or how you change about yourself.

It may just trigger feelings that are already there.

What IS true is that inner game will always match inner game. Guys who have low self-esteem will naturally attract and enter relationships with women who feel shitty about themselves.

Men with high self esteem will naturally attract and end up with women with high self esteem.

PUA tactics don’t influence this much. A guy with low self-esteem will use PUA tactics in a manipulative, selfish way — which will turn off all women except those who don’t respect themselves and their boundaries — therefore getting them a LSE woman.

Men with high self esteem will use PUA tactics to generate win-win situations, to accentuate the virtues of their own personalities and attract women who appreciate and value those virtues and vice-versa.

As for how can you tell if a woman has low self-esteem?

Here are some clear signals, and also instant deal-breakers for me with women:

- Excessively needy behavior: calls you multiple times a day, demands all of your time and attention. Doesn’t respect your boundaries or your “me” time — particularly if she does this early on. A long-term girlfriend who does this is kind of a different story (but still low self esteem).

- Extreme (irrational) jealousy and/or (irrational) anger towards you. For instance, if she gets upset that you spend more time playing your guitar than hanging out with her… uhh… yeah.

- Manipulative behavior. For instance, if she EVER does something with the intention of making me jealous. I don’t mean the little things girls do for attention, but something like ditching me when we’re out together because some guy is buying her shots and she’s obviously doing it so that I’ll get jealous and fight for her attention again. I’m done. Hell, I’ve walked out of dates after an hour because of crap like this.

- A huge sense of entitlement and selfishness coupled with a lack of self-awareness. For instance, a girl who makes EVERYTHING about her all the time, even when things have nothing to do with her… a girl who is incredibly selfish and completely oblivious to it.

- She’s addicted to drama and conflict. If there’s a lack of drama and conflict in her life, she creates it somehow — whether consciously or unconsciously.

- An inordinately negative woman: pessimistic, talks a lot of shit, “hates” a lot of people and things, and generally seems sad and depressed a lot.

- She either lies consistently or lies about major things you should not lie about.

Unfortunately, LSE women tend to ALWAYS be amazing in bed. I still haven’t figured out why this is — but I think it has to do with a lot of pent up emotion or something.

They’re also experts at emotionally manipulating you. You have to be very careful. They’re amazingly good at catching you in their web and pulling on your emotional strings to keep you from getting away. Never underestimate their ability to do this.

A long time ago, I dated a number of LSE women. One of them it took me a good year to finally get away from. Every time I thought I was getting away, she’d come up with something HUGE that would suck me back in: a guy trying to rape her, her friend from high school dying, telling me she’ll have threesomes with me, etc.

The thing is, after a while, I didn’t know if I could believe her anymore. And just the mere fact that a girl is crying over a friend dying and I have no idea if she just made this up or not, tells me there’s a serious problem.

But then again, I didn’t have the self-esteem to stand up for myself and tell her no more, set my boundaries and kick her out of my life.

Live and learn…