How do girls/women like to be treated?

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I daresay if you ask any girl this question, the first thing that’s going to come out of her mouth is “With respect.” Which immediately will make any guy wonder about all the relationships they see where girls are hanging on to guys that treat them like shit.

How to resolve this conundrum? I’ve known a lot of girls that got trapped in crappy relationships. The thing that strikes me about all of them is that the girl didn’t know what she was getting herself into, when she took up with a guy.

Most guys have this undercurrent of ugly, nasty thoughts that come up whenever they’re feeling jealous or defensive. Ladies don’t deserve it, but the guy can’t help himself. Nick Jonas put it best in his song Jealous. “It’s my right to be hellish, I still get jealous!” It’s not his right.

I really think that for a healthy relationship to be possible between two people, at least one of them needs to be trained in a therapeutic mindset. This is the “bigger person” of the relationship and knows how to handle negative feelings, whether they’re coming from themselves or the other person. Or one of them must have access to somebody who can coach them through rough patches.

Otherwise every relationship seems to devolve into a downward spiral of jealousy being pushed onto the other person, who probably didn’t deserve it, the partner doesn’t know how to handle it, and it just gets worse and worse until they break up.

Add this to the fact that attraction comes from deep inside of us and we can never really consciously control who we’re attracted to, and you can easily see how there’s a lot of girls out there who seem to like being treated poorly. Society socializes them to be passive, to take on emotional duties that often make them feel like they’re being walked on.