Dating & Relationships
Why He Says You’re “Great” But Still Won’t Commit, And The Hidden Instinct That Makes A Man Sure You’re The One
A dating coach couldn’t understand why three of his friends who swore they’d never settle down all got engaged in the same year. What he found explains why being a man’s “perfect girl” so often isn’t enough.
Emma had been seeing Liam for six months when he asked if they could talk.
He was good-looking, he was passionate about his work and he made her laugh. Best of all, he never hid how into her he was, which is why she’d let herself open up in a way she hadn’t for years.
So she was completely blindsided by what he said on that walk.
“I think you’re great. You’re beautiful, you’re kind, and smart, and fun. You’re everything I’ve always wanted in a woman. But something’s missing. I just have this feeling you’re not the one for me.”
She asked him what exactly was missing. She begged him to tell her what she could do differently. He couldn’t give her an answer, and nothing she said changed his mind.
A few months later, a late-night call made it worse. Liam told her he was engaged to Stephanie, a woman he’d described as “just a friend”. He said it had come out of nowhere, and that he’d never felt so sure of anything before.
If a man has ever told you you’re great and then held back, you’ll know the question Emma couldn’t stop asking herself that night.
Why does a man feel so sure about one woman and so unsure about another?
Liam had told Emma she was smart, funny and playful, which were all the things he said he wanted. He still chose someone else, and he chose her fast.
Emma was a freelance journalist, so she did what she knew how to do. She decided to write an article about what makes men choose certain women, and she started interviewing dating and relationship experts.
They talked about communication, compromise and loving yourself first, which is all good advice. But when she asked why some women make a man so sure they’re the one while others always leave him hesitant, none of them had an answer that made sense to her.
The answer came from a coach on the radio
Months later, when she was close to giving up on the article, Emma heard Clayton Max on the radio. Clayton has a background in applied psychology and has worked as a dating and relationship coach for over 11 years.
He was talking about the TV show The Bachelor, and explaining how the winning woman stood out from all the others. She hadn’t tried to be his perfect girl, and she hadn’t tried to convince him she was the best choice. Instead she’d flipped him into what Clayton called “infatuation mode”, which made him blind to her flaws and made him feel his life would be a living hell without her.
A week later Emma met Clayton at a coffee shop near his office, and that’s where he told her about the project that had changed how he saw all of this.
Three friends, three engagements and one year
It started when three of Clayton’s guy friends got engaged in the same year. These were men who had spent years saying they “didn’t believe in marriage” and that settling down “wasn’t for them”.
What surprised Clayton was that the women who had made these men so eager to commit didn’t have all the qualities the men had said they were looking for. Yet very soon after meeting them, these women were all the men wanted. One of his friends even moved across the country to make it work.
So Clayton interviewed the couples and spent months reading the research on the psychology of love, attraction and attachment. What he found explained the whole thing.
The instinct that makes a man sure
Clayton calls it the Infatuation Instinct. It’s a drive that focuses all of a man’s romantic interest on one woman, and the research the program draws on, from Rutgers University, SUNY Stony Brook and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, describes an “emotional tripwire” in the male brain that sets it off.
Once it’s switched on, a few things change in a man:
- He starts to idealise her. He overlooks the things that might have held him back and focuses on her good qualities.
- He thinks about her nearly all the time, replaying the moments they’ve shared in his head.
- He finds it hard to even imagine having feelings for anyone else.
When it’s switched off, it doesn’t matter how perfect a woman is for him on paper. He’s left with a nagging feeling that something is “not quite right”, and he usually won’t admit the real reason, which is that he secretly suspects there might be someone better out there.
That was the moment it made sense to Emma. Every time a man had told her he wasn’t ready, or the timing wasn’t right, those reasons had been a smokescreen.
Why ticking every box on his list doesn’t work
Most of us try to win a man over by being his perfect girl, as if he carries a checklist and the woman who ticks every box gets chosen. Clayton’s point is that giving a man everything he thinks he wants only speaks to the logical part of his brain, and that part isn’t where the feeling of “she’s the one” comes from.
What switches the instinct on, he found, is a set of psychological triggers. Curiosity keeps you on his mind when you’re not around. Investment gets him working to earn your attention, and the more he puts in, the deeper he falls. Uncertainty matters most of all, because a man who feels a little out of control with you stays excited instead of getting comfortable.
Most women have no idea how to create those feelings without playing games, so Clayton wrote short scripts for each trigger: what to say, and when to say it.
What happened when Emma tried them
Emma tested them on Jack, a man she really liked, at a dinner where she could feel him getting bored and distracted. She used one curiosity script and he leaned in and started asking her questions like he truly wanted to know her. Just before they said goodnight, she used an uncertainty script.
He texted her 15 minutes after dropping her off: “Hey, what are you doing next weekend?”
She wasn’t the only one. Her friend Carol used a curiosity script, and a man who worked in her building finally asked for her number and took her out.
One of Clayton’s students, Beth-Ann, used investment scripts with her husband of 23 years. He went back into courtship mode, bringing her flowers, planning dates for the two of them and telling her every day how much she meant to him.
The whole story is in a free presentation
Emma went on to help Clayton turn his scripts into a program called Infatuation Scripts, and the presentation explains the whole idea from the beginning. In it you’ll see:
- Why men push away their “perfect girl”, and what the women they choose do differently
- How the emotional tripwire works, and why it makes a man see your best side
- How to show a man how much you like him without handing him control of the relationship
- How to use it with a man you’ve just met, a man you’ve just started dating, or your long-term boyfriend or husband
If a man has ever told you you’re great and then held back, this presentation will finally show you why, and what you can say to change it.
Watch the free presentation See the scripts and how they workThe presentation plays on the Infatuation Scripts website. If you decide to get the program afterwards, it comes with a 60-day money-back guarantee.