It took me long enough to come to the following realization: you can't trust a woman with your heart.
Bereft of the capacity for logical thinking, women can justify anything they do if it makes them feel pretty or wanted; buying new shoes, dying their hair, or juggling men like hackysacks, it's all the same to them if it makes them feel special and beautiful and princess-like, and if you get in the way and subsequently run over it's never their fault - you clearly weren't doing enough to contribute to their self-esteem.
OK, probably not all women are this way, but right now it feels that way. Maybe I've just been in the habit my whole life of ignoring the warning signs and falling in with damaged women, women who are incapable of true compassion and caring and respect. I'd like to think that's the case rather than being forced to believe that all women are evil, but in order to protect myself I'm going to go ahead and stick with gross over-generalizations for now and be wary of every card-carrying member of the "fair" sex.
As such, it's important to be able to know where you stand, and how damaged the woman you are considering sharing your life with truly is. Maybe she's a self-confident woman with high self esteem who doesn't need men to fluff her ego, maybe she's not. Either way, she will never admit or even know that she is the latter, so it's important that guys get together on this one and share some tips for testing the waters while still retaining our dignity.
IMPORTANT NOTE: If a woman in your life fails any of these sort of barometer readings, run, do not walk, as far away as possible. She cannot be trusted. Ever. If she passes all of them, proceed with caution, it doesn't mean anything.
Here's my first contribution to this list of tips, I'll post more as I think of them, and I call on my readers to send in their own:
MAN RELATIONSHIP TIP #1: Send her some flowers for absolutely no reason when she might least be expecting it (this is important, do not send them the night after a wonderful time out, or after an argument, or on her birthday - in fact, this works best if you've never sent her flowers before). Do NOT enclose a card, or any other identifying information that will allow her to tell where they came from. Do NOT ask her later that night if anything special happened to her at work that day. If she calls you up right away when she gets them, gushing and glowing and thanking you for being so wonderful, then you are the only man in her life.
At the moment.
If she doesn't mention it or tries to feel you out a few days later, then that means that she's not sure if it was you that sent them or the ex-boyfriend she's been stringing along and keeping in reserve, and you can safely eject and pop your parachute. This is tried and true, it actually happened to me once when the delivery service forgot to enclose the card I wrote for her, and somehow I was stupid enough to believe whatever line she fed me about why she didn't assume they were from me, which led to disasterous heartbreak much, much later. Again: RUN, do NOT walk.
