Half the fun of relationships is the thrill of the chase. And the chase is heightened even more when there is someone else in the race. Sexual competition does not just stimulate you intellectually—it taps into a primal urge to show that you are the dominant cat in the pride. But, competition for a woman can easily devolve into a masculine pissing contest.You may be at risk of losing sight of what the prize actually is, but you can use these primal instincts to win your lady’s heart (or win someone else’s lady’s heart).
Protect
In primal mating rituals in the wild, males typically engage in physical conflicts to show off their battle skills to the woman they are fighting over. A quick look around the parking lot of a bar after closing time will show you that we are not too far off that instinctual path yet. The mating rituals that can be observed in bars mimic those found in the wild. There is a display of plumage in the form of designer threads, expensive jewelry and even more expensive rides to show the ladies that you are a provider. There is primping and preening so that your natural assets display themselves to be at the very height of evolution. And finally, there is a raw sexuality of a man confident in his ability to propagate, and do it well.
When two males are drawn to the same lady (or even worse, when one male sees someone else’s lady and makes a move on her) the battle will quickly turn into a series of physical displays. The male that is honing in on the taken lady will circle the two, trying to get a feel for their relationship and the male’s prowess in maintaining it. If the lady senses the interest, she will accordingly size up the competitor and decide if it would be a trade up or a trade down in the scheme of what she is looking for.
If she judges the competitor to be a trade up the evolutionary chain for her, she may indicate so by showing off her assets to the competitor when her mate has his back turned. She will strut her own plumage, perhaps giving the competitor a taste of what he would gain, presenting her arguments about why she might be a prize worth battling for.
This is where it gets dicey and modern sensibilities must take over for a moment. Even if you feel you could beat her current beau in a physical match or a battle of the wills (the battle equivalent for the more cerebral modern day man), you should not approach him head on. If you do so, you will come off as boorish and arrogant and shoving your business where it don’t belong.
The best way in is to provide the lady with a service that shows you care about her well being. This should be a gentlemanly act that is perpetrated in full sight of her mate. A good example would be picking up something she dropped like a jacket that slipped off her chair or a pen, anything. Not only does this show care and protection, but it also harkens back to the ultimate in chivalrous eras, the Medieval period, were women dropped hankies just so that a man could pick it up for her. As you pick it up and hand it to her, make sure you make eye contact with an earnestly helpful and kind smile.
Hold her eye for just a little too long and then when you see her mate turn and notice this interaction, glance over at him quickly and allow your earnest smile to evolve ever-so-slightly into a shit-eating grin. This is the Serengeti equivalent to walking up to the alpha lion and flicking him on the forehead, so you will want to move along. Once you raise his ire, more than likely, he will keep an eye out for you for the rest of the night.
The rest of the night should be a delicate dance of being in the right place at the right time: there to hold a door, there to offer her a light. Make all of these flirtations sweet and sincere and she will be delighted by you. Even better, the mate will get increasingly irate that you are beating him to all the things he should technically be doing (and probably did way back when he first started courting her).
At first he will get annoyed with her for encouraging this sort of behavior, but enough well-timed eye locks with him will eventually get his goat and he will attempt the stock physical intimidation tactics to get you to stop. He will pad himself with his buddies, he will do the walk-by shoulder, he will probably also attempt the visual intimidation of glaring whenever he gets a chance.
At this point, you are going to have to decide if you are able to take him, or else get some of your pride to back you, because if you do not back off, this is going to escalate into a physical battle. The trick is to make him make the first move in plain sight of the girlfriend. He will try to steer the conflict away from her vicinity in order to avoid looking like an asshole in front of her, but it is important that she sees this very base primal response from her boyfriend. It is not appealing.
Though your approach is meant to tap into the primal element of the dating ritual, women are not actually terribly impressed by brute acts of strength that are the primal equivalent of pissing on them to mark territory. Once you have whipped him into a suitable frenzy, see if you can’t make one more contact with the lady, perhaps with some kind of physical contact this time (a hand on her arm or her back will do).
What will seem like perfectly gentlemanly behavior on your part (as long as you can keep it sincere, not smarmy) to the lady is going to be read as clear signals from the mate that you are impeding on his chance to propagate with this fertile creature. When this happens, there is only one answer: to the Dome. Most likely what will happen is that he will come up to you and start wagging his finger in your or jabbing it into your chest, hurling out some cleaver threat like, “Watch it.” Here, a continuation of sincere and innocent acts would be perfect since it is congruous with how she’s been perceiving you and completely opposite to what the mate knows you are up to.
If you are good with words, now would be the time to whip out the wit. Wit is equated with intelligence and confidence, which is related to success and therefore your ability to provide. Not only will this show you as the humble, sincere guy she took you for, it will serve to push him closer to the edge.
At this point, you have two options: you can either bow out, if you think you cannot beat him, and try to win her over with witty banter or you can take a punch from a guy who is soon to be at least fighting with, if not breaking up with, your new lady.
On an evolutionary level, she would want to pick the strongest of the men, but, as stated earlier, wit is the strength of the new millennium. If you can talk yourself out of the situation with wit and grace, while simultaneously coming off to the woman as a sympathetic character, you are in, and he is out.
If you can take a punch, feel free to push him to that level. Do not hit him first, because then you transfer that victim status onto him and off of you (victim status is good). If he hits you, or better yet, attempts to, try to duck it to make him look like an ass. If it connects, feel free to hit back but try not to destroy him.
You should just react back enough to show that you are not intimidated by him, but not so much that his girlfriend feels the need to run after him to check on his well-being. If she doesn’t go racing off after him, she will come over to you to apologize for his behavior. This is your in, and your chance to let your wit shine. If you are lucky and you don’t get kicked out, you should have enough time to slip her your number. If you are very lucky, she may just stick around and let him cool off while she lets you buy her a drink.