Reader “Nikki” asked me my thoughts about why men rebound so quickly after a “relationship” ends.

If you’re not aware of what “the rebound” is, it’s the time period between when you exit one relationship and feel like attempting to enter a new one. If someone breaks up with a bf/gf/wife/husband and you meet them before they get over it, that’s called “catching them on the rebound”, like in basketball.

Once they feel like being involved in relationships again, they’ve exited rebound status. Just because you meet someone shortly after they break up with someone doesn’t mean they haven’t gotten over it already.. especially if the breakup was THEIR idea to begin with.

If there were actual statistics, I’m sure they’d indicate that guys in general get over relationships ending more quickly than gals do. That’s what we’re going to discuss in this article.

Relationships

The relationships that I believe in are the ones that are real. Those could be between friends, family members, co-workers, lovers, friends with benefits, frenemies, enemies, whomever.

The relationships that I DON’T believe in are the ones that are declared without collateral:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateral_(finance): In lending agreements, collateral is a borrower’s pledge of specific property to a lender, to secure repayment of a loan.[1][2] The collateral serves as protection for a lender against a borrower’s default – that is, any borrower failing to pay the principal and interest under the terms of a loan obligation. If a borrower does default on a loan (due to insolvency or other event), that borrower forfeits (gives up) the property pledged as collateral – and the lender then becomes the owner of the collateral.

What that gibberish you just read means is that you say “Lend me $10″ and the other person says “How do I know you’ll pay me back?” and then you say “My hat costs $15, so if I don’t give you your money back, you can have my hat”.

When you don’t pay the money back, you have to hand over the hat, which you don’t want to do, because it’s worth more than what you borrowed from the other person, so not giving up your hat is your incentive to actually pay the money back like you initially claimed you were going to.

In boyfriend/girlfriend relationships, there’s no collateral. None. Relationships end faster than you can say “WTF? o_O”. In fact, they end faster than you can say “What?”. Now you see them, Now you don’t. Poof. Houdini. And like that… s/he’s gone.

A lot of women feel like they have protection against this if they’re married to a dude.

They do not.

Marriage

The only situation where they do have protection/leverage is when he’s not willing to part with his money and pay alimony. Sometimes, this results in a guy remaining in a marriage he’s not satisfied with. Other times this results in “Cheaper To Keep Her”, which is that dude goes about his life as if he were single, yet never divorces his wife. It’s actually financially better for him to have her sleeping under his roof and eating his food than to break up with her.

One of the reasons this arrangement works so well is that when women get mad at you, what do they do?.. That’s right.. Withhold sex… So while they’re thinking they’re cockblocking you by not giving it up, you’re lampin’ with your goomah in the apartment you’re renting for her with the money you’re saving from not having to pay alimony because your wife never left.

So, other than “Cheaper To Keep Her”, women have ZERO collateral in relationships. They think they do, because the guy has to TELL HER she does in order to get her to lay down. This is where R&B music comes in handy, because you can get the radio to tell your girlfriend things you’re not actually feeling yourself and that wouldn’t sound convincing if you tried to kick that game on your own.

Now, you might think that there isn’t any collateral in the other types of relationships I mentioned, but there actually is. In a REAL relationship, the collateral is the goodwill that you feel towards the other person, based on who they’ve been for you during the time that you’ve known them.

To go back to our hat analogy.. If you lend someone that you have a REAL relationship to $10, you don’t have to ask them for collateral, because you know that their DESIRE is to pay you back what you lent them. They desire that because that’s what you’d desire if you needed to borrow money from them.

Similarly, you DON’T want them to have to give you their hat. You want them to keep their beloved hat and return your relationship to equilibrium by paying you back the amount they borrowed. You’re lending them the money because you want them to be able to buy whatever they need to buy with it. It’s not a business deal. They don’t need collateral and you don’t want it even if they offer it.

You Gonna Eat That?

A lot of people think that what I just said describes their relationship to their BF/GF.

A lot of these people are wrong.

Some relationships, maybe even many or MOST “romantic” relationships (I have no idea of the percentages) are based on REAL relationships. The foundation is two people that want the best for each other and have teamed up to form a unit, whether that unit is formally recognized (marriage, titles) or not.

Other relationships are actually mutually parasitic arrangements, where what’s holding it together isn’t love or the determined formation of a tight unit, but rather that each person has something that the other person wants.

Typically, a gal might be with a guy because he has more money than other guys or because she doesn’t want to consider herself “single”. Typically, a guy might be with a gal because he thinks she’s hawt, or he likes having sex with her, or sporting her on his arm makes him look good to his friends. If two people like this were to meet each other, they might end up “dating”, if he’s rich enough and she’s hawt enough, and there’s never actually any cohesion which binds them together mentally, emotionally, or spiritually. “Physically” is handled, because if it isn’t, dude’s gonna bounce. :D

To confuse matters even more, people’s positions change while they’re in relationships to each other. People “fall in and out of love” with each other at different times. This causes people to sound really sincere when they’re saying nice things to each other, because they actually feel that way at the time. Instead of accepting this as an indication of how that person feels right now, at this very instant, people take these statements to mean that that person’s going to feel that way forever…

This leads us to Nikki‘s initial question.. Why men rebound so quickly…

The End

For the reasons I’ve outlined, as well as many others that I haven’t, you can’t count that instantaneous, split-second where people go from “We’re in a relationship with each other” to “We’re NOT in a relationship with each other” as the beginning of the “rebound” period.

In fact.. Whomever’s idea it was to break up, they probably came up with the idea a long-ass time ago, and you’re just finding out about it now.

It’s not easy to break up with a girlfriend and have her *NOT* cause a scene. I learned this when I was around 15 and never forgot it! :D .. This means that guys are going to ease themselves out of relationships gradually, instead of announcing when they’re no longer feelin’ a chick that they’re done with the relationship.

In effect, this causes guys to begin the rebound process way before the gal even finds out the relationship’s over. Most likely, he’s completely over you BEFORE he tells you anything at all, so while you’re just finding out and going “Why this and that?” and saying “Can’t we talk about this?” and all the other typical conversations that follow breakup announcements, it really doesn’t matter because he’s already emotionally moved on.

This assumes that he was emotionally attached to you AT ALL while he was dating you. Maybe he was. Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he fluctuated between believing he wanted to spend a long time with you and feeling like he wanted to date other women, or just not date YOU in particular.

If he wasn’t attached to you in that way, there’s no rebound period at all. He’s with you and then he’s not, and it doesn’t make a difference to him either way… Is he going to tell YOU any of this? Nope. Guys have to maintain the romantic facade or else lose functionality of their chicks. It’s like how you have to keep gasoline in the tank of a car if you want to be able to go anywhere. As soon as you don’t feel like going anywhere, there’s no point in gassing it up, is there?

Say What?

Let’s say all things are equal, or even that instead of it being a mutual decision to break up, the guy gets completely blindsided and finds out that he no longer has a girlfriend in that split second when you inform him… Unless he had plans on having kids with you, or you were like the most intelligent and cool woman he’s ever met, or he liked living in your house or driving your car, what he hears you telling him is “You don’t have guaranteed sex anymore.”

The first thing he’s going to reacquire will be sex.

The way he’s going to do that is by beginning to date women.

This is why it appears that men get over being on the rebound so quickly. The first thing that’s important is physicality. The second thing that’s important… maybe… is having a girlfriend. If you have a chick to have sex with, but she’s not your girlfriend, that’s called “Friends With Benefits” or “It’s Complicated” (which, nothing is complicated. People just don’t want to admit they’re hooking up with no formal agreement of exclusivity), both of which are as good as, if not better than having one girlfriend, because you’re still “allowed” to get more until you declare an alliance with one and forsake all the others.

Meanwhile, even if the female’s the one that did the breaking-up, she’s typically going to want to feel emotionally attached to a dude BEFORE having sex with him. This is what’s confusing to her when she sees her ex chillin’ with girls and enjoying his life one week after she broke up with him. She’s wondering how he was able to shake off the residual emotion from the relationship that quickly. Maybe he didn’t. Since guys don’t need to feel emotionally attached to gals in order to hook up with them, you might still be his #1 girl as far as he’s concerned, but you’ve abdicated your position. His options are to try to get you back and suffer through a lot of whining and demands, or go out with new girls that are GLAD to spend time with him, FLATTERED that he asked them out and HOPEFUL that he wants to have a relationship with them (or, even just hook up with them, if they’re feelin’ him that way).

Try To See It My Way

In another scenario, the relationship goes sour and people spend time “trying to work it out” with each other. One of the likely occurrences during that slow demise period is that she gets upset at him and starts withholding sex, which causes him to immediately start lining up new girls before the relationship’s even over.

As a side note.. This is typically mentioned by guys that get caught with wedding rings in their pockets, or on their chain around their neck, hanging below the collar of their shirt, so the chick they’re kickin’ it to at the bar can’t see it… Instead of giving up the rap, he says “It’s not working out between us” or “We’re not having sex together anymore” or “We have an agreement” or “We’re staying in the same house because of the kids” or “We can’t afford to live separately, even though we’re not together anymore”, or whatever he has to say to make you feel like you can give it up without becoming a homewrecker.

Even though most times, that’s just a boldfaced LIE and his relationship to his wife is perfectly fine, you can see my point. Lots of guys are trolling for girls between the time when they decide they’re going to exit their relationship in the future and when they actually tell you it’s over.

Some guys never stop picking up girls. You say what you have to say to one of them to lock her down as your best girlfriend and then let her feel like y’all are exclusive while you live the single life you always had and always intended to have.

When They Say “Why?.. Why?”

The last reason I’ll mention is that for some people, monogamy isn’t natural at all. It just doesn’t make any sense. Why would you NOT hook up with a chick that you wanted if she wanted you as well?

Unfortunately, being that the majority of the country is trained to request exclusive relationships, in order to gain access to some people, especially women, you have to lie and claim that you’re down with the program.

If that’s the case, then it’s actually A HARDSHIP, being in a relationship with you and when you break up with him, he returns to nature… Immediately! >:D

All of a sudden, The Game’s back on, and even if he’s rusty from having spent so much time with one woman, he’s going to enjoy the thrill of the hunt.. getting out there and seeing what he can do. Who’s he going to meet today? What will she look like? Will she be interested in him? Will he have to work for it? o_O

All the stuff that he didn’t get to do (or didn’t have to do) while he was with you is now available to him, and the adrenaline can be intoxicating. In fact, not only might he NOT experience a rebound phase, but he might actually be wondering how he had been able to spend so much time with only one gal before you broke up with him.
–
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As much as women hate to admit it, y’all are primarily selected visually when it comes to dating. I don’t know ANYBODY that has EVER told me “Man.. That chick is BUSTED!.. I’m gonna go over there and say ‘hi’! :D”.

You were selected because he likes how you look. He likes your hairstyle or length or whether it’s curly or straight. He likes how your body has ample curves or it doesn’t. He thinks you’re facially cute, pretty or hawt.

There are definitely other things he likes about you, like personality, intelligence, wit, earning potential… but he finds out about those AFTER he sees you. If he selects a gal to spend time with, it’s PROBABLY because he likes how she looks.

If his relationship with her happens to end and he gets back in The Game, he’s going to be looking for the traits he visually enjoys. This is the first reason it makes perfect sense why you look like his ex. You have the same combination of physical features that made him feel like having sex with his ex, so it’s Game On!!! :D

If his relationship ended because his girl’s visual type changed (she was chunky and got too skinny… she was skinny and got too chunky… she had long, red, curly hair and then cut most of it off, straightened it and dyed it blonde…), he’s definitely going to be looking to upgrade, or at least in Photoshop terms, he’d like to “Revert to last saved version”. It would be much faster for him to get a different chick that looks the way she used to look than to put her on a diet or wait for her hair to grow back.

If his relationship ended because she stopped giving it up, she’s visually the same, yet functionally deficient. It’s easier to get a new chick that looks just like her than to get her back online as far as the sex thing. It’s like how you don’t want to bend metal and then try to bend it back. Just get another bar. :)

If his relationship ended because SHE bounced on him because of his, er.. shortcomings… It’s in his best interest to start all over with a new chick that looks like her so he can reset the timer until THIS chick finds out what the other one found out that caused her to leave.

If they broke up because of personality clashes, he might be looking to upgrade to the same chick, visually, but without the character flaws. Then again, being around a gal that reminds him of his ex could easily trigger flashbacks for him to jacked-up situations that occurred between them.

Memento

Another interesting issue is familiarity. It’s pretty weird and I can’t explain it, but I remember stumbling upon a video blog by a female that looked very much like my ex, except younger than when she and I were together. It felt like a prequel, haha like how X-Men Origins: Wolverine was supposed to be before X-Men, but was actually filmed 9 years later.

If it had been ANY OTHER CHICK, I wouldn’t have listened to what she said for longer than it took me to close the window, but it was really fascinating, hearing her opinions, even though I knew damned well that I *WASN’T* watching video that my ex had taped before I met her.

I think this is a rather interesting form of Transference:

“Transference is a phenomenon in psychoanalysis characterized by unconscious redirection of feelings from one person to another…

Transference was first described by Sigmund Freud, who acknowledged its importance for psychoanalysis for better understanding of the patient’s feelings.”

Of course, this is totally unfair to the “replacement” gal, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles sometimes. The transfer could be to the new person’s benefit or detriment. It would be beneficial if the displaced feelings due to similar looks created an environment where he was more willing to listen to what she had to say and find out about who SHE really is as an individual. If he then selected her on her own merits and started dating her, she lucked out that she got a foot in the door.

OTOH, it would be detrimental if he didn’t care about her as an individual at all and was merely kickin’ it with yet another chick that fits his “type”. This would lead to a “The More, The Merrier” situation where he might end up messing with her AND his ex at the same time or any new gals that he determines to also be his visual type. I mean, the only thing better than a hawt chick is….. MORE THAN ONE HAWT CHICK!!! :D

Personally, I’m not into twins. I know that’s supposed to be a typical worldwide male fetish, but I’m actually not into messing with multiple chicks simultaneously.. simultaneously meaning instantaneously simultaneously as in “in Parallel”. I have no problem messing with several chicks “in Series”, meaning one after the other with infinitesimally little time in between, but a lot of people would consider that hooking up with them simultaneously, being that both instances would have occurred on the exact same day, unless I finished messing with one of them exactly at midnight because I guess you could say I was actually hooking up with the second one “tomorrow”…. um.. I digress.

Rocks & Hard Places

I also would be scared to death to run into an ex with a girl that looks exactly like her. How are you supposed to live that down that she gets to go “AAAAAAAH! Couldn’t get enough of this right here so you had to go out and try to get another one, HA-HAAA!!! :D”. Honestly, I don’t even like to duplicate names. Historically, my most successful name has been Christine. I’ve probably had several of each, but the variations include Christine, Chris, Chrissy, Chrissie, Christina and probably a couple of variations that start with “K”, like Kristine and Krystal, but I don’t remember offhand.

I think it’s just as “YIKES!!! :O” to introduce a Christine to a Christine as it is to introduce females that look essentially identical to each other. Another faux pas is INFORMING a chick that she looks like your ex. It’s a gamble. You could win with it or lose with it. I wouldn’t bother saying so if I could avoid it and was already kickin’ it to the chick. It’s still a good pick-up line though, if ya got nothin’ else. \o/

It gets even worse if you whip out your.. smartphone and show her pictures of your ex. Hopefully not pictures of your ex on your WALLPAPER, but assuming you have an internet connection and can access your flickr account.

Ultimately, I don’t think it makes any difference at all. It *COULD* indicate that dude wasn’t ready to give up his ex emotionally or give up hooking up with her physically, but most likely, it just indicates his “type” as far as women’s looks. I wouldn’t worry about it unless he’s calling you some other chick’s name while he’s tappin’ it, in which case, well… Guess it sucks to be you. :D

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My favorite pickup line is “You remind me of my ex”. :D I really like that line because it’s ambitious. It’ll either work for your or against you and there’s no telling what it’s going to do until you toss it out on the table.

It’s also a multi-purpose line. It’s mostly effective as a countermeasure. If you happen to get caught staring at some chick you’ve never seen before, “Oh, Sorry… It’s just that you remind me of my ex” will get you out of it every time. It’s better to cop a plea to feeling sentimental about a lost love(r) than it is to let her think you were just plain SWEATING HER because she’s hawt. :D

As far as a proactive maneuver, you need to pull it out at the right time. You want to use it to CHANGE the game, not as a regular part of your repertoire. It’s a flea-flicker (an American football play that’s not likely to work, but sometimes produces surprising and effective results. Usually used as an act of desperation in an attempt to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat).

If she’s already feeling you, leave it alone. If you feel she’s “meh” about you, you can use the line to kick-start your rap or demolish it altogether, depending on how she reacts. If she’s definitely “anti” you, you can use it to try to shock her into some kind of interest/action.

It’s risky because women hate to be compared to other women. If you’ve ever seen two gals show up to an event in the same outfit, you know what I mean. It’s actually pretty funny. You never see guys going “Damn… That dude has on the same Hawaiian shirt I do! :(” It’s something interesting or guys can give each other props for it. Anyway… This is why YRMOME is a risky proposition. Women like to feel unique, which is why you want to make sure you word it “You REMIND ME” and not “You LOOK JUST LIKE my ex” hahaha

However, taken in a positive way, she’ll be glad that you see her as the type of gal you’d date or at least have sex with, assuming she was sitting there thinking about hooking up with you in the first place. ;)

So what’s your favorite line?

~Bill | @BillCammack

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Last week, I let the fellaz know how to get over an ex-girlfriend. This week, I have tips for the ladies for what to do when that relationship ends….

1) Consume mass quantities of Häagen-Dazs ice cream

Häagen-Dazs ice cream is the de facto substitute for sex for women. Everybody knows this. If you haven’t tried it yet, stop reading this post and go get some right now. I’m not sure that there’s one flavor in particular that works across the board, but find the right one, and it’ll tickle your ivories for sure. Similar to dogs for men, Häagen-Dazs is woman’s best friend. Eat enough of it, and you’ll wonder why you cared that your man left you in the first place.

2) Commiserate with your female friends

Make sure you tell your girlfriends that you and your man broke up. All of a sudden, they’ll have all these reasons why he was no good for you in the first place, and you’re better off without him. This will make you feel very good… that is… until you realize that they knew all this stuff BEFORE and should have told you about it so you could have dumped HIM before he dumped YOU.

Make sure you reserve some extra nastiness for the chicks that tell you how your ex has been hitting on them the whole time. As your homegirl, it was their obligation to tell you that your man was trying to get some from them. Also, make sure you add a level to whatever they tell you. That’s how it works with women. If they admit to kissing your man, that means they blew him. If they admit to blowing him, that means they had sex with him, etc.

3) Go to a male strip club

Going to a male strip club will remind you that your man was flabby and out of shape to begin with, so to hell with him. :D Just make sure not to overdo it. Avoid actual physical interaction with the strippers AT.ALL.COSTS! Mark my words, you will end up either on an internet site that specializes in that kind of thing, or even worse, on your local public access television station doing what you did, for all to see.

4) Post about him on the internet

Mosey on over to DontDateHimGirl or HollaBackNYC (or wherever you live, they have a bunch of HollaBack sites) and drag his name through the mud. Nobody actually reads those sites, but you’ll feel a lot better, because it allows you to commiserate with women around the world instead of just the ones you get to bitch and moan to while waiting to get into spin class.

5) Get back in shape

Most likely, the reason he broke up with you (or engineered your breaking up with HIM) is that he lost interest in having sex with you. Getting back in shape will not only make him KICK HIMSELF EVERY SINGLE DAY… but he’ll be insanely jealous of the next man that gets to tap that. He’ll also probably start making moves to get you back, so you get the enjoyment of rejecting him on a daily basis! :D

In the words of my friend, Patricia…

~Bill

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When a woman leaves you, you may feel heartbroken, depressed, wistful, horny, betrayed, disappointed… :( any number of feelings, consecutively or simultaneously. Here are five tips on how to move on with your life, and learn to love again………

1) Have sex with her sister

hahahahaha Just Kidding! :D

… unless her sister’s HAWT!

This won’t help you feel better about yourself if her sister’s like “eeeh, ok”, because she’s not an upgrade. Depending on how mediocre she is, you may end up feeling EXPONENTIALLY WORSE! :(

Also, this does NOT… repeat… DOES *NOT* work with her best-girlfriend! Do Not Make This Mistake. A lot of women are extremely emotionally volatile & catty. Their friendships with other women turn on a dime… like happened in her relationship to YOU! :D This means that there’s the potential that in the very near future, your ex-girlfriend won’t care AT ALL about you banging her friend, so you basically wasted your time. (Note for non-Americans… “Banging” is a slang term for “having sex”, most likely derived from the sound the woman’s head makes against the headboard)

2) Have sex with her mother

ok, *NOW* I’m kidding! :D

… unless her mother’s RICH!…….. and HAWT!

3) Get a hobby

Take that extra energy that you have, now that you’re not tappin’ that three times a day, and start working out. You want to meet women in the gym anyway, because they’re WYSIWYG. They don’t get to hide their muffin-tops under those Pee-wee Herman maternity dresses.

Besides… You were probably getting flabby anyway, since you knew you were going to get laid, regardless, so working out is a double-win for you.

4) Make tons of money

The best revenge is living well. Now that she’s not with you, buy that yacht and sail past her house every Saturday with your new girlfriends that you picked up at the gym! :D Rev your new Ferrari’s engine outside that diner where she’s working the overnight shift to make ends meet after her regular job on the assembly line at the sock factory.

oh… wait….. Make sure you didn’t have any kids with her before y’all broke up! If you did, skip this tip, because the more money you make, the more you have to give her in alimony and child support, so you’d actually be better off trying to figure out how to get her back instead of buying boats and cars. :D

5) Drink alcohol

Helps you forget your ex ever existed and makes her sister look better, in case you decide to try #1. :D

~Bill

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