Why do all women insist on shit-testing, especially when it’s so destructive to the very thing that they say they want more than anything else, ie. an LTR? Here’s what shit-testing is all about and how you can deal with it.

One thing I’ve learnt (both personally and from others) is that ALL women will shit test you, especially in the early stages of a relationship. It’s puzzling at first, because the shit testing can be quite destructive, especially if it involves her trying to make you jealous. It makes you wonder: ‘what’s going on here? I thought women want to have a nice romantic relationship with lots of affection, what's the deal with all these insulting shit tests?’

Here's the deal.....

Women, dogs and children ALL do this. The polite name for shit testing (when you are outside of TRP) is 'boundary seeking'. They are feeling out the edges or limits of what I call their ‘free play area’. The important thing to remember..... they are SEEKING the boundary. They want to find it. They will NOT be happy UNTIL they find the boundary. Quite the reverse, they will only be happy when they find the boundary. That’s the first important point to learn.

The second is that if you do not set and enforce a boundary, they will keep going and the shit testing will get worse and worse until it gets really destructive. Some dogs end up biting strangers and get put down. Kids end up in all sorts of trouble. And women end up destroying the very relationship they were so keen to get into.

Let's start with the dogs. Because the easiest way to understand human behaviour is to simply remember that we are all animals, so let's think about animal behaviour first. Most dogs will challenge you a bit, they may even growl at you and perhaps even bite (softly at first, to see how you react). The trick is to react swiftly at the first hint of a boundary test. A quick slap with a rolled up newspaper will tell the dog where the boundary is. You don’t need to hurt the dog, there is no need to be cruel. The slap is symbolic, not painful and much better than shouting because the dog can’t understand what you are saying, but they do understand a slap. The best time for this is when they are young.

The dog will dip his head in a symbolic act of submission, usually while holding eye contact with you. This is what most people call the 'guilty dog look’, but it's actually not guilt. It’s something more important: its submission. He is communicating his submission. He is saying;

'I found the boundary. I acknowledge you as the leader, you are the top log, the alpha, I will follow you'.

Horses do the head dip thing as well, trainers watch out for it while they are 'breaking' a horse. It's universal. In the animal kingdom, in particular the social mammals, a huge percentage of all communication is all about establishing who the alpha is and what the boundaries are. A dog that doesn’t know who the boss is will get more and more anxious, because the stability of the pack is dependent on a solid power structure. Without leadership and chain of command, who knows where the next meal is coming from or what will happen if a rival dog pack attacks?

A trained dog that is submissive to his owner is a happy dog. For this reason, the best trainers always say that you should never let a dog enter or exit the house in front of you, no matter how excited / impatient the dog is. You need to make the dog follow AFTER you. Again, this is all symbolic. Same with eating. Never feed a dog as soon as you get home. You eat first, let the dog see you eating, tell him to lie down and watch. Ignore his whining. Then, when you are finished, and have had a coffee and a smoke, when you are ready, and only then, feed the dog. All symbolic, but all important.

I have a friend with a really well behaved dog. He doesn't let the dog in the kitchen, and he doesn't have one of those stupid child gates to keep the dog out of the kitchen either (the best boundaries are not enforced with walls, they are enforced with clear rules). This dog is so well behaved that he doesn’t need to be on a lead when out walking. He does exactly what he is told. When I visit my friend, we sit there chatting in the kitchen having a coffee and the dog lies down just outside of the kitchen. The dog will be silently watching us at the threshold, with the kitchen door wide open. You can clearly see that he would love to come into the kitchen and be with us, because dogs love company and society. He’d love to be in there jumping all over us. But he knows it's not allowed.

I once saw the dog slowly push his paw forwards, so that he had just a paw inside the kitchen. Just lying there, watching us, with one paw over the threshold. My friend saw this, and slowly and quietly said the name of the dog while holding eye contact. He literally just said one word, and softly. The dog immediately, but slowly and deliberately (while holding eye contact), pulled his paw out of the kitchen and then dipped his head with 'the guilty look'. It was a fascinating glimpse into their relationship. My friend loves his dog more than anything by the way. It's not cruel to discipline your dog, quite the reverse.

There was no need to shout, no need to smack the dog. The dog had long ago acknowledged who the boss was. The important thing is this: it doesn't matter if your dog is NOT allowed in the kitchen, or ONLY allowed in the kitchen, the important thing is to have limits that you decide and you enforce. That makes YOU the top dog, and then, and only then, will your dog be a happy dog.

The same is true of kids, especially teenagers. The ones that get into trouble with the law and get kicked out of school are the ones who had parents that weren't any good at setting boundaries. It's not good for the kids for the parents to be really permissive, because they will run into issues with those that aren't permissive (schools and police). They say that if you love your children, the best gift you can give them is discipline. It's true.

And the same is true of women. DON'T be upset or disillusioned or frustrated when a woman starts with her shit testing. It's actually a good sign. It means that she is feeling out her ‘free play area’, which means that she is interested in establishing a healthy LTR.

(BTW, She has NO idea what she is doing or WHY she is doing this... women are repulsed by any explanation of their own behaviour that is not some romantic drivel. Women don't understand psychology at all, least of all the psychology of women. This is why all of the best psychologists are men. Because men have no trouble with logic and reason leading them to conclusions that aren't all ‘fluffy and nice’).

Don't be upset when a woman starts with her shit testing - take it as the opportunity to lay down those boundaries. You may have to do it multiple times, because either she is a slow learner or she has developed bad habits in the past. The trick is to employ a gently escalating pattern of discipline with regards to boundaries. Be firm but fair. Don't raise your voice. Smile and be friendly as you lay down the law, like a true leader. Trust me, this is what she is looking for, and if she doesn't find it, she will be unhappy and anxious, and will keep going until she burns it all down.

Trust me on this. There are broken men out there who are living a nightmare, trapped in a marriage where the woman feels free to shit on them whenever they like. It will fester and get worse. You’ve probably all seen or met a couple where the woman undermines and humiliates the man, even in public. Sometimes especially in public, because she believes that this gives her more power in the relationship.

She’ll make cutting remarks about his height or some deficit in his abilities, social status or income, in front of other people. This is a doomed relationship. It will end in divorce or continue in a bitter seething pool of resentment, in which both parties are unhappy. And trust me, the man might laugh it off in public so as to not make others feel uncomfortable, but in the privacy of his own mind, he resents this woman with a vengeance. He hates his own wife. And she scorns him because she sees how beta he is. Which is ironic, because its her behaviour that is making him beta, and the very thing she wanted was an alpha man.

If he ever meets another woman that treats him with respect, he’ll leave. And the ex-wife will be crying into her Chardonnay, on her own, with her cat, wondering what went wrong. She’ll probably whine about how all men leave, how he just dumped her for someone younger / blonder / thing, but what she’ll be missing is that he dumped her for someone that didn’t try to humiliate him. But I digress.

The mistake that men make (and I have made in the past) is that they just say ‘all women are like that’ or ‘some women are bad, I just picked the wrong one’. The mistake the men make is that they don’t acknowledge their own part in the issue. That they never set the boundaries and never enforced them. We can’t blame men too much on this, because we have been living in a Femocracy where women can do no wrong and men are guilty without trial.

When a woman starts with her shit testing, you need to step up and set the boundaries and the earlier the better. She will either 'dip her head' (symbolically) and acknowledge you as the alpha in the relationship or she will fight you for alpha status. The first kind are keepers. The second is not.

Another good point to remember: just as my friend never cured his dog of his preference for being in the kitchen and jumping all over us, you will never cure a woman of her desire to challenge and undermine you. My friend has used boundaries, implied consequences and discipline to solve the issue and so must you deal with a woman’s desire to humiliate you and challenge you.