When you set boundaries from the onset, you communicate that you seek an outcome with a specific person—the opposite of the outcome independence you are supposed to embody. If you did not, you would take a step back and observe and assess relaxingly.

Boundaries are less about communicating them to others but more about knowing what yours are for yourself.

And that is why a lot of guys are getting it wrong with women.

When you are explicit in your boundaries off the bat, it is like girls' shit tests. It is gross and uncouth.

A poor show of power posturing to better show one does not have any.

Accurate testing and qualifying are subtle.

Warnings with women rarely work; you are only fooling yourself that you have more control than you do. Or even you comfort yourself that you will leave in a said situation. If you need to say it, it is more to convince yourself than to warn the other person.

When you are comfortable with yourself and what is acceptable in others, you show two things by stating boundaries off the bat:

1) It sub-communicates previous negative feedback loops you were the victim of, which is the opposite of pre-selection. You would not need to mention it if something negative had never happened to you because it would not have come to your mind.

2) The other person knows your agenda and what they can't do, meaning that if you have not stated one thing they should not do, they can always say you never said that. They then have the plausible deniability to act out.

When you don't do it:

1) You allow others to show their true colours, and you can decide to stay or leave. If they assume you are a pushover, you are dealing with someone who will want to take every opportunity to extract from you when given the apparent chance. Great person to trust, eh? If they assume the positive, they tell you they frame relationships as a zero-sum game, introducing the relationship-sabotaging mechanism of keeping a scoreboard.

2) It can show their level of thoughtfulness towards you, allowing them to seek permission, and is a more genuine indicator of their benevolence and good intentions.

The last two are more efficient than the first two because the other person has not been notified that he is under the stethoscope. Private Eyes don’t let the investigation subject know they are part of one.

The same logic applies to company probation periods - employees show their best shelf at first, and you see their true selves after the period. The expectations are set, and provided you meet them for the first three months, there is an eventual letting-off period.

Contractors are assessed from the beginning, and there is no letting-down throughout their stint because they have little to no notice period, like the person on probation. They get a higher daily rate both from the higher risk of the contract's nature and their requirement to always be on top of their game.

Strength is quiet and does not need to be stated.

You have more power in the assumed ability to walk away from the table of negotiations than by stating the rules of engagement for how to negotiate with you, even when it is to state that there is little room to negotiate.

Unpredictability is not only an aphrodisiac but also allows you not to have someone corner you.

You have more freedom than the false sense of security you give yourself through the (self-)regulation that is boundaries.

Like with the economy, regulations allow people to feel safe about a situation they see as overwhelmingly uncontrollable when they have an individual power in dealing with it they don't want to acknowledge. These regulations also create more problems than solutions.

Essentially it is a bitch move from an inability to deal with uncertainty which is a hallmark of confidence and certainty within yourself that no matter what, you will be able to handle it on the fly, as you don't need a rulebook to guide your life. No wonder you find women in companies' compliance / ESG departments because they love enforcing external rules, not realising these rules exist out of lack of accepted agency.

Yes, many will abuse you if you don't set the limits straight up, though the question is:

Are you so desperate for a relationship that you have to try to impact someone's initial inclination?

You want the interactions to work and give them the keys.

You want to have that person as vested as you in the relationship and think outside of their own realm of consciousness to gauge what would be acceptable or not by you.

You are vested in the relationship's success with that person, but you are taking away your ability to assess them without the training wheels you decided to give them.

When you don't set your boundaries, people show their true colours without you giving them stabilisers.

But you don't know if they would have needed it to begin with.

If they did, do you want to deal with someone holding back from being their true selves, and when they don't, do you want to infantilise them and project past failures into new adventures? One of these behaviours hinders baseline trust. The other does not. You can trust someone and make them earn it without being too explicit that they must work for it. You are allowing their personality to reflect whether it genuinely matches yours.

When it comes to girls and women, little to none will have the insight to actually care outside of their own little world. You don't have a duty to save them or redirect them. You are taking on a burden no one asked you to take. Some will have had the proper upbringing to know how to act, and you will smoothly invite them into your world.

Flexibility shows a detachment from the outcome of human interaction; it also allows individuals to display trust in others. Nevertheless, it does not mean you can't have firm limits on what you will and won't accept. Instead of creating issues before they arise, you allow the other person to adapt to your ruling naturally. This is a soft power approach that generates less resentment and is more influential, as cooperation brings goodwill.

To know someone's true character, you should give them the illusion of power. Only when they have the impression they have the leverage will you see who they actually are.

Many people will be nice if they know they don't have the power. Turn the tables, and they will be a tyrant.

Setting boundaries from the onset is equivalent to saying: "Respect me, or I leave.". In the same way, you command respect. You don’t demand it. You are showing your weakness in doing so because you are crystallising a powerless frame.

It is better to assume respect and leave if they don't show it.

When there is enough evidence from previous interactions that shows good spirit from the person, but there has been an occasional misstep from them, it is fine to state what you will and won't accept. It is circumstantial and not structural.

E.g.

If a girl you barely know flaked on you on your first date. Don’t reward her by entertaining her further.

A last-minute cancellation is excusable if your FWB has been reliable since you have known her on her scheduling. You can overlook it and empathise with the situation, but remind her that you would appreciate more notice next time.

Solutions:

Create incentives for people to act a certain way rather than a rules-driven framework, and filter out the ones who fail the implied good faith basis test. In regulation settings, you have two types of philosophies: the rules-based and the principles-based. The difference is that rules-based regulation is strict and precise but inflexible, while principles-based regulation is flexible but open to interpretation. Rules-based tend to be more stifling towards innovation and growth than principles-based. Yet, they are more suited for low-trusting environments, reflecting the aforementioned externalities of such endeavours.

The reason why she later shit-tests your stated boundaries is because, unconsciously, she knows it is an indirect indicator of weakness and insecurity from you.

Setting boundaries from the onset assumes you don't have the authority for her respect.

And you expect her to submit to you, lol.

A king doesn't warn their subjects that they will get punished for disrespect. The subject already knows they run the certainty of bad outcomes if they decide to act out.

Submission is instinctive in a woman.

Shit tests for women are like expressed boundaries for guys.

It is an insecure way of communicating the limitations of their discernment capacity and belief in taking adequate action in a situation without a prescription.

For example, you must be naïve as a woman to think that verbalising your expectations of "dating intentionally" will result in better outcomes.

You are just making your agenda overt for men to manipulate you better.

It is the same as verbalising your boundaries from the get-go as a guy; you are giving the red carpet for women to test you.

Both indicate a lack of trust in oneself in assessing a situation and acting accordingly. Explicit outcome dependency also flags to the other individual your lower value.

Stating overt boundaries means: “I have been hurt by being too permissive in the past, and this is my shield.”. It is playing to lose and communicating that you were previously a loser.

Stating overt expectations early on dating is saying I am ran through and have little time left, so screw the process of getting to know someone; you will do, as long as you follow my rules.

It frames original mistrust as a byproduct of past failures you project into the future. It turns the person into an object, not a subject—something women eventually dislike, funnily enough.

They never actually knew how to discern men's intentions toward them, as when they were younger, they did not care that much about something serious and felt they had the power from the high interest they generated. Yet, interestingly enough, they did not lead with early frame announcements such as “no hook up”. Nothing is more uncouth than a person, presumably and without any prompting, assuming what she sees as hostile intentions from someone they are ideally looking to make a good impression on. In their self-centeredness, they later think men wouldn't bamboozle them by stating their intentions when they are actually just telling the guys how to sell to them, saving the guys the discovery part, when it initially put them in an asymmetric information weakness point.

Furthermore, these same rules turn the dating phase into a bore for women who are more likely not to like the guys who follow them. The same way when they take charge of the date or the conversation. For the simple reason that they cannot run a date without getting bored, and/or the burden of doing so kills the joy of being in their feminine receiving role.

The guy falling in the frame of the rules she set just qualified himself out as the woman she does not want to shag. In the same way, the guy who doesn't take control of the conversation on a date is boring because women are mostly boring themselves and don't have much conversation. It is the same dynamic when he does not set up the date. He will be qualified as indecisive and not a man. In essence, the rules-based framework is the anti-seductive position women with the least leverage operate on when they can embrace more power than they think they have by keeping all their options on the table. It will also filter for the guys they don’t like.

Women's rules are just a Hail Mary to compensate for mismanaged time and priorities. In the same way, men’s boundaries stated from the onset are a power they think they have but don’t know they forego. Where women are trying to fit a guy into their agenda, settling for less with only those they won't like as much, if at all, yet convincing themselves otherwise, men are trying to enforce rules onto situations that did not occur, only showing a lack of faith in themselves and posturing the strength they masquerade having but validating in their action that they don’t hold.

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