Tactics Tuesdays: How to Answer "Who Is She?" & Other LTR Tests

Every guy gets asked tricky questions by his long-term girlfriends. How do you deal with these in a way that lets you calm the girl without giving up power?

When you have a long-term girlfriend – and even before she’s long-term, sometimes – you are going to run into the occasional (or perhaps not so occasional; depends on the girl) grilling about people and activities in your life.

Some of the standard ones are questions like:

• “Who is she?” about some girl who obviously knows you in-person or who appears in photos with you or is texting you, who your girlfriend does not know

• “I don’t like those friends of yours” about buddies you have who are brash, single, and playboy-like

• “You’re still doing that?” if you are heading out to nightlife or parties with friends but unaccompanied by your girlfriend

• “I don’t see why you need to do that” if you are signing up for, say, a foreign language class suddenly out of the blue

• “Oh, so now you care about your look a lot” if suddenly you are fixing up your fashion, getting back into exercise, working to slim down, or trying out new hair/skin/etc. products

You are a lot more likely to run into this with confident girlfriends, and ESPECIALLY if they are looking for something long, long-term with you (i.e., permanent / ever after). Less confident girlfriends will be more circumspect, and may instead only hint at their concerns.

Girls who aren’t thinking super long-term with you, on the other hand, may not ask you these things at all.

When you DO get hit with such LTR tests though, they’re tricky:

Fail to reassure your woman, and she begins to lose confidence in the relationship.

Yet, go too far emasculating yourself in your response (“I’ve never even LOOKED at another woman! I swear!”), and you reduce a lot of her attraction for you, meanwhile handing over stronger relationship control to her.

If you want to survive these types of tests without wrecking your relationship one way or the other, you’ve got to know how to answer them.