How to Break Free from Your White Knight Mindset

The guys that eventually start to “get” women all have one thing in common: they ALL realize that being consistent with women is just not as simple as they thought it was going to be... and they step up to the challenge.

In this article, I’m going to tell you why the white knight attitude has to go, and I’m going to give you some clues as to what you should do instead.

First off, what is a white knight and why does it have anything to do with not stepping up to the challenge with women?

A white knight is the name given to a certain type of blind optimism, and it is a mindset that is very common amongst guys who are yet to take the demands of being good with women seriously.

White knight behaviours include things like:

• Putting women on pedestals

• Making the girl your only focus

• Speaking overly intelligently (faking)

• Taking everything at face value

• Rushing to judgement in order to peripherally impress women or “hold your ground”

• Pretending you are asexual (no sexual motives)

• Posturing, or running an “impress the damsel” routine

• Putting up strong barriers in an attempt to appear like you have good traits like honesty, faithfulness, infatuation, cleanliness, agreeableness, etc.

• Roping girls into romantic relationships because they gave you some signals

Have you ever congratulated yourself for something you thought you did really well, only to later discover you actually overlooked huge details and what you were doing wasn’t even half as good as you imagined it was?

White knighting is a result of the same phenomenon. We think we are clever, until the penny drops later that we are actually messing up very important details that are crucial to long-term viability of our behaviour.

The White Knight Mind

Chances are, if you are just starting out trying to understand women, you will assume that everything about them should be easy or simple to address, and this misleads you to believe that success with women is defined by never failing or making mistakes.

The truth is that this “perfectionism” is stopping you from paying attention to details and mistakes you are already making, and if you keep this behaviour up, you will think that perfectly fixable things are to be accepted as immutable truth that can never be challenged. And by never challenging these assumptions, you will communicate to women a vicious statement:

“I will never change, no matter how much potential you see in me. No matter how much you want good things for men like me, I will always act blind and place the fault of our failing sex-life/relationship on you. And there is nothing you can do about it to change my mind, ever. So just accept it, lose hope, give up your dreams, and tell me I am your world and never give me reason to doubt it, or I will believe to my absolute core that you are a terrible or worthless human being. Shall we go get dinner? I’ll pay! Pretty good deal hey! Btw, you owe me now. Where have you been? Cuz it has not been time spent lavishing me!”

When it comes to understanding women you can’t just assume you know where to start without some sense of needing to improve or it will come back and bite you, because men who don’t develop the skills they need to develop get stuck in a loop.

That loop should scare the living hell out of you! Because it is betraying women you like at the level of their souls.

Most men assume that being good with women only requires charm, flirtation, a smile or two, and an agreement on compatibility. A man like this assumes that if he persists in a valiant way, the world should reward him with a smooth ride towards where he thought he was going to go.

Facepalm!

If you don’t see how terrible that is, read the above quote and list again, until it clicks.

...

Why should they deal with it?

Why should they deal with you?

It is a harsh truth I am confronting you with here, but it is a crucial one that you should not at all skip past or ignore, or you will be adding to unhappiness in the world, making it THAT much harder for women to believe they can surmount the challenge of men and find happiness in their lives.

Leading to depression, feeling alone, feeling crazy, attacked...

Ironic isn’t it. You think the only person you can hurt by being a white knight is you. When in reality, you aren’t just hurting yourself, you are turning your back on what really matters in life. And even more ironically, you smile as you do it, totally oblivious.

• Crazy – Women feel that way because you ignore your white knight behaviour.

• Attacked – Because no matter how hard they try you wrestle with them and try to make what they are saying insignificant (so that your strategy works).

• Alone – Because while you are actually working towards validating your approach etc. she is left looking at the dry and empty relationship you are steering towards, with no chance of changing.

• Depressed – Because she sees it all the time, and like a zombie apocalypse, just can’t escape it.

So have you changed your mind on being a white knight?

Putting Down the Sword and Shield

Maybe you haven’t let it go just yet, but I will nevertheless move on to give a quick tip on how to turn it around, and start changing things for the better!

Become an experienced guy!

You cannot perform open heart surgery if you have never taken the time to learn. You cannot presuppose an understanding of women until you have taken the other road. So take a tip from a surgeon. If you want to “start out strong” with women, do not act like a white knight.

Start slowly facing difficulty and building a more open attitude.

• Don’t act like sex is a shameful thing

• Don’t act like “reliability” and “providing” for women is a selling point

• Don’t act like all men except you have no value

• Don’t act like you will magically be interested in her and have no difficulty at all committing to a relationship (they are not easy to commit to if you understand what you are doing)

• Don’t flatter her and emotionally bait her, until she is weak to your advances

• Don’t act like your way is the ultimate way. Learn through experience what works and relax the totalitarian approach

Remove the white knight armor.

Remove the thinly veiled fiction that is your “approach”.

And open up to the possibility that...

• Sex is a natural thing

• Women can handle a lot

• That the mark of intelligence is by being aware of your competition

• That commitments should only be given when genuine and aware

• That your understanding of women can attract them without words

• And that perspective gained through time and effort is the most correct course you could ever move on.

For these are all things you will learn on the lonely road.

You must become the lone ranger, a man who fixes himself and understands without asking her a word. A man that obviously gets it. A man that consistently proves by his actions that he is never going to flip out.

Because a man who is aware, and emotionally in control, is also a guy who will take a realistic approach, a guy who will judge what is happening based on signals, and a guy who will gauge responses and think before he just does things.

A man that is aware that the real test we have to pass with women will occur before we even get started.

Let go of what is easy (white knight), and become what is inspired (the lone ranger).

You have to start rethinking, validating, and questioning your behaviours, because it is only by being actually responsible and adaptable that we can use our empathy, our insight, and our motivation, to create better situations for women.

To start breaking free from the white knight in you, you have to take a woman’s sense of avoiding you as a good thing. Rejections help her stay free of men who would trap her dreams and desires, even when the man is you!

Riding to a Real Victory

So whilst we push forward in a haze, thinking we can persuade women with false truths, we must learn to:

• Understand several moves ahead

• Take accountability

• Not twist things to our advantage morally/emotionally, but think bigger

• Be much more attentive and require more of ourselves than we assume we should

Because women don’t want to be shackled and judged in the way the white knight shackles and judges them.

So if you are aiming to start out strong with women, don’t make this classic mistake.

Enter with an open mind.

And since women everywhere already know that white knights go sour, isn’t it time you figured it out too?

There is nothing wrong with being nice, so long as the behavioural strategy doesn’t stem from ignorance regarding women.

Women need you to start off at a higher level than this. Before experimentation and “testing the waters” even begins, you will have to replace your white knight attitude with something much more realistic.

The white knight mindset leads many men into a life of rejection after rejection, and forces women into a depressing role they can never seem to escape.

“Maybe someday when we have both grown.”

“I just need space.”

“You are a good guy, but I think I want something else right now.”

And this is ultimately where the valiant white knight takes us. A graveyard of broken dreams, thrown back in our face (or worse, left to run its course).

As men, we begin to crack, and we become the jealous, self-sabotaging, predictable, outrageous, and cruel ex-boyfriends that women hate.

And they hate it because, why are they left with the job of changing you?

It is the girls who wind up with the job of “breaking the bad news” to us guys, and in our confusion we refuse to hear women out. We just FLIP OUT and blame, never quite understanding that it isn’t the girl’s fault. It is our assumptions, it is our lack of adventure and independence, it is our white knight mentality.

It is not ever going to be smooth unless we learn to actually become smooth.

We have to get realistic! We have to get ready to put our blindly “optimistic” expectations aside. And we need to address our fundamental denial of how difficult understanding women really is.

When a man lacks the realistic attitudes that prepare him for the real world and the challenges it has, and acts like a “white knight”, he will collapse on his own sword, or flip out.

Learn that her freedom from white knight obligations and moralistic behaviour is as important as your desire to get girls, if not more important.

Don’t try to IMPRESS them and show off your stout behaviours. Don’t treat them like the enemy and act weird when they see defeat looming. Instead, hold fast, and value rejections as a path to greater understanding.

Women aren’t really the choosers, the ones with keys to validation. They are the voices that say “you need to change tactics”. They are the fun-loving, warm-hearted, sexy girls that you can build a great sex life with. But they are only this when you “get it right”.

Isn’t it time you took off your white knight armor and realized that it is important to change how we act?

Cody