Why "Doing More" For Him Doesn't Make Him Love You More

I used to think that if I just did enough for the man I was with, he would eventually love me more. So I was always bending over backwards, cooking elaborate meals, writing four page letters, doing acts of service I thought would make him chase me harder. It never worked. 

In this episode, Niklavs and I break down why doing more for a man almost never makes him love you more, and why it can actually push him away. We talk about love languages, why most men do not value acts of service the way women do, why men pull back the moment a woman goes all in, and what to do instead if you want a man to actually chase you. This episode gave me permission to stop overworking for love, and I hope it does the same for you.

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

In dating, I used to think that if I just did enough for the man I was with, that he would eventually love me or love me more than he currently did. So I was always bending over backwards, trying to do more things for him in the hopes that he would chase me harder, love me more. And then I realized my approach to dating was completely wrong. And when I learned this, I changed my entire approach. And then all of a sudden I met you and it changed our relationship having this perspective. And we talked about this on TikTok and it went viral. And I want to know what your perspective is in terms of why does doing more things for a guy not make him fall deeper in love with you in a majority of the times.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

Most guys love language is not acts of service. So you would think since you appreciate when a guy does something for you, then if you do the same for a guy, he will appreciate it, which is not the case. Most guys don't really care about acts of service.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Yeah, we were talking about this before the episode. And one time I reorganized a guy's entire closet. Because if a guy helped me organize my closet for two hours, that would be like him doing something he obviously doesn't want to do, and that would mean a lot to me. And that's something that would give me a lot of value, and I would feel very happy if he did that for me. But I spent like hours doing this for him. I remember I took videos of it. And I think afterwards he was nice about it, but he was just like, okay, thanks. Like, and it didn't mean anything to him. And I wasted so many hours doing that. I used to write guys' cards, long notes, like four-page letters. I remember doing that, mailing them, and thinking that if I did all this for him or cooked him like 10,000 complicated dishes, then a guy would want to marry me. And then I would do that and it wouldn't work. And he'd just be like, oh yeah, that this is a guy's things. But then when I would appreciate something he did for me, then it almost incentivized the guys I was with to do more for me. And I think I read something that explained that when you do a lot for a man, he thinks, wow, I'm so great. He doesn't think, wow, you're great, which is counterintuitive. Because if a guy does things for me, I think, wow, he's great. But if you do a lot of things for a guy, he sometimes has a tendency to think, wow, he's so amazing. He deserves those things, which is interesting.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

Yeah, that, and it might actually achieve opposite effect, because it's if you do something to him that required a big effort from your side, now he feels like he owes you something. And if he didn't feel the love, like if it wasn't his love language, so he extended all that effort, and now he feels he needs to reprocate on something that he didn't even feel the benefit of. Because that wasn't his love language.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

And I think it's actually good news for women because once I learned this, I no longer had to waste hours with the guy I was with, and instead I just leaned more into words of affirmation and like praising men when they did things that I liked. So, like if a guy made me some fancy picnic, like you made me a lot of picnics, and I would like thank you 10 times, and then you made me more picnics, because it's basically almost like clicker training in the sense that I'm rewarding the behaviors I like, and then more of those behaviors happen. But when I did a lot of things for the guys I was with, it didn't really make them chase me harder. Because I think if you think about like if this, if this is the guy you're with and you're always doing things for him, he feels you chasing him, your energy towards him, and he kind of almost takes a step back because he feels like you're all over him. And I used to be all over guys putting all this work in, putting all this effort in. It was effort basically wasted because it wouldn't even get him closer to me. It would push him away from me. Um, versus when I put all that effort into myself and doing things that made me happy and leveling up myself, he could feel my movement towards my own goals that the guy or even like you, you chased me very hard in dating and you put a ton of effort into dating and you continue to put a ton of effort in in our relationship now because you know I'm pouring time into making myself a better person every single day. And I think everyone, whether you're uh male or female, they should be prioritizing leveling up themselves and changing themselves, not trying to change your partner, because if you both look at trying to change each other, it just doesn't make the relationship very good.

SPEAKER_01 4:24

Yeah, and and guys are very rational and logical in this way. And if a guy sees that with this little effort, he gets pretty much all of you, then why would he put all this extra effort if he can get the same thing with much less?

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Mm-hmm. I think some other interesting things that we wrote down is like things we wanted to talk about in this vein is like why do men so often pull back right at the moment a woman goes all in? And I experienced this so many times in dating, right when I was decided this is the guy I want to be with. So therefore I'm gonna put in an absurd amount of effort into him, I'm gonna pour all this time into him, then all of a sudden he's like vanished, disappeared, ghost me, not text back for days, not arrange a new date. And I felt so anxious and insecure, and I was like, what did I do wrong? I was just being extra nice. Why do men so often pull back right at the moment a woman goes all in? And I think after reading so many relationship books, what I realized is when you go all in on him, it leaves him no room to pursue you. It leaves him no room to invest in you, and then he just feels like he it feels like you probably do this with every guy you're with. Even if you only do it with him, he probably thinks, oh wow, like this woman, when she meets a guy in the first week, she's all in. So it's not gonna like slowly improve with time. Whereas like he should have to earn your effort. And I know people will be like, oh, but that's playing games. Yeah, you could call it playing games, but I also feel like it's protecting your heart when I used to just go all in in the first week and give all this effort. It was kind of hard to one-up myself after I'd do something like bake him 50 cupcakes. It's like, how could I bake him 80 cupcakes the next time I see him? So instead I'd start with a little bit of investment and then slowly ease up if he earned it, and then I saved myself a lot of pain. But like, why do men pull away the second women are just like all in and love them and just want to give everything to them?

SPEAKER_01 6:25

Yeah, exactly. So if you go all in straight away, you have put your life on this like on a back burner, essentially. And that's not very magnetic. You want to be having your life, your happiness, and then him is just uh addition to your life.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

And he should have to prove himself to you. You shouldn't be auditioning for him because that's putting him on a pedestal if you're doing all this stuff. Exactly. Because then he thinks, why is she trying to win me over? Like I'm such a great guy. Is there something about her that maybe I don't know? Even if none of that's true about you, even if you're even more of a catch than he is, you might have a tendency to think like, oh, she's doing all this to try to win me, like, why would I invest time? And it's unfortunate that that's the way it is, or it's great that that's the way it is, because when you learn the rules of the game, you can win the game. Because once I learn the rules of the game, and then when we met, you're an amazing guy who I would love to like put all effort in in the first week. But like, if we didn't work out, then that would have wasted a ton of my time to put all my effort into you in the first date or the second date or third date, or even women do this in long-term relationships, in a relationship where they've been with the guy for a year or two, they're putting everything into him and then wondering why is he not proposing because you're trying to prove yourself to him instead of sitting back and observing his actions and thinking, does he meet the standard I'm looking for in my future husband? And when you flip that script, he can feel it, and then he'll start auditioning for you and putting more effort into you.

SPEAKER_01 7:53

Yeah, exactly. I think you were very good at this because you made it very clear that you like me, that you like where the things are going, but you had your life. You know, you you were like busy living your life. And then I tried to make my way into your life.

SPEAKER_00 8:08

Yeah, and then you put in a ton of effort to make that happen because I finally learned this, and it made dating just so much more enjoyable once I stopped over investing in men that didn't deserve my investment.

SPEAKER_01 8:21

And no guy will ever lose interest just because you are living your life and you're busy. It's never has happened that, oh, she's like so busy, so I will stop pursuing her. Just guys don't work that way.

SPEAKER_00 8:34

And I think that's very interesting because I used to think that if I didn't do enough for him, that he would lose interest. But that's what would happen if if the guy was a woman, basically. Like I would lose interest in a guy that wasn't doing things for me, most likely. So, but men are different. Another question that I think is interesting is I cook for him, I clean his place, I remember his mom's birthday. He's never once done anything like that for me. Am I crazy for feeling invisible in his eyes? What would you say to that?

SPEAKER_01 9:06

Guys come different love languages, and doing all that, it's it's it's nice, but you don't need to win, you don't need to become the best person ever to be loved. Yeah. Right? Like if you do all these things, you're essentially you're the best person ever, but then you're not confident enough that you think that you can be loved even if you're not perfect. And that's not very magnetic. You need to be confident then even if you're a little bit imperfect, that you can still be loved.

SPEAKER_00 9:36

That's kind of frustrating though, because if I really love a guy, then what am I supposed to do? Just not give him any attention or affection.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Give him attention in the uh in the love language that he feels loved.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

And what do you think most guys' love language is?

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Oh, shower from him with affection affection. Whenever he does something good, just tell him how how he has made you feel, how how good he is, like appreciate the efforts he has put in. Even if they're not perfect, you know, like appreciate also the not perfect efforts, because that will eventually bring the perfect efforts. Yeah. Because nobody's perfect in the first try.

SPEAKER_00 10:13

I didn't hear pretty perfect in the first tries you did, but yeah, I think um obviously you can love the guy you're with in whatever way, shape, or form you want to. Um, but I want this episode to kind of give you permission to realize that you might be putting in way more work than you have to, and you don't have to work that hard in order to be deserving of love from a guy. Because that's how I used to feel. I used to feel like because I was a hard worker in my day-to-day life, I my brain was very used to the fact that the more work I put in, the better results I get. So that must be the same for dating, right? Like the more work I pour into him, the better results I'm gonna get out of him. And it's actually counterintuitive, which is very weird. So if you want to do something nice with the guy with you're with, absolutely do whatever you want. But I just want to give you permission that you don't have to do a thousand acts of service in order to make him love you, because I used to do that in almost every relationship I was in, and I was always with guys that it felt like they were investing way less into me. And then I met you, who I was actually meant to be with forever, and all this. And there was one of the first times in my life where I felt like a guy invested more into me than I did into him. Like you're always showering me in gifts, you're showering me in all this effort, you're doing more for me. You eat the leftovers and let me eat the nice bit of steak, you know, you do all that for me. And it was like such a foreign thing for me because I was so used to always doing more. And I think women are such givers that it's very natural to want to give so much to him. But I just want to give you permission that actually you might get way more out of him if you just use your words. Because when I started using my words more in dating and just sharing him with two sentences, it was way easier for me. It made me feel better because I was genuinely praising the moments when I felt happy or even dialing up a notch. Like I dial it up by 10% when I was feeling happy, which made me feel better as a person. I felt more gratitude, I was happier, and then the relationship slowly got better versus when I overinvested in a man and gave them a lot and then they just like vanished, it put me through a lot of pain. And any pain you're feeling, it sounds bad to say this, but pain is good because it's data and you don't want to be with a guy that's constantly giving you pain. So if you're in a relationship right now that constantly feels painful, you might need to write that down and look at is this the feeling that my future husband would give me? And it might just be a him problem, not a you problem, because you could be the most amazing woman, you could be doing all the right things, but no matter how great you are, he'll never reciprocate at the level you need, and that's on him. And the only thing you need to realize is maybe your only decision you need to make is to break up with him and move on and find a guy that actually like cherishes those things about you because I used to feel in relationships like, oh wow, he doesn't appreciate me when I do this, I'm not feeling loved. And I thought maybe there was something wrong with me, but then I met you, and now I feel appreciated and cherished. But like there hasn't been much that fundamentally changed about me in this relationship versus other relationships, like yes, I've leveled up, yes, I've gotten smarter and everything, but it's the same me, and you cherish me way more. And I wish I realized in those other relationships the guy was the problem, or not that he was the problem, but he was better fit for another woman and they could get along perfectly. And I needed someone that fit me better. It's basically like two different puzzle pieces. Just because that puzzle piece doesn't fit with you doesn't mean you can't find a puzzle piece that will fit with you. Um, I think another interesting question is I plan every date, every trip, every weekend. If I stopped, I don't think we'd see each other at all. Should I stop? Should I test that? What would you say to that?

SPEAKER_01 14:03

Yeah, you should definitely stop because that's how you get your ultimate answer. Because if you keep planning, keep doing things for him, you postpone the answer. Will he do these things once you're not the one the one leading? So it might be a painful answer, but it's worth getting it now earlier than later. So yeah, just stopping putting all the effort in, uh, I think it's a good idea.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

I remember one guy I was obsessed with particularly at the moment, and I thought, I'm gonna plan this date. I remember I texted him and I was like, let's do this at this time, I'll bring this, I'll do this. And then he texted me, like, I don't know, less than an hour before the date, and then told me some excuse why he couldn't be there. And I felt so heartbroken, like, wow, this is so painful. And then I was just convinced that okay, well, next time I ask him to go do something with me, I'll just put in more effort. But the more effort I continued to invest in this avoidant man, the farther away he got from me. And it was a great learning experience because you notice how when you're with a guy that's avoidant, you want to do so much for him. I'm not saying you should be avoidant as a woman, but that like feeling where you just want to chase him down to the ends of the earth, you can actually get men to chase you as hard as you're chasing these guys if you flip the dynamic. Because once I flipped that dynamic, all of a sudden I had guys texting me, I have this plan at this time, I brought this, and we're gonna do XYZ. And I was like, whoa.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

And that's way more healthy because actually guys like doing that. Because if women do that, they feel anxious, they feel pretty bad if they need to chase a guy. But guys enjoy the chase. So that dynamic is quite a healthy one.

SPEAKER_00 15:50

Mm-hmm. And I look at like a guy, let's say, let's call the guy Jay. If you have Jay and I'm chasing him crazy, yeah, I don't feel great that I'm chasing him, and then he's just super avoidant, and then I'm just convinced that I need Jay in my life. But it's like, if that guy is avoiding you or not texting you back, he's not your future husband, probably. Like, he is not showing you what he needs to show you to even deserve you. Because the fact that you can love a guy that deeply and that hardly that hard that's avoiding you, you would love your dream guy even more. So, like, I love the fact that you love him so deeply and you want him so much. That is such a positive about you because a lot of people aren't capable of loving that deeply. And I love the fact that you have that strong feeling. And I used to think, oh, this feeling is just so painful to like experience wanting someone so much that I'm willing to do anything for them and they're not doing anything back for me. But when you put that effort into the right guy, it will work. And it would feel way better if like when you realize that that Jay guy might never probably ever be capable of chasing you at the level you chase him, and that's just because Jay is not your future person, and no amount of chasing him will work. And I know you might not want to hear this right now, but I'm all about being brutally honest because I used to watch these videos on YouTube when I was anxious and in relationships, and these videos on YouTube would always tell you, or podcasts would always tell you, if you just text Jay XYZ, then he's gonna love you, then he's gonna chase you. Sometimes it's just Jay is not your person, and that's why it is so painful and it's not working. Like in our relationship, I never felt like, oh, this is painful, this isn't working, maybe I can fix it. Maybe if I use enough duct tape, this relationship will be amazing. And it's like that guy might just not be your person, and I want you to have so much belief that there is a guy out there who makes you feel spectacular, who takes care of you really well, and it might not be this guy that you're having to pour 40 hours of a work week into him. He doesn't deserve you, like you are better than that. You deserve a guy that loves you and that makes you feel good.

SPEAKER_01 18:05

Yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_00 18:08

If I bought him an expensive gift for his birthday and then he just got me a card for my birthday, I feel stupid for being upset over that. Like, ammonic, what would you say?

SPEAKER_01 18:21

Didn't we have something similar of a situation? Uh when you really put in a lot of effort in your Christmas gifts and gifted me, and then uh the reaction wasn't as you expected.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

I put a ton of effort into a gift for Nikola's and invested a lot of money into it too. And then Nicholas was very nice about it. He was like, Oh, thank you. This is this is nice, yeah. And I could kind of just feel like I don't really feel like that really added to his life much. And then I I asked him about it, I talked to him about it because I wanted to know why why was he not like over the moon about it? Because if Nikol got me some $300 gift, I'd be like thrilled, no matter what it is, because I'd be like, wow, he's investing in me. And then Nikolav just explained that like gift giving, he loves gifting me things, and that gives him more joy than me gifting him something. And I thought that was very interesting because I again I just assumed men are the same as women, but they're not, like they have different uh love languages, different ways.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

Gift giving didn't get. But then affection and words of affirmation did hit. And it's actually try try all five and then see which hits, and then double down on that.

SPEAKER_00 19:33

Double down on that. So now, any like for your birthday this year, I'm probably not gonna get you anything physical because he doesn't want it. And instead, I can charm him in praise or talk about how I really appreciate having you in my life, or like give you specifics because men really get addicted to the feeling you give them. And it's like, how can you give them that feeling? And it's actually it's actually so refreshing to know that you don't have to do all the hard stuff you're doing. Like, it was hard for me to find. It was like this like black toiletry bag that was leather with his initials in it. Looking back, I realized that that was kind of a gift that a woman would like and a man probably wouldn't like. But like, I did all this work, invested all this time, and it's like, I just want to tell you, you might be doing too much. Like, you're investing so much, and that's amazing that you're doing that. But if you poured all that effort into getting yourself a nice purse that you love, he actually might even like it better when he sees you so happy with the purse you bought yourself. And like, I know if I had bought like something like that for me and just showed you it, you'd like that even more than me buying it for you. And that was so confusing to me because I didn't know men were like that, or at least like the guy I was meant to be with was like that. I just assumed I'd have to like shower him in gifts. But I think men don't care for gifts as much as women do.

SPEAKER_01 20:49

Yeah. So you should consider once you're gonna do something for your significant other, are you doing it in their like language, not your own?

SPEAKER_00 21:01

What are some actionable things women can actually do for a guy to make him like love her more, chase her more? Because I know in this episode we were very much saying like you don't have to get him gifts, you don't have to build his furniture for him, you don't have to do a thousand things. Well, what can women do?

SPEAKER_01 21:18

Well, first is actually doing less. That sounds counterintuitive, but often it is actually doing less and pouring all that effort into your own happiness. Because if a guy sees you happy, he he wants to be in your life, he wants to be around you. So just pour that time into yourself.

SPEAKER_00 21:36

Instead, yeah. And I think that's what I was doing when I met you, and then you chased me and you invested in me and you financially invested, you showered me in gifts and stuff, because like I was pouring all my effort into making myself happy. And at first I thought I would see advice like that on social media, like pour into you, choose you. And I was like, Yeah, yeah, that's that. I don't think that's actually right. But then I actually did that. And all of a sudden it's like when you see me pouring into me, you know that I'm working, let's say at a at an eight out of 10, I'm putting all that effort into me, maybe. And then you know that if you don't match my eight out of 10 effort in me, then you're not gonna be an addition to my life. So if you put five out of 10 effort in me, then I view that as less than the amount of effort I even put in myself. So I'm not gonna even want to date you at that point. So you know that I treat myself with a level of respect. I invest in myself. Like, you know that I buy myself organic steaks. You know that I buy myself organic blueberries. So then when we go grocery shopping, when we met, you know that like you're gonna get me organic blueberries because that's the level of respect I give myself. Like, obviously, blueberries is just a weird analogy, but even with the little things in life, you mash and exceed that because you know that that's what I bring for myself.

SPEAKER_01 22:51

Taking all that effort that goes into avoiding guys, still that effort is directed into yourself, your happiness, your your own life. I think you will eventually find a guy who appreciates you and who actually wants to chase you and wants to provide to you and wants to build a life with you.

SPEAKER_00 23:10

I wish someone told me sooner that I was doing so much that I didn't have to do, and that the happiest, most amazing version of me would stop tolerating men that aren't investing. And if he's not investing, that's on him, that's not on you. And I am so glad, like just the fact that you watched a video like this tells me that you're someone that invests in yourself, like you're into self-improvement, like you have your life together at some level, right? So that is amazing. And you will find your person, and you do not have to make him 300 pancakes in order to get him to like you. That's what I used to do. I used to think, I'm just gonna do all this for him. You don't have to do all that for him. You're deserving of love. And if I could tell that version of me something, I would tell her take all that extra effort and that extra energy and pour it into the things that genuinely make you happy. And the right man will align with that perfectly and will also invest time into you and want to join that life that you've built. I cannot wait to see you implement this. Feel free to drop any questions you have on this video, and thank you so much for being here.