14 Things Every Woman Should Know About Men Before 30

Mindset Matters More Than Money

One of the easiest tricks society will play on you as a woman is convincing you that money matters more than anything when it comes to men. I'm telling you this as a man: you will find plenty of rich men with disposable income to throw at your dates who are very, very nasty human beings. He might hand you a classic flap every time he upsets you, and still mistreat you, because the super wealthy are often the least accountable. Their attitude is simple: if you don't like my program, too bad, I'll find another girl.

What you want to pay attention to is mindset. Find the man who is actually going somewhere: he works hard, he keeps loyal friendships, he has a plan for his life and he's executing on it. Not the guy who says I want to be a millionaire and then sits at his computer playing video games. When you grow with a man like that, you can hold him accountable. The established millionaire learned long ago that women will sacrifice everything they wanted just to be near the money, and he behaves accordingly.

Consistency Beats Intensity Every Time

Consistency is the most important quality to look for in a man you're dating. A guy who sees you twice a week, every week, for months, is always better than the guy who gives you a fairy tale week. You know the one: you meet him, you see him every single day, you're brushing your teeth at his place, doing your makeup at his place, sleepover after sleepover. You basically got married in seven days. And the next week? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. You went from strangers to married to divorced in the span of one week, and then he ghosts.

I know consistency doesn't feel like the Disney princess story. But I promise you, that steady man is where you'll find your happiness over time. Always choose the guy who shows up week after week over the guy who floods you with intensity all at once.

His Friends Are a Silent Cosign

You meet a guy, he's sweet and caring, then you meet his boys and they're nasty human beings. Your brain says, they're horrible, but my guy is nothing like them. My guy would never talk about women like that. I promise you, you don't know that man. His close friends are a mirror of him. Every group has a bad apple, but when you notice patterns across his inner circle, how they treat women, how they talk about women, how they approach life, that tells you a lot about him.

Any guy he proudly calls his boy is a silent cosign. It is very hard to stay best friends with a man whose behavior you don't cosign at all. Your experience of him happens in a vacuum, cut off from who he is around his friends. The faster you accept that he is who his friends are, the less you'll get hurt by men who look like standup guys but are really just like the players they run with.

Learn Him, Don't Try to Change Him

The mistake so many women make: you meet a guy, you can see he's missing a lot of what you want, but he's cute and he likes you, so you decide you'll change him into your dream man. You will always fail at that. When you meet a man, he already is exactly who he is. Come to that first date as a student, not a sculptor. Learn his values, his morals, his philosophies, where he's been, what he's about. The more you learn, the easier it is to decide if this is actually your person. A man becomes your person because the qualities you need already exist in him, not because you renovated him.

Part of that learning is understanding roles. Men grew up with wildly different belief systems, so find out early what he thinks his role is as a husband and what he thinks yours is as a wife. I see this constantly in the personal questions I receive: a woman discovers her man expects her to work full time, pay half the bills, cook, clean, and raise the children while he comes home and relaxes. That's two full-time jobs for you and one for him. You will not argue him out of a belief system. If his picture of the roles doesn't match yours, you're not compatible, and no amount of tall and attractive fixes that.

What Actually Motivates a Man to Act for You

The two motivations that keep a man taking action for you are feeling important and feeling appreciated. I know you can reach a place where you're so happily independent that you literally don't need a man for anything. True. But in a relationship, a man needs to feel like you need his strength, his intelligence, his expertise. That, plus genuine appreciation for what he does, no matter how big or small, is the lit fuse inside him that keeps him planning dates, calling when he says he will, and attending to your desires. No importance and no appreciation means no fire, and no fire means no action.

Ego works the same way, so let's keep this between us. A man always wants to feel better than other men. When he sees firsthand that other men want you, want to date you, want to wife you, his ego attaches itself to having access to what other men can't get. Suddenly losing you means losing the thing that makes him feel like the winner. As twisted as it sounds, letting him see your options keeps him attentive.

And when he does take action, understand what a gift really is. He brings you tulips when you love roses. The tulips aren't the gift. They are a representation of his love, because men express love through action far more than words. Reject the tulips in that moment and he feels like you rejected his love. Receive it, appreciate it, and later on, once the moment has passed, mention that you love roses even more. Now he feels accepted, and giving to you becomes something he wants to do again.

You Train Respect, You Don't Demand It

You are never going to twist a man's arm into respecting you. Begging for respect doesn't work. Demanding it on a weekly basis doesn't work. The only thing that works is the association you make him build: when he respects you, he receives your time, your attention, and your energy. The moment he disrespects you, he gets none of it. You're gone like a ghost.

That's the whole system. No lectures, no ultimatums, no third and fourth chances. If he doesn't like what happens when he disrespects you, he'll figure out how to respect you.

Choose a Man With Purpose Who Solves Problems, Never a Passive Man

Purpose is fuel and a man is the car. Without purpose, he has no destination, and a man with no destination starts to wander: his mind, his activities, his loyalty. An idle mind is the devil's playground, and the aimless man is the most dangerous man to be in a relationship with, because he's the one most likely to fall to temptation the moment he has too much time on his hands.

You also need a problem solver, because if you want to relax into your feminine, your man has to be able to lead. I talked with a woman who dreaded going out with her ex because she booked every reservation and managed every timing, because he couldn't. She was drained and anxious instead of soft, doing her job, his job, and the team's job.

Which is why the worst thing you can do to your love life is choose a passive man. I know some of you love a shy guy. It sounds cute at the beginning when you ask him out, give him your number, plan the first date. Then after a while you realize you're in hell. You stop feeling like his woman and start feeling like his mother. He has no opinion, no perspective, no plan beyond whatever you want, and you slowly start to look at him with disdain. You'll watch other women get surprised with romantic getaways their man planned and realize that will never be you. Never build with a man you have to take action for just to get the relationship off the ground.

And through all 14 of these, remember the one about change: men never change for you. Never. A man changes for himself, when he internally realizes his life will be painful if he stays the same. The guy who begs at your door promising to delete every girl on Instagram isn't changing for you, he's changing because losing you finally hurt him. So don't spend years nagging and begging and waiting. Wipe your hands clean, let it be, and if the day comes where you can't stay unless he changes, walk. That's usually the exact moment he decides change matters.