Clifton Kopp
A womanizer is a man who treats women primarily as sexual objects who exist for his own self-gratification.
In his own mind, the womanizer is king. He’s finding pleasure without commitment and doing whatever he wants while others have their responsibilities and relationship bonds.
But a womanizer isn’t as strong and impressive as he thinks he is.
In fact, he tends to have a number of crucial weaknesses and blind spots.
How do I know? I used to be a womanizer.
Below, I’m going to explain why I was treating women this way, and how I dealt with it.
Here are the top issues with being a womanizer…
1) Burnout and boredom
The womanizer cruises for sex and short-term affairs without commitment, and is often willing to lead on women, lie and cheat in order to score.
Whoever else gets hurt, the womanizer only cares about getting his rocks off.
He may be a “nice” womanizer, but at the end of the day, this is a guy who’s lost hope in love or would prefer to have various partners than to build a life with someone.
Like I said, I was a womanizer, and I treated women this way.
Eventually I met my girlfriend Dani and things began turning around, but it didn’t happen overnight, and I admit that some of my womanizer attitudes still linger.
I don’t cheat, though, and I’ve never gone back to the lifestyle of treating women like sexual iFood.
The reason isn’t only loyalty to my relationship. It’s because when I look back at my days of t*ts and Tinder I feel exhausted.
I remember the boredom and the feeling I had inside:
It wasn’t excitement or real sexual interest, it was just kind of anxiety and compulsion. I was exhausted but I also felt pushed to find a better, hotter chick who would finally blow my mind so much I wouldn’t have to find any others.
But the more I chased this perfect sex goddess, the emptier and more bored I felt.
It took a long time to realize that I wasn’t going to find real satisfaction until I started approaching love and sex a lot differently, but it was a lesson I had to learn the hard way.
2) Cynicism and depression
When it comes to the main weaknesses of a womanizer and how to deal with them, we also need to dig below the surface and look at the ugly truth.
Many guys who treat women as objects or playthings have serious emotional issues.
While the media has focused a lot on this “toxic masculinity” and claimed it is what happens when men don’t have enough boundaries and values taught to them, my experience was different.
I grew up being taught the highest standard of respect for women, even putting them on a pedestal to some extent.
However, frustration in high school and university surrounding girls rejecting me as well as anger at my perception that others were having romantic success while I wasn’t, fueled my womanizing ways.
I did one of the worst things you can do if you want to succeed in life:
I self-justified poor behavior on the basis that I was a victim and deserved to do whatever I wanted.
“I didn’t get what I want and was treated poorly without girls that I wanted recognizing my value, therefore why should I treat any girls as more than a pretty face and sweater meat?”
A bad attitude indeed. But you’d be surprised how long this kind of cynicism (and the resulting depression and hopeless feelings) can stick around and color your world (and love life) dark grey.
3) Emptiness and envy
Here I was hooking up left and right, but inside I felt jealous.
Yes I was scoring a lot and meeting cute girls, but I wasn’t truly connecting or creating any meaningful bonds.
I felt jealous of those who had someone they truly cared about in their life romantically.
I wished I could have that!
The seemingly futile search for love and intimacy had left me feeling alone and let down, and I was trying to fill that hole by chasing any woman I laid eyes on.
It may sound fun at first glance, but it was actually pretty sad.
Part of my wakeup call came with watching this free masterclass from the Brazilian shaman Rudá Iandê about how to find love and stop chasing happiness and fulfillment in the wrong way.
It’s not that sex is bad, it’s great.
But it was many other things I discovered about how I was using sex and treating women that were actually a sign of a much deeper issue.
By working on that I was able to completely turn things around and find real love and the relationship I’d always wanted behind my disillusionment and cynicism.
Check out the masterclass here.
4) Conflict and betrayal
The next up in the list of the main weaknesses of a womanizer is the kind of conflict and betrayal that happens.
I was treating women as disposable toys, but they also treated me that way.
On the odd occasion I actually liked someone I was hurt to find that I was nothing to them.
I was full of entitlement and had the idea that I could play around as much as I wanted, but if I wanted to get serious then surely they would, too.
Wrong.
It turned out that the way I’d chosen to approach dating and sex was self-defeating.
Women I slept with or dated short term felt no real commitment to me and slept with other guys without a second thought, often leaving me feeling betrayed.
This led to all sorts of conflicts and unenjoyable splits. They may have been short affairs, but seeing them end badly was painful.
The solution is not to treat sex as a band-aid and sleep with people I didn’t actually like at all, but as I said, this was something I apparently needed to learn the hard way.
5) Losing time and focus
This next issue in the main weaknesses of a womanizer may seem trivial, but it’s actually a real one:
Being a womanizer and spending so much time texting contacts and arranging dates and sex meetups actually wasted a lot of time.
I lost respect for myself in the process while also getting behind in my career development.
The image of the womanizer as this cool guy who cruises in on his motorbike and breaks hearts before leaving town just isn’t very accurate.
It’s more like an awkward guy hunched over in his Hyundai texting a girl named Wendy and wondering if her weird voice means she does hard drugs or whether she just had a long night…
It’s more like wasting entire afternoons hooking up with women instead of getting work done.
It’s a waste of time and you lose your focus!
6) Loneliness and isolation
This next point here about the main weaknesses of a womanizer may surprise some, but it’s true.
Being a womanizer is lonely, or at least it was for me.
I realize now that I was trying to use sex and short-term dating as a way to fill the hole I felt.
That sounds like such a cliche but it’s absolutely true. I wasn’t really feeling loved or like I was finding true connections. I didn’t feel I could be myself.
So I defaulted to something where I felt that I could at least relate on that level: the physical.
While it’s true I had some fun adventures, the pain I caused to some women who fell for me as well as my own growing disappointment was not worth it.
I remember many days having slept with someone and feeling worse than before I’d left my apartment.
I felt like I’d let myself down or taken the easy way out. Because I had.
7) Loss of trust
I have to say that probably the worst of the main weaknesses of a womanizer is a loss of trust.
I don’t just mean others losing trust, but also me losing trust with myself.
I began to say things to myself that I knew were not true and that I knew I wouldn’t stick to.
For example I might think: “Well, this woman is really sweet, so why don’t I see how things go with her and give it a rest on talking to others for a few weeks?”
Then what do you know, three days later I’m meeting up for a drink and a sh*g with an old contact I slept with six months ago.
The worst part is whenever things like this happened I didn’t even feel guilty in most cases (will get more into this later).
Other women lost trust in me, but I also lost trust in myself.
I knew that my resolve to be faithful wouldn’t last more than a day or two and my own word started to mean nothing to me.
This also spilled over into other areas of my life, as I began to lose self-discipline overall.
Not good!
8) Loss of respect
Along with the loss of trust was a loss of respect for both myself and others.
Because I was starting from quite a victim mentality and a place of resentment, I already had a low opinion of women, generally.
I began losing respect for myself when I saw that I never kept my word and that even women I did respect I was letting down and lying to.
This loss of respect hurt, and it made me lose self-confidence in myself in other areas of my life as well.
If those close to me couldn’t respect me, how could I expect work colleagues or anybody else to hold me in high esteem?
This loss of respect hit hard, and for several years it only fueled the cycle, making me disrespect and use women even more as a result of feeling it would make me feel like a big man.
It didn’t.
9) Guilt and regrets
Like I was saying, usually womanizing didn’t really affect me.
I started from a bitter basis, so hurting others or letting them down didn’t mean a lot to me.
But I did sometimes feel guilty and I do have regrets.
The way I was behaving and my mode of communication was immature, hurtful and ridiculous.
What’s worse is that I met some women I would have really liked to get to know better, but because of considering them as just useless sl*ts I didn’t really give them a chance.
I wish I’d had a different mentality, because even though I’m happy in my relationship now, I feel that I really could have gotten to know some wonderful people and had a real connection.
I could have grown instead of just stewed in my own ego and tried to force everything into the cynical narrative I’d built in my head.
The main regret I have, really, is that I complained about the world treating me poorly and then I went right out and did the same to “the world” (i.e. women).
What did that solve?
If you want to fix a problem why would you just add to it?
That’s a question I’m still struggling with today and one that I hope every day to improve by being more conscious of my decisions and actions.
10) Accumulating a bad reputation
Being a womanizer left me with a bad reputation among some circles.
Several women I went out with were in on-again off-again things with their boyfriends and that didn’t turn out well.
It almost came to physical confrontation in a Wal-Mart parking lot at one point, and that wasn’t even the worst of it.
I got stalked online, I had someone start a social media page just devoted to me being an a**hole, and more…
I can say it didn’t affect me, but I’d be lying.
Because deep down I knew that these girls and angry guys and others kind of had a point.
I was plowing through the world like it owed me regardless of who I ran over in the process, and people weren’t impressed.
The fact that womanizing still gets a pass so often in society doesn’t reduce how disturbing it is, and trust me, it will hurt your reputation.
11) Inability to commit (even when you want to!)
Being a womanizer often gives you an inability to commit.
You’ve spent so long trying grocery store samples that you no longer want to buy anything in the store.
Like I said, there were women I didn’t take seriously which I regret and believe could have had potential.
There was also just the totally wrong approach to dating.
I’d go on apps and swipe yes on everyone, paying no attention to whether I was actually interested at all.
“They’re all the same anyway,” I’d tell myself.
Then my cynicism would be confirmed. Or I’d notice a girl who wasn’t “all the same” and feel resentful that she was typecasting me as a f*ckboy who wasn’t to be taken seriously.
“But that’s not how I am, I swear,” I’d protest.
The thing is:
You are what you do.
You may know the “real you” deep inside, but other people can’t necessarily see that. They’re judging you based on what you do.
I was treating women as disposable and that’s what they saw. They didn’t take me seriously, because they could tell I was acting compulsively and scared to be alone.
They were right.
I was scared to commit and get abandoned, so I was just pursuing short-term fun. It was a toxic cycle that took a new approach to break out of.
12) Compulsiveness
Another of the main weaknesses of a womanizer is compulsiveness.
Womanizers are overly swayed and controlled by their sex drive and temporary desires.
This makes them easy to control and manipulate, for women and for others.
For example, you could get a womanizer to sign a bad contract just by making sure the contract agent in front of him was a gorgeous woman in a low-cut blazer.
Compulsiveness and being led by what’s under your pants isn’t a good trait for an adult to have, but it’s surprisingly common.
Learning to control our sex drive and desires while still maintaining a healthy relationship to sexuality can be tough but it’s very much possible.
It’s basically a matter of growing up and not just constantly doing exactly what you feel like.
13) Fear of being alone
The other of the main weaknesses of a womanizer is fear of being alone.
Being alone can be empowering, but when it lasts too long it can also be quite scary.
Why wasn’t I being honest about what I wanted?
I said I just wanted sex and fun, but really that was my way of saying that I was scared of being alone.
I knew that the girls I was meeting weren’t my type. I knew there wouldn’t be anything deeper.
But I was avoiding the ones who seemed like a better prospect because I knew they would be a bigger time investment and maybe lead to something serious.
I didn’t want to risk it.
I was afraid they’d see I wasn’t good enough and abandon me. So I didn’t even try.
My general rule was only to go out with someone I didn’t like.
Pretty twisted, right?
14) Fear of love
This is the paradox, however:
When you’re afraid to be alone but also afraid to get into something serious you end up in a real no man’s land.
To be fair, love can be kind of scary and intense.
But nothing in life comes without a risk, and if you never take a risk on love it’ll never take a risk on you.
I was scared to be alone, but demanding not to be dragged into a relationship or love either.
This contradiction eventually reared its ugly head, because without being willing to take a chance how could I expect someone else to take a chance on me?
The truth is I knew that love was real and worth it.
But I’d also been burned by it and seen friends and family destroyed by getting into codependent and toxic relationships.
I wanted real love so badly, but I was also so terrified of it and what it could end up being.
This was something I had to resolve inside myself before I was able to really be OK being alone and taking the time to get to know someone on a deeper level with real potential.
Riding a dangerous rollercoaster
Being a womanizer is like riding a dangerous rollercoaster.
I admit there were good times, when I thought I’d “hacked” the system and was on top of the world.
The heartbreaks and rejection of the past was gone and I was “the man” doing whatever I wanted and dodging women’s games or when they tried to get me to feel something…
But as much as I rode the highs of the rollercoaster and breathed in the euphoria, I experienced the crashing lows when the bolts popped off and I derailed.
I experienced falling for women who just saw me as a random wild ride, too.
I experienced losing respect and trust in myself and losing hope in love.
I experienced feeling like I’d wasted a lot of time on reckless and immoral behavior, frankly.
I know that word isn’t popular anymore these days, but I think it’s important.
Why?
Because at least by my own standards, the womanizing I did was wrong. It didn’t work to free me from past disappointment, nor did it help me find real love and a partner.
It was impulsive behavior that ended up emotionally hurting me and others.
Womanizing didn’t increase my confidence or give me sexual prowess like I thought it would.
It only helped me to eventually realize I was driving at lightning speed down a dead-end road.
Thankfully I turned around in time, but not everyone is so lucky.
