Most Men Don’t Realize These 4 Common Phrases Instantly Change How Women Feel About Them
It's not what you say; it's how it lands.
Sebastian Romero | Unsplash Some men kill the vibe slowly, like a sad, drawn-out, painful death. Others snuff it in one brain-dead sentence. I’ve learned something about attraction: it isn’t just built on chemistry, it’s also shattered by carelessness. One wrong word, and my heart goes from butterflies to buzzkill right then and there.
Over the years, I’ve had my interest die sudden, cartoon-style deaths: mid-laugh or mid-date. And it almost always happened because of something they said. Not something big or dramatic, just … words that revealed more than they meant to.
Here are four real things men have said to me that killed my attraction instantly: little verbal grenades, lobbed straight at the spark.
Most men don't even realize these four phrases instantly change how women feel about them:
1. ‘What are you laughing so much for?’
I’ll never understand why people would ever want less laughter in their lives. I mean, I understand it from a psychological perspective: one of the most common reasons, and also the ugliest, is that you’re envious of other people’s fun, positive energy, or burst of happiness, and you want to cut it at the root.
I suppose it happens. Maybe you just lost all your money, maybe your mother just died … I only accept serious, gut-wrenching, life-transforming reasons like those. But if you feel the need to make me as unhappy as you are because you can’t handle my joy, we have a problem.
I remember my maternal grandmother used to be this way. She’d have a problem with people laughing, especially if they were women.
She just couldn’t stand it — ‘Why are they laughing so much? It’s indecent! Almost obscene! Can’t they see they’re bothering everybody?’ They weren’t bothering anybody but her.
She, on the other hand, was always frowning, always angry, always ready to suck all the air out of the room, and all the joy out of people’s hearts. Her main way of having fun was working past dinner time. (She also had a problem with people using too much toilet paper, too, but I’ll leave that for another time.)
I, on the other hand, am easy to laugh (possibly a coping mechanism against her rigidity). If something’s even a little bit funny, in reality or in my head, my brain will find a way to twist it into the most hilarious thing it’s ever come across. So, I just laugh.
And that’s exactly what happened with this guy I had a crush on. We were all part of a group of friends and went to a supermarket together. It was around Halloween time, and the stores were chock full of pumpkins, teeth, and bright red blood. Halloween is my favorite holiday, so naturally I was already in a good mood from all the … blood, I suppose?
Anyway, at one point, going through the store, I found myself fascinated with all the creative flavors of Halloween candy, and I started making up some of my own: M&M&MMMBrains, Twix or Treat, Boo-ble Gum, silly stuff like that.
And right as I was fooling around with 2 straws in my mouth as vampire fangs and a pair of huge googly eyes over my T-shirt, duh, we were in the supermarket, Mr. Stick-In-The-Mud suddenly bursts out: ‘What are you laughing so much for? Cut it out!’
I did cut it out. I also cut out my feelings for him, right there in the sweets aisle. If you’re not ready to laugh with me through the good times and cry with me through the bad times, what are we even doing here?
2. 'You’re intimidating'
New Africa / Shutterstock
I hate this one. I hate it with a vengeance. No, I am not intimidating; you’re intimidated. By the ghosts in your head.
Never in my life have I been intimidated by a person, except maybe in situations when someone was trying to physically harm me. And when someone says it to me, it kills everything I might have been feeling right there on the spot.
That’s not a compliment, it’s a confession. What he really means is: I can’t rise to meet you, so I’ll frame your strength as a flaw.
Men who say this aren’t dazzled; they’re drowning. They’re the ones who look at a woman’s confidence, her ambition, her fire, and instead of leaning in, they retreat. They don’t think: How do I get sharper so I can keep up? They think, better drag her down to my level so I don’t feel so small.
It’s cowardice dressed as flattery. They want you to believe your presence is so powerful that it knocks them off their feet, when in reality, it’s just exposing the cracks in their masculinity.
An attractive man wouldn’t tell you you’re intimidating. He tells you he’s intrigued, challenged, and obsessed. He matches your fire, instead of asking you to dim it.
The second I hear “you’re intimidating,” the attraction is gone. Because I don’t want to babysit someone’s insecurity. I want a partner who sees my strength and thinks, finally, someone who can run with me.
3. ‘It’s all in your head’
This just happened a few days ago. There was this guy at work I kind of fancied. Not enough to go for anything, but he seemed cute enough to raise an interest.
That interest fell flat; one day, we had lunch together. Here’s what happened. We were at lunch, and he was squeezing some sort of goo through a hole in his toast. Sounds weird, I know, but he was actually just kind of playing around.
So, he had a plate of hummus and veggies. On top of the hummus, there was a piece of toasted sourdough bread with a decent-sized hole in it. He squashed the bread down over the smooth hummus, and the pressure made the paste ooze through the hole in the slice in a distinctly revolting way. Or at least I thought so.
I didn’t lash out or anything, I laughed it off and told him I’m creeped out by the whole thing because I have an aversion (possible phobia) to holes and things coming out of them. It’s a real thing, I swear.
I just discovered it, it’s called trypophobia — an aversion to patterns of small holes, like lotus seed pods, clusters of barnacles, sponges, and especially skin patterns from infections or parasites (this is where the disgust factor originates, I suppose).
To which he said, laughing, ‘That’s ridiculous, it’s all in your head. Stop making up phobias to make yourself look interesting!’ Well, sir, screw you then. I didn’t say that. But I thought it — hard.
Later on, walking back to work, he told me how he nearly died from an untreated cough. He thought he was okay, but ended up in the ICU with very low levels of oxygen in his blood.
I listened to the whole story and encouraged him every step of the way, but it also made me wonder about a pain I’ve been having in my leg for quite some time: a numb spot that sometimes really hurts when I walk. I said maybe I should go and have it checked out. ‘Nah, you’re fine!’, he said. ‘It’s just pain, it’ll go away, don’t overthink it. Don’t make something out of everything!’
A case study in lack of empathy, this guy. And a sharp cut to my level of interest.
4. ‘I just go with the flow’
New Africa / Shutterstock
Well, good for you. You can flow yourself right out of my life.
A man told me this when I asked if he wanted to do anything together that night. We had been dating for a couple of months, and things weren’t exactly where I wanted them to be. He seemed lazy, uninvolved, and possibly an alcoholic.
His FOMO ran rampant. Fear of missing out is something I’m usually quite judgmental about. Don’t worry, there’s nothing so interesting going on, now or ever, that you’re going to miss out on.
The most interesting things happen when you’re busy building your own amazing life. The rest is just noise. Of course, it’s easy for me to talk because I’m an introvert. But even so, his go with the flow remark landed wrong, as someone’s inability to make plans with me for fear that something else more interesting might happen.
This is not about going with the flow — I know plenty about going with the flow — I’m an artist and I use that flow daily in my writing, painting, or whatever creative pursuit I happen to be involved in.
Flow is magic, it’s a wave of unbridled enthusiasm and creative energy — it’s certainly not an excuse to avoid committing to a date. So I let him have his flow without me, and I had mine with people who were happy about having me around.
Attraction isn’t just about looks or charm — it’s mostly about how someone makes you feel when they open their mouth. These four didn’t just kill the mood; they showed me who they really were. If you’re paying attention, sometimes it just takes one revealing sentence.
So here’s my rule now: if his words dim my spark, I won’t argue, fix, or wait around for him to catch up. I’ll just quietly walk away — and save my laughter, my fire, and my wild, ridiculous joy for someone who thinks they’re lucky to be in its path.
If he kills the spark, I won’t relight it for him. I’ll just take my fire somewhere it’s celebrated, not smothered.
Mona Lazar is a writer and unconventional relationship coach with words published in Better Humans, Medium, Illumination, The Soulciety, Newsbreak, The Startup, Hello, Love, The Good Men Project, Curious, and others.
