She hasn't texted back in 40 minutes.
You know this because you've checked your phone four times since you sent the message. You're supposed to be working. You're not working.
Meanwhile, there's another woman. She replies fast. She shows up on time. She laughs at your jokes and lets you lead without making it a negotiation. You've had three genuinely good times together.
You barely think about her.
This used to confuse me. I'd sit with a woman who was clearly into me, clearly good company, clearly worth my time -- and my mind would keep drifting to the one who made everything difficult. The one who needed three days notice and still might cancel.
It's not about who's better. It's about how your brain processes reward.
The clearest way I've heard it explained is the slot machine analogy. A vending machine gives you something every time you put money in. Predictable. Consistent. You stop thinking about vending machines.
A slot machine gives you something sometimes. Randomly. Unpredictably. That randomness is what makes it addictive. Your brain cannot close the loop. It keeps running the calculation: will this be the time? The dopamine isn't in the reward. It's in the anticipation.
The woman who makes you work for it is a slot machine. The woman who shows up is a vending machine. Your brain is addicted to the slot machine even though the vending machine is objectively more useful.
I had a situation recently. Three good dates here in Porto, the third one ending at mine. Smart, Brazilian, genuinely fun to be around. The kind of woman who sends a gif of a stressed chihuahua when the scheduling gets difficult. Playful. Warm. But always busy. Always a negotiation.
I caught myself checking my phone more often for her than for anyone else. I caught myself running scenarios. Constructing stories about what she was doing, who she was with, whether she was pulling away or just actually busy.
The other woman -- the one who simply showed up -- barely crossed my mind between dates.
I knew this was my wiring misfiring. I knew it rationally. It didn't stop it.
And I knew something else. This pattern -- pushing away the women who show up and obsessing over the ones who don't -- was the reason I kept ending up in the wrong relationships. Good women gone. Difficult women staying too long. Same story, different faces.
Recognising the pattern is not enough. You have to actively work against it.
Three things actually moved the needle for me.
The first was action over analysis. The obsessive loop runs in idle time. When I caught myself in the loop I stopped trying to interrupt the thought and just did something physical. Training -- drop and do 25 pushups. Work -- open email and answer three of them. These kinds of habit interrupts are well documented in Atomic Habits by James Clear, which I fully recommend reading if you haven't. The principle is simple: you can't think about your phone when you are sweating on the ground. Presence kills the loop.
The second was enforcing the rotation strictly. When I caught myself thinking about the difficult one, I opened a different conversation and moved it forward. Not as a distraction tactic -- as a real redirect of energy. The woman who earns consistent mental space gets consistent energy. The woman who earns a chihuahua gif and radio silence gets proportionally less. You have to actively enforce this until it becomes automatic.
This principle extends beyond dating. Apply it to friendships, to business relationships, to anyone in your life. The people who show up get your energy. The people who make you chase them get less. Simple rule. Harder to maintain than it sounds.
The third was tracking behavior, not potential. I made myself write down what each woman had actually done in the last two weeks. Not what I imagined they might do. Not the story I was constructing. What they actually did.
The difficult one: required calendar negotiation for every meeting, sent one message about her feelings, sent one chihuahua gif, went quiet.
The easy one: showed up, was present, let the evening be good.
Your brain runs on projection when it's obsessing. Writing down actual behavior kills the projection. You're suddenly looking at data instead of a fantasy.
If you're dating in Portugal as an expat -- or anywhere, honestly -- you will run into this. The country has no shortage of warm, playful, beautifully complicated women. Brazilian women especially bring this energy: hot and cold, present and then unavailable, affectionate and then suddenly busy. It is genuinely fun until your dopamine system starts treating it like a casino.
The slot machine is more fun than the vending machine. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. The uncertainty creates chemistry that consistency can't replicate. But fun is not the same as good for you. And a man who cannot control which woman occupies his mental real estate is a man who cannot control much else.
The woman who makes you work for it will always feel more significant than she is. That feeling is just your dopamine system misfiring. It is not information about her value. It is not a signal that she's the one.
Learn to recognise it. Learn to work against it. It will help you more than you expect -- not just in dating, but in every area of your life where the difficult option gets disproportionate attention over the one that actually works.
It's a slot machine. And you already know how those end.