Advanced Tactics to Turn Back the Tide

You met a girl. Got her number. Went out on a date. She likes you, but you got a little too clingy somehow. Maybe you texted her too much. Or pushed too hard for another meet up. Or your emotions got the best of you and you were mushy and sentimental when you should have been playful and challenging. Perhaps you got needy. You turned into a wussy. You let your insecurity get the best of you and communicated that to her in some way.

You can sense her getting distant. She’s feeling a bit crowded. She’s into you, but you can tell she’s pulling away. She occasionally reciprocates your overtures and occasionally initiates half-hearted overtures herself. But when it comes down to it–spending time together or hooking up– she has an attitude that says hands off. You’re just not a priority to me. You’re just no good enough.

And you’re left feeling like an emotional basket-case. All your “game” is suddenly out the window. You were once cool, playful and a challenge. Now you’re hurting, confused, conflicted, and not sure what to do.

And you realize that if you don’t change course, if you don’t fix the situation, it will spiral down and eventually end things.

How do you fix it?

The main idea to correcting something that’s going off course is using time and space to your advantage. You are capitalizing on the fact that there is some interest there already. By showing a careful combination of initiative and lack of initiative, you can amp up her interest.

A great analogy to relationships is flying a kite. You pull a little bit and then you let go. You pull again and let go again. Pretty soon that kite is flying as high as it can go.

Another analogy is starting a fire. If you throw a giant log on a small pile of smoldering kindling, it will crush out the flames. Sometimes it’s too far gone to rescue. But other times, you can pull back and give that fire a lot of air so that it builds back up again on it’s own–without you doing a whole lot.

What you’re doing here is playing with time and space. Giving her time to think about you. You’re pulling away. But not just pulling away, you are doing it in a way that highlights the fact that you are pulling away.

You are contacting her less. You are spending less time with her.

But this DOES NOT mean that when you are with her you act disinterested and bored.

Indeed, you are becoming scarce. But scarcity doesn’t mean anything if the scarce product itself doesn’t hold ANY value. It must have SOME value. Even if the value isn’t as high as gold or diamonds, the fact that it’s much scarcer could potentially make it even more valuable.

So when you do see her, text her or call her, you must show excellence. Do all the right things and do them hard. Be excited to see her. Flirt hard with her. Sexually escalate hard. Connect with her as deep as possible. And then at the high point, cut things off and leave her wanting more. This way the space that you are creating is hugely magnified and she really feels it.

Below are listed 15 tactics. Keep in mind, all these tactics capitalize on a girl’s interest in the first place. If there isn’t any interest from her, these won’t work. She’ll just walk away.

Some of these are very “gamey” tactics in that it really doesn’t build up a relationship in positive emotional ways. What it does is open up space to let her start to take initiative and feel things.

These tactics are not inner game. Inner game is just as important as outer game, so in order to understand the inner game, read this post, What To Do When You Think About Her Too Much. If your inner game is too messed up, she will sense it and no amount of outer game will help. She will hear it in your voice tone, in your body language, the way you are inhibited around her.

I would not use these tactics on friends or when things are going well with someone. Some of these ¡Ætactics’ may be things I would do naturally in managing the distance in any relationship, but I would rarely premeditate any of these tactics or use them regularly if things were going well. I would only use them if I were sensing a loss of interest and needed to get her focus back on me.

Some basic concepts:

• Be busy. The main idea here is that you have a life. You’re doing exciting things, hanging out with cool friends, maybe seeing other great women. She’s not treating you like a priority so in the same vein, you will only fit her into your exciting life when you get around to it.

• Let her take initiative. I always talk about how taking initiative is the most important aspect of becoming a confident guy. Ironically, once you are in some relationship with her, many times the nice guy will take too much initiative and fuck things up. He does this because he’s insecure. He feels like if he doesn’t take initiative, she won’t. When you feel her pulling away, there is a tendency to want to take more initiative to fix the situation, show her more feelings and emotions. In actuality, this normally just crushes the relationship and makes it worse. Pulling back and waiting for her to take initiative is almost always the best move.

• Let her think about you. Let her miss you. Time is your greatest ally.

Here are some more specific tactics:

The drop-out. You are texting back and forth with her it seems almost every day. But she is distant and lethargic about it. Drop out for a day or even two days. Don’t take initiative to contact her for a period that seems longer than normal. It may scare you that you might lose her, but that’s exactly the point. She senses that you are okay with losing her and she begins to react. When you do finally get back in contact with her, be excited and animated.

Slow track. (Credit Brad P). Let her take initiative. This is at the heart of this game. What happens at the beginning of the relationship is that you start to get into a certain groove of contacting, and inviting her out. Perhaps you start to contact every day or every other day. Perhaps you invited her out one too many times and she was resistant. If you still have her on the line, you start to pull back and contact her less often. And when you do contact her, you don’t invite her out. So for example you might contact her on Monday and be super flirty. Have a little go back and forth but then don’t invite her out. Tell her how crazy busy your week is. If she mentions hanging out or prods you to take initiative, you can say “We should hang out but this week is crazy busy. Let’s touch base early next week.” And you can wait until then. This can go on indefinitely. Particularly if you are seeing other women, you can really slow things down with this girl to the point where she is asking to meet up with you. Again, as stated earlier, you want to be awesome and excited to see her when you do see her. But also let her know how busy you are.

I’ll give you a call later and then don’t. This is an interesting tactic that really can’t be used too often. Rarely will it work more than once. But the idea is you say something like “I’ll give you a call later on tonight.” And then you don’t call. So far you’ve been jumping at every chance to talk to her. She starts to wonder, why didn’t he call? Is he not as into me as I thought he was?

Set up a date and then don’t confirm. (Credit Lee). You talk to her and say “Let’s hang out Monday.” She agrees although she’s a bit wishy washy or non-committal. You say “I’ll give you a call on Sunday to confirm.” Then you DON’T contact her on Sunday or Monday. Tuesday you send her a text about how busy things have been and asking how she is.

A hint of jealousy. You simply throw something into a text or conversation hinting that women are making overtures to you. This needs to be EXTREMELY subtle though, because it can easily come off as bragging or gamey or even backfire. Something like “I’m out partying at so and so. It’s funny how hard these girls try.”

A hint of lets-just-be-friends. If she’s said something in seriousness like “You’re not going to try to hook up with me are you?” or shows some other kind of resistance to moving out of friend zone, push back hard in the opposite direction. Tell her she can help you pick up chicks when you go out. You also need to be careful with doing too much of this or she really will think you do intend to be friends with her. This works best when coupled with some sexual banter. “Let’s go out, but you have to promise not to hit on me.”

Flirty texts vs. mushy texts. If you sense a girl is pulling away, you need to be very careful with sentimental texts. “I miss you.” “Thinking about you.” “Wish you were here.” Let’s say she’s going to her hometown and might be hanging with her exboyfriend. Or is meeting up with some guy that really likes her. Or is just doing something super exciting like a modeling on a runway and will be getting a ton of attention. The last thing you want to do is send her sentimental texts while other people are pouring on the validation. The best possible thing to do in that situation is shoot her a flirty text of some kind. “CNN Newspoll: 65% of respondents say I’m cuter than you.” “I think you should take me to the Coney Island and win me a stuffed monkey.”

Zero validation. If she is an attractive girl who likes attention, it’s possible she has a lot of guys showering her with lovey-dovey compliments. Don’t be that guy. As above, keep it light and flirty. Or if you do validate, follow it up with banter. “You’re so creative. I like that. Too bad you’re such a dork!”

Don’t return a call or text every once in a while. Again, you can’t do this too often, but if it seems she is really preoccupied with other affairs and is taking you for granted, you can simply not return a text or phone call. She may have ten guys professing their love to her, but the one guy that doesn’t return her phone call–or takes his sweet time–she’ll wonder about him. This is human nature.

Cut short phone calls, dates and interactions. This is huge. You be the one to end phone calls and dates. And try to end it on a high note. Again, you are super busy. Gotta run. Don’t talk longer than ten minutes on the phone and be out doing exciting things when you call. If you’re out on a date with her, you could meet for one drink, be very flirty and sexual and then tell her you have to run.

Let her be the last one to text. When you text back and forth, let her send the last text. Just drop off after that. This obviously has its limitations but if you can work out the text exchange so that she sends the last one, it’s better.

Temper your text response time. The response time to her texts is in some cases more important than the actual content of the texts. In these situations, I would normally wait a minimum of ten minutes to reply to her texts. You’re a busy guy out having fun, after all. If she is a slow texter, you want to mirror what she does. If she takes 45 minutes to return a text, take at least that time to return her texts. And if she is particularly slow and it seems like she is making little effort, you could double-mirror. Take 90 minutes to return a text if she took 45 minutes. If she takes a day to text you back, wait two days to text her again.

If she asks for space or flakes, give it back twice as hard. This is huge. If a woman ever says anything like “I need space.” or hints that you are getting too close to her, you want to give her twice the space she asks for. This can actually be more effective in a serious relationship, because people don’t generally ask for space when the relationship is at a more casual stage. So lets’ say you are seeing a woman, and she says “I need space. I need to take a week to think about things.” Your response should be “That’s a great idea. Let’s take two weeks.” This concept is important because when you are in an emotionally subordinate position, it is painful to give her that space. And she knows it. If you simply agreed to the space she asked for, you would be right back to where you started a week previous. But if you move forward and open the space up yourself, she starts to feel a yearning.

Do not ever push for her to come out and meet you. Let her take initiative. If she isn’t taking initiative to invite you to meet up and you feel you need to do this, invite her out, but if there is ANY resistance, do not push, get pouty or call her lame. Be as cool as possible with it and continue with some of the other tactics.

Do not ask her how she “feels”. At casual points in the relationship, asking her how she feels about you or your relationship with her is 95% futile. Words rarely rarely change anything and only serve to dig you in deeper. Instead, take action. Pull away and see how she responds.

Do not tell her how you feel. If you sense a disinterest from her, that is the exact wrong time to tell her how you feel and show interest in her. It will only crowd her worse and make you seem like less of a challenge. This is not to say that you can’t connect with her in deep rapport. Deep rapport is the foundation for her feelings for you. But there is a big difference between you pouring out emotional neediness, i.e. “I miss you and want to see you more often” vs. getting her to share her deepest and inner most thoughts about life, her passion, her childhood etc.

The above tactics can be very useful in a lot of situations, but they obviously have their limitations. It’s up to you to decide whether they should be put into play.

Just like too much smothering can crush a burgeoning relationship, any of these “creating space” tactics can destroy a relationship in the other direction. Letting that kite go too much can send it crashing just as pulling too much can.

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posted in Relationships