Tactics Tuesdays: Back Turns and Freeze Outs

There are a couple of old seduction community tactics I'd like to talk about today:

Back turns and freeze outs.

These are useful tactics when used correctly.

When used incorrectly they can make you look bitter at times, clownish at others.

The most key element of a successful back turn or freeze out thus is calibration: timing it right, using it correctly, and not doing it too short or too long.

 

What Are Back Turns and Freeze Outs?

A back turn is when you turn your back on someone you're speaking with.

For instance, if you are at a party, talking to some girl, and she starts making fun of you, and you decide to respond to that by turning your back to her and striking up a conversation with someone else.

A back turn, used right, communicates the following things:

1. "You have committed a faux pas"
2. "I am deliberately ignoring you because I'm annoyed"
3. "You are going to have to chase me if you want me back"

If a woman isn't hooked when you use it, she won't care. Some guy she didn't much care to talk to anyway back-turned her... oh well!

If she is hooked, but only a bit, and the back turn came over too minor a slight, she may find a back turn silly and juvenile, as if you're behaving like a child.

If she's well hooked, and the back turn comes over too small a thing, she may at once both feel you're being juvenile but still also panic a bit because she doesn't want to lose you.

Now, when it's used RIGHT, it will come when a woman who is hooked really HAS stepped over a line. The back turn creates a fear of loss in her, because she knows she screwed something up, and it makes her chase.

Freeze outs are a bit similar to back turns, in that they involve withdrawing your attention from a woman. However, they're used more when a woman resists escalation / forward momentum in the courtship, and revolve around a rapid cooling off (or 'freezing out') of your affections toward her, to the point of it being very noticeable to her.

Both tactics rely on operant conditioning: they are effective only when done immediately following the bad behavior (so she knows what behavior in particular you are punishing).

Thus, again, timing comes into play; these tactics don't work if a woman does something unproductive and you wait 15 seconds then back turn or freeze out. The response must be instantaneous, or nearly so.

 

How and When to Use a Back Turn

Back turns, in my opinion, are dramatic, and as such are best saved for spotlight situations.

For instance, if you are talking to a girl in front of a group of people, and everyone is watching you and her, and she is joking around at you in a disrespectful way, if you then back turn her and begin speaking with someone else in the group, you have just dramatically and publicly snubbed her. Now, to save face, she must find a way to get you speaking with her again.

The back turn was popular in the days of seducers approaching large groups of people in nightlife and needing to deal with resistant women in a large group. It is very useful for that.

The back turn is less useful for more intimate conversations. If you're talking one-on-one with a woman in a bar, for instance, and she's with a single girlfriend, and she ribs you a little too hard and you back turn her, if it's just her and her friend she's probably more likely to wander off and talk to someone else than she is to try and chase.

But if you are already in a group of people with you, and the rest of the group likes you and responds well to you, and you back turn her and exclude her while being cool and friendly and chatty with everyone else, then she is going to chase.

The other time back turns are useful is on dates when a girl is being particularly rude or difficult.

Like in a group, she is something of a 'captive audience' there, and since she is stuck with you, she does not want to have the discomfort of having to face your back.

Let's say you've taken a date to a café and she has gotten way too jokey. She is seated next to you, cracking jokes left and right, largely at your expense, laughing at her own jokes. It is past the 'funny jokes' part of the flirtation and should have progressed to deeper intimacy by this point, but she is stuck in place wise-cracking.

So, you back turn her.

First you give her a bored look to communicate your annoyance at her behavior. Then you slowly turn your back until it is just your back facing her. You casually look off into the rest of the café, minding your own business.

If she has even an ounce of social savvy, she will pull you back in, apologizing, "Okay, okay, I'll lay off the jokes," and now you can move things forward again.

Back turns can be done a bit playfully (like this date example), or in complete annoyance or else stone-faced (which is more often how you'll use them in groups).

The rule for using back turns is this: you can use a back turn when a woman's over-stepped yet she is stuck with you. Examples of where this will work:

• In a group of friends she isn't likely to leave
• On a date with you where she is hooked / having fun
• If she's riding a bus, train, or plane with you and is hooked
• If she's in class or at work or some activity with you and is hooked

The rule on hooking is that if she isn't tied to you by multiple of her friends, she needs to be hooked for a back turn to work. Also, if the only thing tying her to you is her being hooked, you are usually going to want to use a bored look or some other signal before the back turn, just to make it extra clear to her that you are doing this out of annoyance with her, so she knows she can fix it simply by cutting out the annoying stuff.

However, if you are in a group of people together, you don't need her to be hooked to use the back turn effectively. She might think you're a complete loser, and not be hooked at all, and be throwing insults at you, so you back turn her and talk to other people in the group, and if you are a cool, charming guy who wins over the rest of the people there, she will feel a need to win you over too, at which point she starts to chase.

If you lack either of these conditions though -- if she isn't stuck to you by a group of people or by being hooked + being more or less a captive audience (because she's on a date with you or is stuck with you somewhere), leave the back turns in your toolbox and use something else.

 

Joking Back Turns

Note that you can also use back turns in a joking manner.

Joking back turns are a sort of back turn sub-category. They can be used half in jest or fully in jest.

For instance, if a woman hits you with a good zinger, and there's a playful dynamic between the two of you and you want to really joke around with her, you might flash your eyebrows up in mock surprise, then fold your arms and turn your back to her, making her laugh and grab you to spin you back around again.

While it is joking, it nevertheless still points your back at a woman, and still requires her to do something to get your attention back -- so, it may be playful, yet it still has much of the psychological effect of a real back turn.

 

How and When to Use a Freeze Out

While back turns are useful for women you have hooked or women in social groups with you, freeze outs are best saved for more intimate moments in a courtship. Such as:

• When it's late in the courtship and nearly time to pull
• When you're physically escalating on her
• When you're attempting to initiate sex

If during one of these periods she becomes extra difficult or starts throwing lots of heavy tests or resistance your way, you can choose to respond with a freeze out.

That looks like this:

You're at your place with her, the two of you seated on the couch, having a nice and intimate chat. You go for the kiss; she declines. You continue speaking. You go for the kiss again; again, she dodges. She then says she isn't sure she feels that way about you. So you freeze her out:

1. You turn your body somewhat away from her (instead of facing her fully like before)
2. You cross your arms, closing off your body language
3. You throw an annoyed skeptical look on your face
4. You look off in another direction, ignoring her
5. You stay closed off and don't talk to her

I have known a few guys (as well as myself) who used a variant of the freeze out while at their apartments where if the woman was not being cooperative for too long and they were getting tired of trying to escalate past her walls, they would simply get up off the couch or out of bed, walk over to their desks, sit down, and just start working. Keep in mind that you generally want to have been trying to escalate for at least about 30 minutes first before you do this; you want her planted down in your place with roots so she doesn't leave when you leave.

Either way, the girl can now awkwardly get up and leave... or she can chase, trying to warm you back up again, trying to recover the good feelings she had with you until she resisted you.

If she was enjoying the warmth and the closeness and everything else with you, what the freeze out does is to take that away unless and until she is ready to start moving things forward again.

It is a powerful message to her that "All that stuff you were enjoying with me you only get if we are in this courtship together, moving things forward mutually."

Depending on the girl, she might chase heavily (grabbing you, pawing at you, climbing onto you, etc.), she might criticize you in frustration ("Oh you're so difficult!"), or she might offer you a minor olive branch ("It's not that I don't like you...").

You can also use freeze outs in relationships... where they're typically called 'the silent treatment'.

While women are perhaps more known for using this on men than the reverse, if you ever date a girl who's a hothead, the silent treatment / freeze outs can come quite in handy, as this type of girl generally can't stand it and will start pushing to mend things after normally not a long time at all.

 

Exiting a Back Turn or Freeze Out

The way you exit a back turn or freeze out is just as important as the tactic itself.

If you pop back out of it on your own, all fine again, without her doing anything, usually that will hurt you, not help. Or if she doesn't invest enough to get you back, and you bounce back happily, that's bad.

On the other hand, if she really puts some effort into getting you back, and you draw out the back turn / freeze out, or you return to her still very standoffish, you may make yourself feel unattainable to her (it is simply too hard to win you back), and she'll give up.

How do you calibrate your exit from a back turn or freeze out?

Well, you can exit from a back turn / freeze out along a spectrum from:

• Very skeptical of her / still closed off to her
• Somewhat skeptical of her
• Neutral toward her
• Somewhat accepting of her
• Completely warm and accepting of her

How skeptical vs. warm you should be depends on two things:

1. What she was doing or not doing before the back turn / freeze out
2. How genuine an overture she made to try to win your attention back

So for example... if she was being quite rude to you, throwing one acerbic jab after another your way, and you back turned her in front of a group, if she then stands behind you telling you oh come on, don't be that way, come and face me, I'll be nicer, I promise, all while laughing, well, she is chasing you, yes, but it doesn't come across all that contrite. So you can turn toward her again, but you are going to be very skeptical of her unless/until she can give you reason not to be.

On the other hand, if in the same situation she walks around in front of you, faces you sincerely, and tells you, "I'm sorry, I got a little too carried away," you should probably be somewhere between somewhat accepting and very accepting of her due to how much effort she put in (walking around to get in front of you, rather than trying to get you to turn around and face her) and her level of sincerity.

Here's another example:

Say you were fooling around with a girl on your couch but she put up a wall you could not get past so you froze her out.

At a certain point, she grows quiet and distant, and says, "I guess I should go," in a sad voice. How do you handle that? Well, she didn't make much of an overture, so you still have to be very skeptical. However, she has said SOMETHING, and seems at least a bit disappointed, so you can respond. A good 'get her goat' response here is often a challenging one... something aimed at triggering an emotional response from her you can use to jumpstart the seduction again, like, "Yeah, that's right, just run off. We have this whole wonderful evening and then we come back here and you put up this wall and then just run off. That seems perfect."

If your style is less confrontational / less emotional, you might opt for a pattern interrupt instead. e.g., she says she guesses she should go, and you ask her, "Hey, before you go, have you seen that new [whatever] yet?" Then you pull her into watching something with you while still being rather standoffish until she warms up a bit.

What if she offers you more than just saying she should go though?

Let's say you're fooling around on the couch with her, she puts up a wall, you freeze her out, and then after a moment she snuggles up to you and puts her head on your shoulder. What can you do?

You can turn to her warmly and go immediately to whatever form of escalation she was denying.

For instance:

• If she refused you a kiss, turn to her, put your finger on her chin, and kiss her
• If she refused to let you take her shirt off, turn to her, put your hands on her shirt, and lift it off
• If she refused to let you hold her, turn to her, pull her onto your lap, and cradle her

Her very nuzzling you is basically her saying, "I'm sorry; let's try again," and gives you cart blanche to continue at the place she was blocking you.

Now, what if you're not sure exactly the right way to calibrate to what a girl is doing?

Well, do your best to think about a.) what she did to prompt your back turn / freeze out, and b.) what she has done to try to bring you out of it. Remember that most women won't wildly pursue! But you do have to expect her to do something.

As you gain experience responding to women's overtures following a back turn or freeze out, you will refine your calibration and get better and better at responding the right way when a woman takes steps to win you back.

 

Working Freeze Outs

One freeze out you need to exit a bit differently is the "get up and go to your desk and start working" freeze out, where a girl you were escalating on put a wall up and you responded by moving somewhere else and doing some work. Because you have moved away so much, most women will not chase, and most will not even call out for you to come join them. Some may ask you what you are doing, and a few may say things like "I thought we were going to watch a movie"... but usually that is about all they will do.

In this case, you can't rely on the girl extending a real olive branch. What you do instead is work for 10-15 minutes; then once you finish, you leave your desk again, climb back into bed / back onto the couch, and pick up where you left off.

After 10-15 minutes of cooling their heels and not getting the touch and snuggles and kisses and excitement they were getting before the freeze out, while wondering if you were ever coming back and if they'd blown it for good, most women, you will find, are a lot more willing to proceed.

 

Wrap Up

Back turns and freeze outs are great tools for dealing with a woman who is being snippy, rude, or lingering too long in an earlier phase of the seduction and blocking progress forward.

However, you need to calibrate them properly, and save them for situations they're warranted in.

Use them in situations where the woman isn't hooked and/or a captive audience, and your interaction with her may simply end. Use them at the wrong time and you risk seeming petty or childish.

Use them at the proper time though and these tactics make very clear to a woman she has done something wrong, and put the onus on her to mollify the situation.

Chase