Tactics Tuesdays: Prefacing

Tiny little tactic here that lets you get away with lots.

Generally there are some subjects in conversation you cannot touch. Certain sensitivities, criticisms, or, alternately, certain proposals. Things that if you accuse someone of them or suggest them raise so many hackles it can blow the whole conversation up.

Sometimes, too, you’ll meet hot-tempered people quick to jump to conclusions every time you manage to utter more than a few syllables. These individuals can be particularly hard to talk to, as they personalize nearly everything you say.

Finally, there are things you might say – including many of the openers you deliver to women during cold approach – that might be hard to swallow on their own. They seem incongruent or hard to believe. A woman might think you’re just yanking her chain.

The one tactic you can use to route around each and every one of these problems is prefacing; where you use a short prefacing statement to pace your listener’s understanding before diving into the juicy stuff.

 

Prefacing Examples

Let me start with an example just so make the tactic clear.

Let’s say you’re talking to a girl and she seems a bit anal-retentive and hasn’t bitten so far on any of the sexual topics you’ve floated. You want to try a little gambit about being ‘sexually stiff’ to see if that loosens her up. However, you suspect if you just accuse her of it or talk about it on its own, without prefacing, she’ll reject it. For instance:

YOU: You know, I’ve noticed certain people tend to be pretty ‘sexually stiff’. They have a lot of rules they follow and are generally a lot more suspicious of sexual things. It’s my belief these people cut themselves off from a lot of themselves.

HER: I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t think that’s true at all.

She will reject it because she feels like you’re accusing her without accusing her. Your statement doesn’t name her, so she’d look defensive if she just blurted out “Not me!”; instead she simply rejects the premise whole cloth; a kind of ‘nuke it from orbit’ move.

What if instead you tell her directly you’re talking about her, still without prefacing?

YOU: You know, it seems like you might be one of the people I judge to be pretty ‘sexually stiff’. Such people have a lot of rules they follow and are generally a lot more suspicious of sexual things. It’s my belief these people cut themselves off from a lot of themselves.

HER: You’re wrong. You don’t know anything about me.

A direct accusation runs a high risk of turning the girl defensive and causing her to reject your suggestion. Once again, the approach does not work.

What can we do if we want to use this gambit? We can preface it… by telling the girl it is not about her.

YOU: I’m not saying this is you, but I’ve noticed certain people tend to be pretty ‘sexually stiff’. They have a lot of rules they follow and are generally a lot more suspicious of sexual things. It’s my belief these people cut themselves off from a lot of themselves.

HER: I think that’s true. Some people are just not as comfortable with sexual things.

And now you’re in and can talk about being easier-going sexually. Because you prefaced it by telling her you are “not saying this is” her, you avoid the kneejerk “I’m being accused!” reaction… and now she reacts toward it differently.

Also, because you’ve extended her the benefit of the doubt (by “not assuming” anything about her), she is socially obligated to do the same to you, extending you the benefit of the doubt as your observation extended her (that your statement is about “certain people” more generally) and not dismissing it out-of-hand.

The reaction most of the time is either going to be:

1. She agrees that it is true and certain people are sexually unconfident, OR

2. She starts to qualify herself: “Yes, and just to be clear I am really not that way” or “I actually am that way a little bit”

Each of those responses works to your benefit: her agreeing with the statement opens it up for conversation; her qualifying herself puts you firmly in the lead.

But why would adding just a few little words of prefacing completely change the way a statement is received?

 

The Power of Similarity & Attainability

We use prefacing before anything we say that might make a girl feel we are too dissimilar to her and thus unattainable for her.

If you’re talking to a girl and out of the blue accuse her of sexual woodenness, she will very likely be offended, feel like you do not ‘get’ her, feel like your and her values are too dissimilar, and begin to auto-reject you.

If you approach a woman cold and jump right into a too-polished opener, she will think you must do this all the time, feel like you and her are completely different (SHE would certainly never go around talking to lots of strangers all the time! It’s just weird!), feel like your and her values are too dissimilar, and begin to auto-reject you.

Readers of my book How to Make Girls Chase are intimately familiar with how big a role attainability plays in the success or failure of your seductions. If a woman starts to feel that you are not attainable to her – i.e., that you do not really respect her, that the interaction is not actually ‘real’ in some way, or that a girl like her cannot actually get a guy like you – she will auto-reject you to protect her ego.

One Date owners know how vital it is to maintain a feeling of shared underlying attitudes with women you’re talking to. So long as she feels the two of you share similar attitudes toward life, she will trust you, and the interaction flows smoothly along. But if she begins to suspect that your and her attitudes are too dissimilar, trust erodes, you become unattainable, and the interaction falls apart.

Prefaces allow you to avoid ‘accidental similarity/attainability damage’ with statements and approaches that are otherwise ‘too out there’ from a girl’s usual point of view. That is how you’re able to get away with things you otherwise could not by prefacing.

As an example: say you approach a girl on the street and tell her, “Excuse, but you’re REALLY pretty and I had to meet you. I’m Liam.” Now, she may be flattered, and she may stop and talk. Nevertheless, it’s so out-of-the-blue and un-prefaced that she is going to wonder who does that? Who just walks up to a random stranger to compliment her like that?

Well, most of the guys who have done it to her in the past were thirsty guys, desperate guys, or horny guys, so she’ll be tempted to throw you into their lot. Unless she’s a little thirsty and horny herself, that is going to make her feel like you and her are on different wavelengths. -attainability -similarity and you’re already starting off on the wrong foot.

But if instead you preface your opener, you can have a completely different effect:

YOU: Excuse me… [authoritative voice tone; 2-3 second pause to let her to wonder what you have to say; curious smile as if there is something very interesting about her] but I saw you sitting here, and I simply HAD to come tell you, that… [1-2 second pause + genuine interest nose crinkle] you have the sunniest disposition I have seen all day. Like I can just feel the sunbeams pouring off of you. I’m Chase. [handclasp]

Just opening her with, “Excuse me, but you have such a sunny disposition,” while shorter, simply does not have the level of grounding and sincerity as you get with a properly paced and prefaced opener.

(you can still use short, non-prefaced openers in situations where that will be congruent; namely, in situations where either opening is so low effort you don’t need a great reason to do it; or where the girl has obviously put in a lot of effort herself into getting you to open, so the two of you are on even footing effort-wise)

Basically, we use prefacing on openers to explain the level of effort invested in meeting her, which is going to seem unusual much of the time unless she also runs around investing a lot of effort into approaching random people; meanwhile we use prefacing on other statements to avoid women taking them as accusations and dismissing or rejecting them.

This keeps us feeling to her as if the values we share are similar (if she can understand why we’re doing something, it means she relates to it!), and keeps us attainable to her.

 

How to Preface Properly

You’ll use prefacing for anything where you feel like a girl MIGHT:

1. Feel like what you’re saying is insincere, or

2. Feel like what you’re saying is an accusation

The preface ‘takes the edge off’ things that might otherwise cause you dissimilarity or auto-rejection issues. Anything where you suspect her default reaction will be to push back and tell you “No way!” or “No thanks.”

Some examples of non-opener prefaces:

• “I’m not saying this is you, but”

• “Now don’t take this the wrong way, however”

• “I’m going to talk about XYZ but that’s not an accusation”

• “I’m not saying we need to do this, but WHAT IF…”

For instance:

You’re talking to a girl at a party who is moody and difficult. You tell her, “I’m not saying this is you, but have you noticed how some people go out to have fun but then they don’t let themselves have fun? Why do you think that is?”

She can:

• Comment on how OTHER people do that… and now she will feel social pressure to also display (through lightening up her behavior) how she herself is NOT that way.

• Acknowledge that she IS doing it, tell you WHY, then still feel social pressure (now that she’s admitted to it) to lighten up a bit and not be so pouty.

(bonus: there’s an implicit conformity frame embedded there, as you suggest that the “thing everybody does” at parties is have fun, but she by not doing it is the odd one out)

Or let’s say you’re sitting in a park talking with a girl. The conversation is pleasant but platonic. This girl has an amazing posterior though and you keep glancing at it / thinking about it. You feel like it’d be better to just say something rather than say nothing and let this keep on being platonic. But you don’t want to sound like a complete horndog. So, you preface:

“Now, don’t take this the wrong way, however you have just an amazing ass. Just throwing that out there!”

If she likes you, she is going to laugh and engage with this. She may well start to be a lot more flirtatious with you, as she may not have realized before that it was supposed to be a flirtation, that she was ‘allowed’ to flirt, or that you even liked her that way (maybe you seemed a bit too high value and did not seem attainable to her. Suddenly you share that you like her ass, in a not-boorish way, and she realizes you are attainable! Now she can safely flirt!).

Now imagine this scenario: you’re hours into a seduction with a girl, and it’s going well but beginning to feel stale. You want to propose a move but she’s been a little resistant compliance-wise and you’re not certain she’ll go for it. Of course if she rejects a big compliance move on your part it’ll be negative compliance momentum and you’ll be in some trouble. Prefacing to the rescue!

“I’m not saying we need to do this,” you say, “but what if we took a stroll over to the lake, removed all our clothes, and went skinny dipping?”

This is a wild, out-of-left-field, sexually charged suggestion, especially considering the context (compliance-resistant girl you’ve been talking to for hours). Had you just told her, “Let’s go to the pond and go skinny dipping,” it would not have matched the dynamic, would feel like you are not attuned to her ‘resistant’ wavelength at all, and would hurt both similarity and attainability. But because you preface it as a ‘crazy idea’ that you are simply floating rather than demanding, she can either laugh it off as a joke or accept it as a thing to do.

• If she laughs it off as a joke (“You’re crazy!”) it nevertheless implants a sexual frame in her head and at the same time suggests that you want to get things moving, so she’d better quit dragging her feet.

• If she accepts it (“You know what… why not. Okay!”) then you break out of the rut you were in and stand an excellent chance of nailing this chick naked in the lake.

 

Prefacing in Relationships

You can also use prefacing in relationships.

Any time you need to discuss a prickly issue with a woman that she has a lot of resistance to discussing, or that she has had bad reactions to in the past, prefacing can save the day.

For instance, say you’re with a girl who’s been wearing shoes without socks so now her shoes smell bad (fun fact: if you wear shoes without socks, a lot more sweat seeps into the shoe interior; warmth from your feet + moisture from the sweat + an environment that never gets cleaned is the perfect home for fungus to grow and emanate a lot of nasty odors). I actually had a chick like this… great in every way except that when she’d come over and take her shoes off suddenly the whole apartment stunk. I made her start leaving her shoes in the hallway outside just to not stink the place up!

Let’s say you brought it up a few times already but she hasn’t fixed it and gets defensive when you bring it up. You need to figure out what she’s feeling accused of being, then preface that you are NOT accusing her of that, then tell her WHAT you want her to do.

For instance:

YOU: Hey can you start wearing socks please? And get some new shoes? That smell is awful.

HER: I hate that you make me feel dirty all the time!

Okay, she feels accused of being dirty… then wants to not comply because if she complies it’s like an admission she’s dirty. Now that we know what she doesn’t like being accused of, let’s use a preface to isolate the problem – normally you would do this another time rather than immediately after she has just resisted your first attempt (i.e., give her time to cool off and reset so she is not in a defensive mode):

YOU: Hey, first off, I am NOT calling you dirty. The rest of you is totally clean. However, is it too much to ask you to change your shoes and get some socks? That ONE part of you is actually dirty and it’s a pretty easy fix.

HER: [laughs] Okay fine I will get new shoes and start wearing socks.

By prefacing that you are not accusing her of whatever it is she prickles at being accused of, you maintain similarity and attainability, then can isolate the problem for her to address.

(with that girl I was seeing, fortunately she got the message right away, and as soon as she knew that not wearing socks was the cause of her stinky shoe problems she bought new shoes, bought a bunch of socks, and the problem was instantly solved. Who doesn’t wear socks when wearing shoes? I don’t know… but until I met her this girl didn’t!)

 

Wrap Up

I’m not saying you always have to use this, or that you need to use it in every situation.

But, for what it’s good for, prefacing can be very powerful.

(did you notice I prefaced just there?)

Prefacing allows you to glide right past scenarios that trigger feelings of dissimilarity and low attainability to instead implant ideas or suggestions, or pull off openers, or handle relationship issues, in high similarity / high attainability ways.

As with any tactic, calibration is key. Even with prefacing, if you try pushing something on a girl at the wrong moment, or without enough of a connection built up, she can still take it wrong and opt to just reject it or leave.

Yet preface properly, and you can smoothly pull off many things that for other, non-preface-using men would be difficult or impossible to pull off.

Chase

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