Why Women Make You 'Dead to Them' at Breakup Time | Girls Chase

Why Women Make You 'Dead to Them' at Breakup Time

Chase Amante

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Chase Amante's picture
you're dead to me
Everything was great with her... and then out of the blue she went ice cold to you and treated you like as if you were dead to her. Why do women 'dead you out', and what can you do when they do it?

On the Girls Chase Boards, a forum member named Ramshead talks about a girl from work he's been sleeping with casually off-and-on for a year, who suddenly went ice cold on him:

So this girl seems to be mad at me for no reason. We work together and we have had issues in the past. We have been going out on and off since May 2018. No one knows we are seeing each other and it’s not in my interest since I’m fooling around with a few of the girls at the office and surrounding business. We both have made it clear we are not looking for a relationship. She has told me she cares about me a lot.

We went out this Saturday we had dinner at my place and went to the beach to talk everything was cool. We came back to my place and had sex and the next day we texted a bit.

But since Monday she has been ignoring me. We really don’t talk that much at work but we at least say hi or smile at each other. So im still warm to her and say hi but she ignores me or turns around. Yesterday an older lady coworker gave my department Hershey’s kisses. When the girl passed by my desk I said her name but she passed by really fast and I thought she ignored me or didn’t here but she came back and I offered her one and she accepted it and said thank you and left.

Today is when I confirmed she really is mad at me about something. We have an hour lunch and our lunches are 30 minutes apart. We usually run into each other on the street and walk around and talk for a bit. Today was different. I was waiting on the intersection for the light to turn green and I saw her on the opposite corner to my right walking on the green light. I wear sun glasses to walk around and I saw here look at me and pretend like she didn’t see me and kept walking. When my light turned green I crossed. I could have turned to my left and catch up to her but I decided to walk straight.

I’m not sure what’s going on. Is she already ending it, wants me to commit. I’m confused since nothing bad happened over the weekend.

This is a common female behavior that heralds an impending breakup. It won't necessarily always lead to breakup, if you catch it in time to resolve it.

But if it goes untreated too long, bad stuff is assured: cheating, breaking up, tantrums, etc.

I talked about this behavior before, in my article six years ago on emotional association and dissociation. When a woman loses enough faith in you and her relationship with you, she emotionally dissociates from you.

Today I want to talk particularly about the pre-breakup "you're dead to me" dissociation guys run into, though. Because it's an especially nasty sort of dissociation, can be quite distressing, and tends to blindside guys who don't know what it is or where it came from.

Comments

America's Ass's picture

C.A
I've been going through your friend M.L's SS system. Great course btw. The nuances on touch were great! One other thing that also struck a cord was his use of self-deprecating humor. I can't seem to find any writing by you tackling this concept of self-deprecation. Could it be that perhaps it's hidden away among the thousands of your awesome articles but under a different title? Any pointers in the right direction are highly welcome.
Best,
America's Ass.

Author
Chase Amante's picture

AA-

You're right, we don't go too in-depth on self-deprecation anywhere on the site.

The other authors and I have talked about it a bit in some other pieces:

... however, it's only brief mentions here and a few tips on when to use it. Nothing too detailed.

Looks like I've had "do an article on self-deprecation" on my topics to-do list since mid-2013. Maybe I'll see if I can bump that up a bit :)

Chase

Sam-G's picture

Chase,

Great article once again. It resonates with me a lot. I can remember several times I received this type of attitude by women I really liked. At start, when you are new, you really get hurt by it. It seems like some kind of "treason" against you. You find it "unfair" etc Only later as a man you realise that this is done by women not out of strength, but out of weakness. It means you managed to affect them emotionally.

However, could the exact same behaviour be explained not as something that she wanted from you and didn't get, but as a preemptive protective mechanism against a practical development in her life. For instance, a girl knows that she is leaving to another country to study or work. Or, she leaves for the entire summer and knows that she can't possibly hold a relationship by distance until she comes back. So, she cuts you off anyway, no matter what you had to offer to her.

Author
Chase Amante's picture

Sam-G-

Yes, that's an excellent point about other instances a woman will do this in despite you not doing anything actively (or even passively) wrong:

However, could the exact same behaviour be explained not as something that she wanted from you and didn't get, but as a preemptive protective mechanism against a practical development in her life. For instance, a girl knows that she is leaving to another country to study or work. Or, she leaves for the entire summer and knows that she can't possibly hold a relationship by distance until she comes back. So, she cuts you off anyway, no matter what you had to offer to her.

Yes, if she knows she's got to go, and she doesn't feel like she'll be able to handle the emotional separation, she may dead you out in advance of that move, or as moving day draws nearer.

You should be careful about assuming deading out vs. temporary ghosting in some of those scenarios though. I had a girl I took out in college, where we had a wonderful night out together, drinking and talking and laughing and flirting, right before the semester ended, and then she just quit responding at all to my texts and phone calls the final week. I got one farewell text from her after exams were over, wishing me a good summer and saying she'd see me after, and that was it. I tried to contact her a couple times over the summer but heard nothing.

Then at the end of summer, right before class started again, I got a call from her and another girl. She was drunk, and the friend was telling me how much she liked me and that she'd been talking about me all summer. She ended up really wanting to meet when we got back to school. By the time I heard from her I'd already written her off as "I guess she wasn't that interested", and did not expect that call.

Had we not had more school together, and went off to live in different cities, I'd never have heard from her again. But instead, she radio silenced me during summer when we were apart, and then picked up where we left off once school began again and we were back at the same place.

Sometimes a girl will dead you out in these scenarios.

Sometimes she's just being practical, and not bothering to maintain the connection when she's not around you, intending to pick it up again later when she is.

Chase

Jessen's picture

Hey Chase,

I did a few things which ruined my reputation a bit.
So I used to be this cool guy with some status. I meet girls and they like me.
And then I started to ignore girls and did not even say hi. For some reason, I thought it was cool
I kept hearing comments that I was arrogant and I said to myself : "Cool, these people respect me!"
In reality they despise me. In about a year, I blew up my whole reputation and girls just hate me.
It took me sometime to realize but now I can say I was socially uncalibrated.

My questions are:
1. How do I take it from there? I considered being really nice but then again, I'm scared of coming across as a pussy and nice guy (which is one of the main reasons I started ignoring people)
2. This whole ignoring people kind of intoxicated my mind. Some part of me does think that it will make me cooler even though a friend of mine was able to point out that most cool dudes never do this. But its still not clicking.
How can I break free from this?
3. Most girls in my social circle think I'm a jerk. Is it possible to win them back?
4. Why do I get the impression that its cool to ignore? I seem to see cool people do it to me but maybe they do it just because I started it in the first place.
5. The main comment I hear from people is that I'm arrogant. And that's from people whom I have not yet met.
Is this kind of arrogant what you advocate guys to be just a bit because women love prideful men?
So far, it only got me hate so I'm completely off course.

Clearly I'm missing something but I'm too dumb to see it.
Please help me out

Author
Chase Amante's picture

Jensen-

I haven't dealt with that specifically on the scale you have, where it's everybody and it's your whole reputation. But I have dealt with it with individual people. And I sort of suspect it'll work the same way.

What I'd recommend is you find moments to catch up with individual people who've soured on you and explain to them that "Hey, Farah. This is probably random, but I just wanted to tell you I realized I was being kind of a jerk the past year or so. I was up in my own headspace and ignoring people and just being an ass. And I wanted to apologize for that and let you know I'm going to try to do better. Okay. So sorry. That's all." And then you can dash off to wherever you're going (I'm kind of picturing this being a high school scenario, and you're just grabbing people in the halls between classes, updating them, then getting to your next class). Or if it's not a dash-off scenario and there are multiple people around, then just do a "Hey guys" speech and address it to all them.

Important sense to communicate is you don't expect anything from them, you're just apologizing for having been a dick, and letting them know you're going to try to do better.

Some people will continue to be skeptical for a while, but you should also see some pretty immediate re-warming, if you do this right.

Is this kind of arrogant what you advocate guys to be just a bit because women love prideful men?

Sounds like you've gone too far, into jerk-land.

The good news is, everybody loves the reformed jerk. If they hated you before because they liked you but you were closed off to them, when you're still just as cool but now you're telling them it wasn't about them, it was just because your head was elsewhere, and you'll try to do better, you get all the bonus points that come with auto-rejection recovery, and that's powerful stuff.

Chase

Asterix's picture

Chase,

How do I keep my skills with women while in a relationship?

I broke up with my girlfriend last week. I fully understood this thing that women never leave the game. She picked things right where she left them while I struggled to get back up. I'm out on the hunt but my skills aren't that sharp.

Is there a way to avoid this? That is, being in a relationship without having the skills get rusted?

Author
Chase Amante's picture

Asterix-

Well, the unfortunate answer (the one you don't want to hear) is if you're doing monogamy, and you're taking a girlfriend for a stretch of time and not sleeping with other women, your skills will inevitably rust.

You can slow the rusting and put a floor to it if you maintain an active social life and continue to flirt a lot with other women. The farther you take these flirtations, the less rust you'll accumualte, and the slower it'll build up. But of course the flipside of that is heavy flirtation with other girls is a risk to your relationship if you're monogamous, and it might not be feasible if you mostly do social circle and your girl comes from or is plugged into your circle.

Past a certain skill level, it gets to be like riding a bike, and you don't ever accumulate so much rust you lose it for long. I've seen a lot of guys who were very good, who went into monogamous relationships for 5 or 10 or 15 years, then went back to the game, and usually these guys have some early successes right out of the gate (a few rapid lays), followed by a stretch of shaking off rust, followed by them hitting peaks of better results than they ever got before their long relationships.

The best advice if you're worried about keeping rust off is "Try to reach a level you're fully satisfied to be at with girls before you settle into any kind of monogamous commitment." If you can do that, the rusting won't be too bad, usually, and it's easy-ish to shake off later.

There's one other element of this, and that is how fully you commit to the monogamous relationship. If you're just all-in, with no thoughts to other women, you'll rust more and it'll be harder to bounce back later. If you keep a part of you that says "It wouldn't be so bad to be single again", you will think about other women more, probably talk to them more, and won't rust as much or as quick, and will handle it better if/when the relationship ends.

Which is not to say you shouldn't go all-in. Maybe you should. Depends wha you're after in life.

Chase

Neal's picture

Hey Chase, somethin similar happened to me recently.

Remember that girl that I said she blocked me on Facebook, then she ended up being in the same groupchat with me, then unblocked me, then created her own private group and invited me as well as 2 soft-guys (her 1st 2 boyfriends were gang members for the most part).

I been conversating with her for 3 months on Facebook and then, she recently broke up with her 2nd bf, then a few weeks after, changed her profile pic to sluttier. Her father who is religious and Christian, posted something sarcastic that I think he was offended and she denies. Then I said "If your parents weren't on your Facebook, you'd be sluttier."

And then she went on the "Wdf did you just call me a slut?"

And then went on a rampade, making "F Neal, f his virgin ass, I pull more bitches than him and I don't even try."

Then she kicks me out her groupchat, unfriends me on Facebook, so pretty much everything except block me...

I'm willing to bet however, if another guy friend whom she has 0 attraction to calls her a slut, whether direct or indirect, she'd care less, make a less deal about it. Sounds like a shit test too. Her msg window is still open so maybe she wants me to msg her some day.

Xander's picture

Dear Chase,

Women reactions described in article happened to me few times, but mostly soon after I meet that girls. One happened last year and the other two three and four years ago, and I still sometimes catch myself thinking about it. I believe your reply will help a lot of guys that experience extremely cold behaviour soon after they meet girl.

The first one was four years ago where girl that at first conversation was warm suddenly went ice cold and even little bit rude. We were on some business trip and she was translator. After some time it started to annoy me so I decided to talk with her and ask her what is wrong and why she behaviour like that. She was little bit surprised and told me that she is not fully aware of it and that everything is fine with me. After that from day to day her coldness toward me started to melt and after few days she was nice again. We meet from time to time on buseness trips and sometimes she starts to be cold but soon returns in normal mode. I even think if I had time I maybe could push things forward with her.

The second time was three years ago and it was at the same time really terrifying and funny how one girl was extremely cold toward me. There was one party where I was invited. There were a lot of my friends and people I know there including even girl I mentioned above. Everybody received me very warmly and were happy to see me. I was popular it that circle. But one Russian girl was so extremely ice cold to me without any known reason. When we were talking she tryed to express as more as possible how cold she is toward me. We were not talking a lot at all, and after party and meeting when we drived them to back to airport she said goodbye to everybody there except me.

The third time was last year where simply two Russian girls after short talk with me started to be ice cold. Conversation was light with little deep diving  from my side, but language barrier maked harder to me to give my best.

My guess is that probably I was not fulfied their expectations. Those were business trips and parties and probably I was not recognized as good lover or someone that can give them good time. Please tell me what do you think that can be cause of women "dead to her" behaviour soon after men meet them? Do all things written on article that is focussed on breakup time can be applied on the beggining of interaction with girl?

Kind regards,

Xander

Author
Chase Amante's picture

Xander-

With issues like this, it is always attainability, 100%.

Women don't get rude and cold to you because you don't measure up at all. They do it to protect their egos when they think you are going to reject them.

Check out these articles; they will help clarify a lot, and put you on the road to figuring out how you triggered this reaction in these girls (usually it's either something you did, or something you didn't do):

Chase

George Wilson's picture

Dear Chase,

That's the best article yet.  You hit the nail on the head with:

"Women, on the other hand, want constant movement in their relationships, and get antsy if the relationship spends too long in stasis...

One surefire way to make a woman go nuts: just don't change anything and don't advance the relationship for 6+ months. She's certain to start feeling like something must be Very Wrong."

6-7 months is the power play for relationship title. 

Her: "What are we? Boyfriend / Girlfriend"
Me: "What does that mean? Monogamy? We can be monogamous...what more do you want?"
Her: "My girlfriends want to know if we are in a relationship."
Me: "The problem with relationship titles, is that there's unwritten rules that make the relationship about the relationship, instead of enjoying life together."

This pacifies her for about 2 seconds, and then the shit tests come.  I find my phone locked when I get out of the shower.  She complains about me going out at night and socializing, but calls me drunk at night with her friends and tells me they think I'm cheating on her.  On to the next one...

You could also add another relationship pattern. "6 months after they dead you out, they call you and say, 'What happened to us? Remember all the good times we had together?"  That's the point where they moved on to the next guy, who wouldn't give her what she wanted, and now he's "deaded out" and she needs your leadership again because she is lost in an emotional rebound.

Hardcoded patterns.  Very repeatable and predictable.  I was just "deaded out" two weeks ago.  I thought she could handle multiple relationships.  Your article helped clarify women psychology with leadership.  I won't make that mistake again.

Cheers!

Author
Chase Amante's picture

George-

Yes, both are good points. These do seem to happen almost like clockwork, don't they?

6-7 months is the power play for relationship title. 

Her: "What are we? Boyfriend / Girlfriend"

You could also add another relationship pattern. "6 months after they dead you out, they call you and say, 'What happened to us? Remember all the good times we had together?"  That's the point where they moved on to the next guy, who wouldn't give her what she wanted, and now he's "deaded out" and she needs your leadership again because she is lost in an emotional rebound.

Multiple relationships... yeah, they're tricky. Past a certain amount of time if she doesn't feel like it's going somewhere she'll hit eject. It really needs to feel like an exclusive relationship, even if she knows it's not.

The big trick with all this stuff is the facts can be whatever, so long as the feelings are there. If the feelings aren't there, it doesn't matter what the facts are, she won't be happy.

Chase

Joseph P.'s picture

It only takes ONE TRAIT OR ACTION to make yourself dead to a woman. I always keep my emotions in check.

Maybe you don't have a 6 figure job. Maybe you own a Samsung and she only uses iPhone. Maybe you cheering for Alabama or Clemson turned her off. Maybe she's looking for a new orbiter and you won't be taken advantage of. Maybe you have a PS4 and not a Xbox One. P.S. is Halo that damn good? Never played it.

Women only see men as Alpha/Lover, Beta/Provider, or Useless/Invisible. If she saw you as beta and you cut her off, she now sees you as useless. Useless meaning you're no orbiter or simp, but you're no sexy alpha lover either.

A woman will make any reason to ghost you. Sometimes just say you worked things out with your ex and got back together. Above all, you're not interested in unreceptive girls/ unresponsive girls are not sexy.

Alas, if you feel a girl is doing this act, move on and don't look back. Second place is first loser, AKA you lost to a more valuable guy.

Author
Chase Amante's picture

Joseph-

The one thing to remember here is if she wants to be with you, she'll squelch her disgust at your dirty kitchen with the greasy kitchen towels and the cockroaches that skitter off when she turns the light on. But if her other needs stop being met and she sours on you, and it's time to rationalize her decision why to you, suddenly you'll get an earful about how your kitchen has always disgusted her and she's sick of dating a pig.

The reason is something she genuinely cared about. But it gets amplified up into being a big deal when she's angry or upset at you, and it becomes a dealbreaker when she decides to dead you out.

The reality is the dirty kitchen was a minor contributing factor. The real cause are other things, like a gradual breakdown in respect, or her coming to the conclusion you will never give her the relationship she wants. But she isn't fully aware of those other things, or prefers not to articulate them, so you hear all about how you being a slob is the reason she's leaving.

Women engage in a ton of rationalization. You can't take what they say at face value too much; always need to be looking for the subtext.

Alas, if you feel a girl is doing this act, move on and don't look back. Second place is first loser, AKA you lost to a more valuable guy.

Yes, can be the right call.

Sometimes it's just a signal she's about to go back on the hunt for your replacement, though. Usually this signaling will start before she's put herself back on the market. It's simply better for her and less cost intensive if she can prompt her man to fix whatever is wrong and give her the relationship she needs than if she has to steel her emotions to him, sever ties with him, and start sifting through mates all over again.

Chase

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