(2) Intermediate

Think for a moment of a time you were talking to a pretty girl you'd just met. You started hitting it off -- things were going great. You took the conversation deeper and deeper -- getting to know her more and more. It felt like the two of you were bonding at this incredibly close level, and it kept getting closer. There was more and more magic... more and more chemistry... crazy amounts of electricity sparking in the air...

... then, suddenly, the spell was broken. It was like the two of you came up for air, then realized that you'd emerged back up at the surface and couldn't get back down to where you were before.

It was as if you'd awakened from a dream.

Then, try as you might, you couldn't get back into that dream again... and both of you knew it. The interaction with this girl -- this girl you'd been bonding and connecting with so deeply mere minutes before -- ended soon after.

It became too awkward to continue once it'd returned to that surface level of shallow conversation and superficiality, and she uncomfortably excused herself, telling you she had to go find her friends or that it was time for her to head home.

But you were close -- you knew you were. There was so much intensity between the two of you, until it just... evaporated.

A reader writes in a comment on the post about building emotional connections:

"This worked great with a beautiful young lady I was interested in. We had many things in common. She got presumptuous and began whining & nagging about her car repairs. I was a gentleman throughout yet she felt perfectly entitled to tool me!! How would you treat her inappropriate request? Oh I forgot to mention this demand was asked of me after the third date..."

That's an unfortunate outcome for our reader, losing a girl he had a great connection with to presumptuous requests, but it's all too common a scenario, and it's one that gives us an outstanding jumping off point for getting into a meaty topic: dealing with dating situations where women complain, try to get stuff from you, and push to use you.

For the relationship equivalent of this phenomenon, check out "Women and Drama." What I want to talk to you about today is dealing with this when it happens on dates -- and how you can sidestep, shut down, and otherwise flummox women's attempts to get favors and "gain the upper hand," so to speak.

I think you'll find it invaluable.

A few days ago, a reader going by the name of Jimbob asked a very good question about feigning disinterest or playing hard to get with women. Here's the segment of his comment that had to do with it (I've added a few paragraph splits to increase readability):

"But anyway what I wanted to ask you is regarding what I sometimes read about when I stumble on to PUA forums or other dating websites. Apparently you're supposed to mix showing interest and feigned disinterest with girls, to make them want you more and try and come after you a little bit and win your approval.

"I've never really tried this consciously, but in my experience showing interest and then showing a lack of interest for whatever reason results in the girl recoiling as if she has been rejected and then she feigns disinterest with the “Oh, I wasn’t really interested in him" attitude you mentioned. Even with really beautiful girls I've seen this, they rarely respond positively to interest mixed with disinterest, sometimes they just act confused, once I actually saw a look of anguish on this girls face because she thought I was rejecting her by not flirting with her, after that she ignored me for quite a while.

"I think it's maybe a self esteem issue or issues they have surrounding rejection, or maybe they've been burnt too many times, but it seems that even the beautiful women have average self esteem these days (I live in the UK by the way). Maybe because they're so gorgeous they're used to guys hounding them 24/7 so if you show disinterest they take it literally, I don't know, but to me it seems like a pointless and hit and miss technique."

Jimbob, this is a great, sharp observation on your part. It took me about 2-3 years of actively approaching women and trying to improve with them before I started noticing this:

Playing too hard to get costs you women. Lots of women, quite often.

Why does playing too hard to get lose you women? Jimbob touched on the answer in his comment -- and I'm going to take you down that rabbit hole in this post.

In the post on how to get foreign girls, a reader named swingcat (no relation to the other guy!) asks the following:

There are quite a few Chinese girls I know who ONLY speak Chinese and who told me they always dreamt of meeting a foreigner. Out of experience I know that with nightgame you can pull girls without speaking a single word. What about daygame however? And for nightgame, how can you go beyond SNLs without being able to communicate?

You mention leading. Yes, that is indespensable but how do you establish comfort or comfort? How do you non-verbally qualify? Maye you can post some examples orFRs, since you mention that you have quite a few of these experiences. I think this would be really helpful.

Basically, he asks how do you move things forward with a woman you can't (or prefer not to) communicate with?

Which, I think, is a great question.

You won't just use this with women who don't speak your language. I use a lot of what is to follow in my regular interactions with women who are native or fluent English speakers, too.

But, you ask, why choose to go wordless rather than make use of verbiage-laden, well-worded conversation? Well, that's a part of what we'll talk about here today.

I'm a reasonably well-traveled fellow. I've lived on two continents and ventured around on four, with time spent in between on islands in the Pacific and the Atlantic. When you travel a lot, one of the first quandaries you come across is this: how do you get foreign girls who don't speak English?

Well, if you listen to most of your fellow travelers, you learn the local language. If you're in Russia, you learn Russian. Brazil, Portuguese. Columbia, Spanish. Japan, Japanese. After all, you can't very well talk to girls if you neither of you speaks the other's language... right?

And if you can't talk to them, you certainly can't get anywhere with them... isn't that also right?

I'm here to tell you it isn't. It isn't right at all.

And in fact, what you'll generally find is, the most successful guys typically don't speak the girl's language, period. The guys who know the language struggle with moderate success, while men who can't even say "hello" are taking foreign girls to bed by the bushel.

How's it work, and what's going on? That's the subject of today's post. So step right up and listen while I tell you a few tales -- some of my own, and some the tales of a handful of the men I've met along the way...

I've always been a big fan of games. I invented games to play on the schoolyard with my classmates in first and second grade; I played Atari games and Nintendo games and games on the computer. Games are quite often a lot of fun.

And... they can also be really, really challenging.

I remember how there were a few games I'd play as a kid that went on for a really long time, and I'd always get killed before getting to the end. Ninja Crusaders on Nintendo was one... I only ever beat that game once, after playing it for what seemed like forever. I got pretty good at the first four levels or so, but once I got to level 5 my survival rate went way down... and reaching level 10, the last level, was an achievement in and of itself. That one win I finally got felt like I'd climbed a mountain.

Most games that were that hard I never even bothered trying to beat. You'd get good at the first few levels, then keep getting beat at the same spot, and much of the time you'd just give up and go do something easier.

The pick up game is just like this.

The other day I was walking down the street with a friend of mine when I happened to see a couple walking toward us. The man in that couple then lifted his arm up and wrapped it around the girl's shoulders; immediately though, she reached up and removed his hand from her shoulders, and a sheepish grin spread across his face. When he noticed that I'd been watching, he then hung his head a little lower.

I laughed, but it made me think. It's quite demeaning as a man when a woman does that -- when she pushes you aside or ignores you.

And when it happens in a bar or a nightclub -- when there are other, aggressive males around -- it can be downright dangerous.

Hence, this post, about competitive men trying to steal your girl, and about blood in the water. I want to identify a common but under-discussed phenomenon you'll run into when you're out with women -- and I want to teach you how to avoid falling victim to the sharks.