Tactics Tuesdays

You meet a girl, and she tells you "You need to dress better when you go out" or "You shouldn't talk to girls that way." Can this be salvaged – or is your goose cooked?

Sometimes you meet a girl who hits you with a demand, a critique, or an instruction.

Sometimes it's in a flirtatious way. Others it's with attitude (whether annoyed, or of the schoolmarm variety). Either way, the words of the thing will look like these:

• "You need to start dressing better and not wear t-shirts so much."

• "You shouldn't walk up to girls and make fun of them before you know them."

• "You have to do something about the way you talk to people. It's too assertive."

• "You should be more respectful about how you talk to women."

• "You need to trim your beard. It's too long."

• "You should stop wearing torn jeans. It's not fashionable anymore."

... and any of a variety of similar instructions or critiques.

Again, the tone can vary: sometimes she's flirty; sometimes she acts like an adult lecturing a clueless kid.

There are a variety of ways to respond to these critiques. Most of these ways aren't that great.

However, there are a few excellent ways to respond to these, that are pretty much always what you want to go for.

The 3 second rule says you must approach a girl within three (3) seconds of realizing you want to talk to her. When do you follow this rule – and when not?

For today's Tactics Tuesday, I've dug up an old pickup rule some of you well know, and others may not have heard of.

The 3 second rule stems from the early online seduction community. It's a "Mystery" tactic (one of the early 2000s seduction pros). And while you don't want to be rigid about it, it for sure can be a handy little thing.

The 3 second rule works like so: from the instant you spot a girl you'd like to approach, you have three (3) seconds to approach her.

The purpose of the rule is to avoid all the downsides that accompany waiting too long to approach: the buildup of nervousness, worrying thoughts that lead to psyching yourself out, and the closing of the approach escalation window.

The rule itself is straightforward. Today we'll talk about a couple reasons it's useful... plus when it's better to ignore this rule.

Do you talk in clear, simple ways? The most effective communicators all do. Use these tips and make your language a breeze to understand.

Early in my teenage years, I began to learn humor. Mostly I watched late night talk shows and crafted one-liners. I tried longer funny jokes too, but they usually fell flat. The lesson I learned - without realizing at the time - was simple one-line quips usually worked best.

Another early humor realization: obscure humor leaves most people confused. For maximum laughs, choose easy-to-understand humor almost anyone can relate to.

After high school I became a tire salesman. At the start, I'd give lengthy sales pitches with all the features a tire had. I'd ask customers questions like "What are you looking for in a tire?" (since most people don't know much about tires, that question usually got blank stares). My boss noticed this and told me to forget about features and focus on the benefits. The customer doesn't care the tire was laser-etched. He does want to know it grips the road when the streets are wet, or provides a smoother, more comfortable ride. So I switched to my boss's clear, concrete examples, and I sold more.

Next my boss told me to ask how the customer's current tires did for him. And he told me to ask if there was anything the customer wished his tires did better. So I did that, and instead of blank stares I'd get direct answers: "It'd be nice if they'd lasted a little longer." Or "I have trouble with them when it rains." Now that I knew what each customer wanted, it became easier to sell, and I sold more still.

When I began to write sales copy, a friend told me to throw my copy into Hemingway Editor. The editor rates a piece's reading grade level: does it read at a first grade level? A fifth grade level? A tenth grade level?

I'd seen Hemingway before and run my writing through it. Sometimes it came back as "Post-Grad." How intellectual of me! I thought at the time. My friend pointed out this actually meant the writing was hard to read. The higher the grade level, the more challenging the read. Even for the well-read, lower reading level writing is easier to process. My friend mentioned he'd whittled sales copy of his for a finance product down from Grade 8 to Grade 4, and his sales doubled. "If I can explain a complicated finance product in fourth grade language, you can do it for anything," he told me. I became a devotee of the app. I didn't just use it for sales copy; I ran all sorts of writing through it, and used it to make all my writing simpler.

Next I reread Stephen King's On Writing. Suddenly all King's talk of removing adverbs, gerunds, and the word 'that', plus using simple words instead of complex ones stood out. I made all those changes to how I wrote and spoke.

Each step of the way, in every new language-based endeavor I took on, I learned the same lessons. Language works best when it is simple and clear.

When you kick a girl out (or leave her place yourself), you set excellent precedent – for the long-term of that relationship.

There's one very special thing you should do with every girlfriend you plan to be with longer than a month or two.

It's a thing she will always remember - one of those memories that sticks in the brain.

She may not necessarily cherish it... but then again, she may.

That thing is to kick her out.

You can also leave. Though leaving is less powerful than giving a girl the boot.

You don't want to do this capriciously. You should only do this if a girl truly gives you a good reason to.

Fortunately, women being the boundary-testers they are, sooner or later every girl will give you a good reason.

And when you give her the boot - or take your stuff and go - you set a precedent for the entire rest of the relationship that makes everything else you do easier... because it's backed up with teeth.

Compartmentalization lets you keep separate areas of your life separate – and avoid fallout from ideological clashes or failing relationships.

As you become more active socially, some things get hairier. You meet more and different kinds of people. You start to run in some very different circles. And eventually you end up with friends and connections who are completely incompatible with one another. The broader and more diverse the people in your life become, the more you need to take care who you introduce to whom.

Further, the more integrated your various circles and lifestyles are, the easier it is for problems in one to snake their way into others.

To fend off mismatches and problems bleeding from one area into another, you use lifestyle compartmentalization.

The ability to compartmentalize your lifestyle is a handy one to have. It lets you prevent mismatched acquaintances clashing. It lets you avoid friends wanting you to choose themselves or others. It keeps you out of scenarios where your girlfriends judge your buddies and try to get you to stop hanging out with them.

It's easy to compartmentalize your lifestyle, yet it's something not a lot of people do. It feels good to introduce people we like to other people we like. It's lazier too - rather than do one thing and talk about certain topics with your buddy Eric, and do another thing and talk about other topics with your buddy Kevin, and do yet another thing and talk about still more/different topics with Kate, the girl you've been seeing for a couple months, why not invite them all to hang out together and do one thing, and talk about the same things with them all?

Yet failure to compartmentalize your life leads to a more limited life - because when those different people from different walks clash, they tend to decide a.) maybe they didn't know you as well as they thought, if you have this type of friend, and b.) you're going to have to decide who you really want to be with: themselves, or those other folks?

How do you change a girlfriend’s beliefs, and bring them inline with yours? By shifting her personal Overton window – to alter her ideological environment.

Commenting under a prior Tactics Tuesdays article on dismissing ideological fights you want no part of, Kaelos asked:

“How about in a long-term relationship with a woman, where you share similar beliefs/views but there are some mild to moderate differences on topics like feminism, frugality vs spending, child-rearing practices, small differences in religious beliefs, etc.

Is there a strategy to implement so that her beliefs/views more closely match your own well-researched beliefs/views over the long term?”

We’ve talked about behavior modification on Girls Chase plenty.

What about belief modification?

Well, yes. You can absolutely change someone’s beliefs... to an extent.

To do that, first, we’re going to focus on shifting a woman’s own personal Overton window.

Fun personality games you can use with women you talk to, ‘imagine games’ increase a girl’s immersion and connection – when you use them right.

There’s a class of game or gambit we can call ‘imagine games’. An imagine game is when you ask a girl to imagine something, like that she is wealthy or can travel anywhere she wants to. You then spin her answer into a cold read, which escalates the courtship forward and makes her feel like you know her very well (thus establishing some similarity).

Imagine games are similar to, but different from, other games I’ve talked about on Girls Chase before, like:

• The Cube
• Strawberry Fields
• The Three Favorite Animals Game

These sorts of games (imagine games, and the games above) have the added advantage of creating a bubble with a girl, where she zeroes in on you and becomes intensely focused on you, and the outside world drops away, immersing her.

(the downside of this much immersion, this fast, is that it’s difficult to sustain for long, and if you don’t bring her out of it on your own terms, the spell breaks. So, just make sure you bring her back up to the surface on your own so she feels you’re in control and it never gets awkward – you can always re-immerse her later on)

We’re going to take a quick look at ‘imagine games’ – how they work, wrong ways to use them, and right ways to use them – below.