The opposite of love is not hate – the opposite of love is indifference.
I think one of the biggest mistakes guys against a 3 Strikes rule make is assuming that it means a guy would be so preoccupied with sex that you couldn’t wait for 4-6 dates. They assume that a 3 Strikes rule (or any rule dependent upon sexual reciprocation) makes them Players at best, superficial and sex-concerned at worst. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The mistake is to presume that a 3 date policy is some form of punishment for the girl for not having ‘put out’ soon enough to verify interest. It’s not punishment, it’s a fail-safe that serves to protect a guy from some protracted personal investment for a very limited return. For example, I play golf and when I want to improve my game I hire a golf pro. I pay him $120 for 3 lessons, so $40 per lesson (very similar to the $40 per date rule popularized by Tom Leykis). At the end of my 3rd lesson I assess whether or not my game’s improved and I can decide to continue with him or, if I see no improvement I can choose to find another pro and do the same. There are a lot of golf pros ready to work with me. I’m not punishing the pro for doing this, I’m simply looking for the best value in an area I wish to improve in. If I think my swing has improved or I notice my average go up, I’ll continue with with the pro.
The misunderstanding is to see a 3 Strikes rule as a threat. “She’d better put out after tonight or I’m outta here”. I can see why that would place a burden upon a woman, but you must take into account why a 3 Strike rule would even be a necessary concept. 3 dates (and I mean real dates, none of this coffee / lunch crap) over the course of 3 weeks should be ample time to make the assessment as to whether a woman has interest and attraction enough to become intimate. Anything beyond this is indicative of filibustering on a woman’s part and usually points to an only lukewarm IL if at all. In this way a 3 Strike rule benefits both men and women; why would either sex want to engage in a relationship that was lackluster from the start? Why would either want to be involved with a person who was settled on or settled for?
It’s urgency and anxiety that makes for genuine, chemical-fueled sexual desire – not comfort, not familiarity. This is precisely why I say Any woman who makes you wait for sex, or by her actions implies she is making you wait for sex; the sex is NEVER worth the wait. It’s not that you can’t have sex with her, it’s that the sex is compromised, internally debated, choice-of-necessity sex. It becomes mundane before anyone’s clothes come off.
The Power of NEXT
I used the above situation as a prelude to illustrate the power of tapping into one of the most elusive and difficult to internalize principles of game – the power of NEXT. It’s very easy to casually type, “just NEXT her man” when you have no personal investment in the advice you give. It’s standard male deductive-logic pragmatism, and rightly so, to solve the problem by eliminating the source. Likewise when you lack a real understanding of the personal conditions and mental schemas the average guy (i.e. Matrix-Beta) is predisposed to, telling him to simply NEXT the only plate he’s got spinning is about as useful as telling him to Just Be Himself with the next girl he happens into.
Spinning Plates is actually the best starting point for mastering the power of NEXT. When you have other irons in the fire it’s much easier to shift the focus of your attention to another woman; at least in theory. There’s a certain degree of emotional dissociation that needs to be made and this is usually dependent upon the personal investment a Man puts into any one woman. Far too many men, and even practiced PUAs, have a very hard time with NEXT not only because of this dissociation, but also the doubt that comes from “what might’ve been.” Couple this with a soul-mate myth inspired ONEitis and you can see why most guys will fight to their own bitter end not to NEXT the girl they’re with.
It’s exactly this doubt that makes men think they’d be throwing the baby out with the bath water by NEXTing a woman. A lot of men think that NEXTing a girl is some knee-jerk response from guys who don’t have any other ideas of what to do, when in fact it should be a practiced, default response for the first indication that a woman is attempting to set the frame in her favor by manipulating a guy using her intimacy as a carrot to pull the cart. It’s men without options that find NEXTing a girl in some way ‘wrong’, and to a man with only one plate spinning this is entirely counterintuitive, but it’s important to remember that Rejection is better than Regret – even if you’re the one doing the rejecting. It’s better err on the side of NEXTing than be dragged into the quicksand of a woman’s frame.
Tactical NEXTing
The opposite of love is not hate – the opposite of love is indifference. When your silence inspires more anxiety than any spoken threat, that’s when you’re an Alpha.
Learning indifference is the key to mastering the power of NEXT. Women are masters of indifference for the same reason Men with options (i.e. Plate Spinners) find it useful; they derive confidence from having options. Since women (in their prime) are the primary sexual selectors, indifference is their natural default state. It’s only Men with options who make an impact enough to rattle a woman out of this default indifference and fire her imagination (caffeinate the Hamster).
NEXTing as a tool is one of the best ways to determine real interest level in a woman. Dumping a woman is one of the highest forms of DHV that a man possesses. Nine times out of ten the NEXTed woman will attempt to reconnect with the guy who’s got the personal confidence enough to walk away from her. Why is this? Because it shakes up the routine which you slip into by playing in her frame. In behavioral psychology terms she’s about to go into what’s called an extinction burst. You’ve removed her source of reward (i.e. attention, comfort, familiarity) and now she will frantically attempt to restore it. Uncertainty is exciting, particularly after you’ve set a pattern of behavior that she thinks is secure. Unpredictability is good. The guy who can walk away from a less than optimal situation is a man communicating that he has options and the confidence to be uncompromising (or at least less compromising) in what he’s willing to accept. The secret is that pussy is an easily had commodity and it’s up to a woman to convince you that her intimacy is in someway unique among all others. The hard truth, that she’s well aware of, is that no amount of sex is an equitable trade for a man’s complacency and/or compromising his identity.
In fact, a woman want’s you to walk away; it communicates that her intimacy has no control over you putting you decisively in control (where she wants you to be), increases her desire by planting a seed of doubt of her estimation of you, proves you to be (at least in appearance) a man with other irons in the fire, and finally, confirms for her that your attentions are valuable to other (potential competition) women.
Permanent NEXTing – Going Dark
There will come times when NEXTing a poisonous woman becomes a necessity. For any number of reasons, extracting her from your life may be essential to saving your own life. NEXTing under these conditions (really a break up) takes on much more gravity since the woman you’re cutting off will still experience the same extinction burst despite the factors (perhaps her own fault) that led to it. The same basic principles of emotional dissonance apply, but the emotional investment may make it impossible to achieve true indifference. It’s during these extinction burst when she opens up sexually to retain a your failing interest that prove the most difficult for men to resist. A starving man can’t help but want to eat from the most convenient buffet prepared for him, even when aresenic is on the menu.
As I mentioned in War Brides, women have an innate, hard-wired psychological facility in achieving this degree of indifference that men can scarcely believe they’re capable of – even after decades of an LTR or marriage. So imagining and enacting a disconnect of this emotional magnitude is kind of a foreign concept for men to embrace themselves. It not only goes against our deductive, problem solving natures, but it also conflicts with a feminine primacy acculturation that teaches us to stick with her no matter what, “all for love.”
Keep that in mind; the intent of your leaving isn’t punishment for her misbehavior, nor is it meant to teach her a lesson to learn from, it’s to save your own life from further damage. As I stated earlier, NEXTing a woman is DHV (demonstrating higher value) of the highest order. True or not, It implies you had other, better options than her. NEXTing her implies you’ve just gone from a comfortable, familiar beta to the indifferent Alpha that she never realized you had a capacity for. What serves as a benefit in Tactical NEXTing is liability in a Permanent NEXT, you will hear from her again. At first it will be desperate and crying, later it will be casual with feigned nonchalance – don’t take the bait.
The best thing you can do is go dark. Block her calls / texts, drop her from Facebook if you have one, cut off all contact. No messages via friends, no “hey howya doing?” nothing but indifference. You’re off the grid for her.
Learning indifference is the key to the power of NEXT. Presuming and cultivating that presence of indifference makes your attention that much more valuable and makes a permanent NEXT a much easier transition.