I find that a lot of girls seem to respond to negative emotions more than positive emotions. This might well be a selection bias in the bar crowd, because they are all seeking validation and witholding that validation sometimes means negative emotions. Eg. Girl told me tonight, "I really didn't come looking to meet somebody tonight". I turned to her and said, "What makes you think I want to meet you? That's highly presumptous of you." and turned away. It created such a strong emotion in here. Because such a statement is way outside my comfort zone (nice guy programming makes me avoid confrontation), I really didn't engage the girl after that, though I was sitting right next to her at the bar. But I find this very interesting. Nobody in the community talks about this for obvious commercial reasons.

Do any of you leverage negative emotions? If so, how? I typically find it difficult to re-engage. But that is just me being afraid of confrontation. How do you guys do this?

I don't think viewing it as negative/positive emotions is that beneficial. I prefer to look at it as plain old rejection.

She rejected you. So you tried to frame it as you rejecting her in return. The reason rejection often gets an emotional response out of people is because... duh, nobody likes to be rejected. It hurts their feelings. Most people's initial response to rejection is to seek validation in some way.

So she rejected you. You re-framed it as you rejecting her in order to validate yourself. Which then in turn incites her to feel the need to be validated, most likely by you. This is the same reason teasing and negging works and a lot of PUA techniques are based on doing this -- i.e., leveraging a girl's insecurity to make her chase your validation. This is also why PUA techniques generally work best on low self-esteem women.

In the old days they also had a technique called "false disqualifying." You'd tell a girl something like, "You're not my type," with the intention to get her to try and win you over. Sometimes it'd work (i.e., with needy, low self-esteem girls), other times it would backfire and the girl would just say OK and move on.

The thing is, this kind of interaction isn't very genuine and causes both people to behave in a pretty needy way. It's not exactly enjoyable either. It becomes a validation battle, which as you pointed out, is probably why it happens often in bar settings.

As a man, you pursue women. Part of pursuit is being rejected. I'm going to assume you opened her. So when you tell her, "Who said I wanted to meet you anyway?" that's going to come off as pretty ridiculous, and butt-hurt.

Next time just take the rejection on the chin and move on.

Walking away is my usual response. In this case, the timelines were kind of whacked. I opened direct. We talked, but she wasn't hooking. So I just hung around fiddling with my phone and not interacting with her. At some point, she turned to me and said, "I really am not looking for someone tonight". By this time, I really wasn't interested in the girl. I was well aware of what I was doing though when I told her that I'm not trying to meet her.

I think it is really good practice to subject myself to some of these "confrontation" like interactions. I tend to lose internal equilibrium when somebody gets pissed. I've working on this for the past few months.

One way to look at it is to appreciate that she was being up-front about her interests and intentions instead of stringing you along or milking you for attention or a free drink or something.

But yeah, if she was being unnecessarily rude, and you felt like it deserved a confrontation, then yeah standing up for yourself in that situation is probably a good exercise. I would also say that you demonstrating standing up for yourself and establishing personal boundaries in that situation made you more attractive.

(09-10-2011 10:13 PM)Mark Wrote:  This is the same reason teasing and negging works and a lot of PUA techniques are based on doing this -- i.e., leveraging a girl's insecurity to make her chase your validation. This is also why PUA techniques generally work best on low self-esteem women.

I never thought about it like that, but it makes a lot of sense. I imagine that's why some emotionally healthy girls look at you all weirded out when you neg them. They think something like: what's wrong with this guy? But I can't deny I've had a lot of very good flirtatious interactions negging girls that don't take things so seriously.

Quote:As a man, you pursue women. Part of pursuit is being rejected. I'm going to assume you opened her. So when you tell her, "Who said I wanted to meet you anyway?" that's going to come off as pretty ridiculous, and butt-hurt.

Next time just take the rejection on the chin and move on.

Excellent!! It's part of the game, a big part of it, to be honest. I've noticed how sometimes I get mad at the girl if she rejects me and vice-versa. It's like an internal childish reaction: you didn't like me so I'm not gonna like you either, lol!!!

I'm fine with girls changing their minds and moods, I suspect girls can sense that in me and are therefore more attracted to me.
The hard part for me is dealing with the negative feedback, the "I screwed it up", to resist the temptation to beat myself up right then and there, and analyse my mistakes.
It's hard to keep a happy face when internally I am telling myself how much my game sucks and how much I need to improve so and so skills because the girl was clearly thrilled to meet me or was walking me to her place (she explained that she had had too many ONS that week )
I recently managed to get past the defensiveness in an sms exchange and was amazed at how good I felt and how much of a positive impact it seemed to have on the chick.