I haven't really been too active on this forum but i thought I'd share a technique I've come up with and have been using for a long time, and finally gave it a name that was fitting.
I DON'T sarge. In fact i never do a cold approach. I'm strictly a
social circle/environment gamer. Why? Because I'm young(20) and don't really find a need to go out of my way to find girls, I have a steady flow crossing my path. So with that said in all fairness, take my advice for what its worth and let me know if you've had similar situations.
So without further ado, let me explain what i call
Preemptive freezeouts/takeaways.
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Imagine this situation if you will, you have a friend or acquaintance that you see often (lets call him Skip) ..you guys hang out often, and socialize well.
You're going to see him that night at a social gathering with mutual friends. But this time, you're peeved at him. Maybe you found something out about him, maybe he said something behind your back, or maybe you just feel irrational and are going to take it out on him ..whatever.
So you let the anger simmer in you for a while before your night out. You're ready to give him a piece of your mind. You plan to dhv to the group and ignore him. You've even had enough time to start imagining him BEGGING or PLEADING with you to tell him 'whats wrong', but you're not going to budge, you're going to teach him a lesson. rawr.
So the night rolls around and you get together with a few of your closer friends and head to the arranged meeting place before the party. He's there already with his closer friends. You guys exchange pleasantries and you decide to 'flip' into the ignoring mode with him. You can't wait 'till he tries to start a conversation with you. You guys usually talk about your love for cars, but not this time. No sir, hes not getting your conversation.
But then 5 minutes pass and you start noticing something
different about him. He hasn't really made any eye contact with you the whole 5 minutes, and as you look back at it, he didn't really seem that interested or excited seeing you. His handshake was a little limp, and he barely turned in your direction.
You think to yourself, well its only been 5 minutes, I'll give the old chap a while longer to come around so I can scold him properly. Grr.
15 minutes pass and he's having a blast with the group, while you're standing on the sidelines peeved and boiling. But now its exponentially increased, cause different thoughts are running through your head. "WHAT IS GOING ON?" you wonder to yourself.
Does he KNOW I was mad at him?
Is HE mad at ME for something?
Did
I do something wrong?
Maybe I was being too harsh, let me give him a warmer side and all will be swell again!
^The last one is a red flag.
At this point the ENTIRE dynamic of the interaction is changing and your original frame is falling apart.
So you decide to cut him some 'slack' and you're going to draw him back in with some kinder words and banter maybe.
You say 'hey skip, I was reading in our favorite magazine about your favorite car, the new Corvettes!' You're sorely disappointed and confused as he replies, 'oh thats cool' and proceeds to talk to the group or someone else.
At this point you've really had it and your angers boiling over. You try to engage the group in conversation, but your vibe is terrible, and your confusing and contradicting emotions are communicating to the group easily. A lot of time passes, and
you finally just ask him..
'DUDE, is there something wrong?'
'No' he says ..'why do you ask?' (very non reactive)
'Because ..its just ..i mean why did you ..are we cool?'
'Yeah sure buddy' he says as he pats you on the shoulder in a demeaning manner.
As you can tell by this point you've been completely tooled. So how was Skip able to completely throw your internal state into chaos and havoc?
By employing a PREEMPTIVE FREEZEOUT
Weather he knew it or not, this created IMMENSE confusion in you and disrupted your internal state and focus.. but most importantly, notice how
ANGER and OFFENSIVE thoughts turned into
FEAR and DEFENSIVE thoughts.
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I'll give you the example from my life that REALLY set this concept in for me.
I am a behaviorist and my class is like a small conference room, with maybe 10 chairs around a long table with the teacher at the head. Now my teacher generally loves me and we keep the class fresh ..I do presentations often and that gives her a break i suppose. Well one week i had missed a lot of school and had poor excuses to boot. Well the day i went back to school, before I entered the room, I overheard her talking to one of the older women (an elementary school teacher) telling her something along the lines of "You know what, I'm way too nice to him and even tho he's nice in the class i think hes taking advantage, I think I'm going to try to ignore him for a while and be passive" ...the elementary school teacher agreed and the plot had been set.
NOW I was wondering ..well okay, I have this golden nugget of information, but WHAT do I do with this?
Do I impress her more?
Should I be more "on"?
Should I just plain apologize?
..But whichever one of these I tried, I was only REWARDING her passive aggressive conspiracy.
So class time started in 10 minutes and I had come up with a SIMPLE way to own the situation.
For every 1 step she took in ignoring me, I was going to take 100.
Class started and she began her campaign. She would ACTIVELY ignore me, by calling me out on a question, and mid answer cutting me off, even if it was a good answer.
So I began completely ignoring HER now. No eye contact, no laughing at her jokes (only obviously fake half smiles), and every time she asked me a question I would give VERY simple and concrete answers ..FAR from my usual abstract and unique thinking I'd offer to the class.
TEN minutes passed and I could feel her getting panicked somewhat, she was asking me A LOT more questions, PURPOSELY asking me questions she KNOWS I find interest in. However I was still giving her half assed answers (although complete).
She begins to stutter her words a little bit
She begins to try to crack smiles at me to open me up.
She begins to compliment me unprovoked to the class.
..Doing ANYTHING she can to OPEN ME UP..
And trust me, her internal shift was OBVIOUS.
FINALLY, I started trying to figure out how to put an end to this myself. The method I came up with (and there are probably other ones too) is I gave her a HOOP to jump through for a chance to reward her. I FINALLY raised my hand and she QUICKLY called on me. I asked her to explain how long it took her to get her PhD and how hard school was (in a way relevant to the previous topic, of course).
She took about 15 minutes straight explaining how hard it was and blah blah. I usually speak against school and structured education, but because of her DASHING little presentation with graphs and pictures and the WORKS, I had now become a 'believer'. Not really. I openly complimented her on her hard work and stated 'Maybe thats the right path for me too! Thanks Dr M!'
At this point she BURST into a stream of compliments for me.
You're smart too!
You've got so much potential!
You're one of my favorite students!
You're such a nice and kind person too!
I accepted them and after that ALL WAS WELL and I had the upper hand completely. SO WHAT HAPPENED HERE?
By employing a
PREEMPTIVE FREEZEOUT I threw her off completely and cause, what I can assume to be, mass confusion and conflicting emotions inside her. She wanted RESOLUTION, and I was the only one that held that.
BUT ..I can only give that to her as a REWARD for qualifying herself to me.
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So before this stagnates let me summarize the process
- SENSE the impending freeze out from your adversary (takes intuition)
- YOU employ the freezeout PREEMPTIVELY
- SIMULTANEOUSLY DHV the group (most of the time, doesn't even need to be impressive. just enough to show value. Because if you're freezing him/her out but you're sitting in the corner while he's working the room, you've kind of blown it.)
- NOTICE the subtle internal confusion in him/her, they'll usually just wait till they burst and just ask 'is something wrong?' ..or for girls you'll notice a much more submissive vibe. Again, this may take a lot of intuition.
- GIVE them a hoop in order to END the tension and REWARD them. (which at this point, if you've been doing this right, they'll be BEGGING for.)
- Use a hoop that you know they TRULY believe they deserve a reward for. Since you've interacted before this should not be hard at all.
[I would suggest using what qualifies you two as friends in the FIRST place to qualify him/her] Examples include you're love of cars, or movie trivia, you get the picture. This creates a hoop he'll be MORE THAN HAPPY to jump through.
and there you have it, it takes some time and intuition to get it right, but its POWERFUL.
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Preemptive takeaways 
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