Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Preventing arguments in the long run

As I moved on from picking up chicks and discarding them, and instead attempted to have relationships with women, I learnt some valuable lessons. I also learnt a lot from other men who told me their stories. Not all of them were “players”. In fact, hardly any of them were. But as it so happens, if you meet up with someone for dinner, even in a professional context, and you’ve known him for a while, they tend to open up a little bit. They might not directly discuss how things are with their wife or girlfriend, but instead give you enough pieces so that you can easily put the picture together. (This reminds me that it might make sense to discuss conversation styles, since this is hardly covered. No, I’m not referring to PUA nonsense.)

The guy I was having dinner with was a rather successful young professional. He recently made some changes in life, of the kind where he’s taking on a greater amount of risk in the short-term  in the hope of some payoff in the future, but nothing crazy like eating ramen noodles for a year while trying to build the next Facebook. In the worst case, he’ll get some tangible experience, which he’ll likely be able to leverage for another job, if that’s what’s going to happen.


However, to get in the position where he is now, he had to move, and take a small pay-cut. His wife also moved. I was asking him how she was talking it, so he remarked that everything is going quite well. Then he smirked and said that before they took this step, he primed her, and got her to verbally buy in at every step. He mentioned that he explicitly asked her, at certain key moments, whether she was “really sure” she wanted to do this. The implication was that he didn’t want to end up in a situation where he’s got a crazy bitch at home who tells him about all the “sacrifices” she’s made and the “career” she’d given up to support his plans. I didn’t ask him about any of his previous relationships, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that was what had happened to him in an earlier relationship, especially since he nodded when I hinted at the hypothetical possibility of the particular dynamic I just mentioned, albeit phrased in much more polite terms.

I hopefully don’t have to point out that you can’t expect that kind of long-term thinking to preempt all kinds of arguments. It obviously strongly depends on the woman you’re with, but the more rational ones do prefer some consistency in their actions. If you can then remind her that the situation she's trying to blame you for is one she is responsible herself because instead of just tagging along she actively agreed to those changes in her life, the argument may very well be over before she was able to start it. This seems to also apply to her vain attempts to shift the power balance in the relationship. Of course it helps if you're in a position where she doesn't have much leverage over you, but this goes without saying.

When you argue with someone who is at least somewhat rational, you'll notice that they need consistency in their behaviour in order to maintain their self-image. It's like in mathematics, if you accept some basic axioms, then you also have to accept everything that logically follows from them. Thus, if you find yourself arguing with a somewhat rational person and you realise that she's trying to engage in some shady rhetorics, you simply point that out to her. An irrational woman will then throw a tantrum, a more rational one will agree, but maybe not immediately, that you're right. Well, it's more likely that she'll drop the conversation since she realises that she doesn't have the upper hand. But imagine that you never got her to verbally accept any premises! In that case, you invite all kinds of drama.

For the less experience among you, I'll add that none of this will be of any help if you're with an utterly irrational woman. Those selectively listen to what you say, misremember (lie), and try every manipulative trick she's picked up in kindergarten. Get out as fast as you can, and be smarter when (if?) you're choosing your next partner.

5 comments:

  1. Aaron, have you been following the whole RSD Julien saga in Australia? He's basically being banned from hosting his events over there after some video of him forcing a japanese woman's head on his crotch saying 'White men can do this shit in Japan, etc.', has incensed a whole whack of people.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh man... you don't even need to be an anti-PUA to see what's wrong with RSD and their coaches.
      I mean, seriously? Grabing the head of an asian girl to illustrate a fact? Why he couldn't just say "westerns have more chances of getting laid in Asia"?
      What a bunch of weirdos...
      (Sorry if i made a mistake, english is not my native language!)

      Delete
  2. I just can't imagine people paying him thousands of dollars to hear him lecture.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Well, he got her through what amounts to a "Yes-street": pacing her along a logical path of arguments she cannot say "No" to and get her to say "yes" to his proposition (this by the way is a classic sales technique). If he hasn't carefully paid attention to her feelings about the move, his efforts will have been in vain.

    Me? Been there, done that. And the relationship tanked anyway. So I asked her afterwards why she said yes to all of it while in truth wanting none of it, and she answered in an indignant tone: "You were so devoted to the move, you can't expect me to say "No"!!".

    Conclusion: you will not convince her at the rational level, only at the emotional level.

    In the case above the means: she will happily follow him as long as he feels great about the move and as long as she feels great about being his girl. If either feeling is gone, the other will soon vanish too.



    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There is a difference to that, though. A "yes street" means that you get the customer to say yes to small commitments, so that they are used to saying yes, and will hopefully also accept greater commitments. In the discussion I described, though, the sales negotiation, if you want to use that term here, was about a rather large commitment from the very beginning.

      Well, his hope is that he has found one of the more rational women, so I don't want to make any predictions. What I find disconcerting, though, is that he didn't secure his home base and has agreed to a shared bank account, of which it is fair to say that one party profits a bit more than another one.

      Delete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.