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- Oct 9, 2012
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"Go no-contact" seems to be the default advice online for dealing with strained relationships.
If you ask me, there are basically tiers of "strained relationship handling":
In my opinion, people online in general -- not just in pickup, but in the red pill space as well, in the female dating strategy space, and even on dating advice Reddit -- seem to default to "go no-contact" because a.) they don't have relationship-mending skills themselves and b.) the person they're advising also probably doesn't and it'd be too hard to coach that person through it. "No-contact", OTOH, is simple to understand and apply. Just stop contacting her and wait for her to come back; maybe she will, maybe she won't.
NO-CONTACT DOES NOT ALWAYS WORK
I'm going to quote @Skills here, who has had good experiences with it:
Probably I am simply not as sexy as Skills
(I am kidding... we are equally sexy. Right Skills?) but my experience going no-contact with girls has been much more hit or miss regarding whether the girl comes back or not:
If you are doing no-contact, you should ONLY be doing it if you are completely fine with never hearing from the girl again.
Not every girl is going to chase you down to get you back, even if you were the Man of Her Dreams.
Some women are very passive; some view it as "the man's role" and accept that if the man does not contact them, that he is rejecting them; some leave everything "to fate" (you know... the "it just happened" types). Those types will usually not contact you first, and going no-contact with them simply means it is over, for good.
SHE'S BANGING OTHER DUDES ON NO-CONTACT
It is worth adding that in my experience if you let a girl go for N weeks or months, especially if you are a guy she was very into and needs to recover from emotionally, she is going to go on a rebound tear during that "no-contact" period and she will fuck some guys.
Depending on her personality and the relationship with you, she may admit it, she may lie and hide it from you, or she may be evasive. I had one girl who came back tell me she'd had sex with no one else. I knew it was BS, and found confirmation in her journal later (including all the lurid details!).
Another girl who came back made it seem like she'd been mourning my loss quietly, in a state of romantic tragedy, the poor girl; but I found out from a friend of hers she'd been banging her 50-year-old boss.
In one case, I know exactly when a girl I went no-contact with hooked up with new guys:
In both cases I had put the girl through a pretty emotionally taxing relationship/breakup, so she needed rebounds to get her power back.
The less emotional the breakup, the longer a time you probably have before she goes out and hooks up with someone new (less strong of a need to emotionally rebound, etc.)
But you should always assume that from the moment you go no-contact, a countdown timer begins, and at some point new cock is going inside her.
If she comes back to you after banging other dudes, several unfortunate things happen:
If you're a sexually liberal guy, you probably won't care she snarfed a few cocks in between relationship stints with you.
If you're not sexually liberal, however, or at least not in how you run your relationships, now you have a third unfortunate thing that you have let your "Pure Princess" run off, get pounded out by some dudes, then come back to you, and you are going to have visions of their big hairy dicks pounding her out pop into your head at the worst possible moments (like when she is giving you a nice little kiss and telling you "Have a nice day!" as she sends you off to work. "Man, I hope she doesn't fuck any more dudes while I'm at work!" you think!).
NO-CONTACT PUTS YOU ON MORE EQUAL TERMS
The biggest black mark against no-contact in my book is that if and when the girl comes back, even though she is the initiator, she is now on more even footing with you.
In the original relationship:
But then at some point, after she finished rebounding & recovering, she came back to you, and you were there waiting, willing to take her back.
She now knows that she can leave and return.
She also knows you are not going to swiftly replace her (so no more dread game for you, my friend!).
This is fine if you are running low commitment, open relationships.
It is bad though if you are running high commitment, closed relationships.
You do not want "relationships of equals." You're the man; you must lead.
The fact that you let it fail the first time is a leadership failure:
www.girlschase.com
The fact that she is the one who initiated and resumed things, once again, is a leadership failure (in this case, she was in the lead).
Sets a bad frame if you are having any kind of ongoing committed relationship.
WHEN SHOULD YOU USE NO-CONTACT?
Here are the situations I recommend no-contact for:
WHEN SHOULD YOU NOT USE NO-CONTACT?
Here are the situations I recommend against no-contact:
Instead, use the Olive Rule and fix your relationship:
www.girlschase.com
NO-CONTACT IS NOT REALLY ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL
I know for a lot of guys "go no-contact" is the default "dealing with a tricky relationship" strategy.
As a guy who has done it, plus also used the Olive Rule to mend relationships in situations where most guys probably would've done no-contact -- for serious ongoing relationships, the Olive Rule is better.
That's because fixing the relationship
That said, if it is a situation where you just do not care if she still hangs around, or it is an mLTR and you can't be fucked, or the problem is an unresolvable one, or you're only using it as a short-term gimmick because you know she'll fold in hours or a day (and in case you read her resolve wrong and she doesn't, I hope you have your contingency in place!), then no-contact works just fine.
Chase
If you ask me, there are basically tiers of "strained relationship handling":
- D-Tier: chase after her, crying, offering her everything she wants. This will lose you all her respect and turn you into her doormat.
- C-Tier: find some way to make her jealous to get her chasing after you. This can work sometimes but has a high backfire rate and really poisons the well at the same time (many girls will just decide "Two can play that game" -- and no matter how good you are with girls, girls themselves will always be better still at getting laid and rubbing it in your face).
- B-Tier: go no-contact. Force her to come back on her own and bend to your frame. Of course, she may not come back. If/when she does come back, it is typically only after she's banged a few other dudes and missed what she had with you. The relationship dynamic often is not really the same after that point, because she kinda feels like she "settled": you weren't her ideal, but she found nothing better, so now she's back, ready to accept you warts and all.
- A-Tier: just fix the problem. Use the Olive Rule. The only time you cannot do this is if the problem facing you is one of the 7 unresolvable romantic conflicts of interest. Do this, and a.) you don't become the doormat, b.) you never poison the well, and c.) she never goes out, messes around, then decides she is going to "settle" for you -- you remain Her Very Best Choice #1.
In my opinion, people online in general -- not just in pickup, but in the red pill space as well, in the female dating strategy space, and even on dating advice Reddit -- seem to default to "go no-contact" because a.) they don't have relationship-mending skills themselves and b.) the person they're advising also probably doesn't and it'd be too hard to coach that person through it. "No-contact", OTOH, is simple to understand and apply. Just stop contacting her and wait for her to come back; maybe she will, maybe she won't.
NO-CONTACT DOES NOT ALWAYS WORK
I'm going to quote @Skills here, who has had good experiences with it:
Probably I am simply not as sexy as Skills
(I am kidding... we are equally sexy. Right Skills?) but my experience going no-contact with girls has been much more hit or miss regarding whether the girl comes back or not:- I have had girls come back to me after no-contact. It happens months later, and always after they have rebounded and banged some other guys. Usually they lie about it and say they did not, or are vague or evasive, however. But they reappear with something about how they miss you, or want to "try again", or how they have been thinking and they think we can make it work this time if we agree on a few changes, etc.
- I have also had girls never come back after no-contact. That includes both girls where I have been guilty of being pretty awful and also girls where I ended things very amicably. In one case, a passive girl got roped back into me by another girl I was seeing later. As soon as the passive girl was back in my life, she was crying, telling me how much she had missed me, competing with the other girl, trying to get me for herself. But she never once reached out to me on her own. She didn't reengage until she was brought back in.
If you are doing no-contact, you should ONLY be doing it if you are completely fine with never hearing from the girl again.
Not every girl is going to chase you down to get you back, even if you were the Man of Her Dreams.
Some women are very passive; some view it as "the man's role" and accept that if the man does not contact them, that he is rejecting them; some leave everything "to fate" (you know... the "it just happened" types). Those types will usually not contact you first, and going no-contact with them simply means it is over, for good.
SHE'S BANGING OTHER DUDES ON NO-CONTACT
It is worth adding that in my experience if you let a girl go for N weeks or months, especially if you are a guy she was very into and needs to recover from emotionally, she is going to go on a rebound tear during that "no-contact" period and she will fuck some guys.
Depending on her personality and the relationship with you, she may admit it, she may lie and hide it from you, or she may be evasive. I had one girl who came back tell me she'd had sex with no one else. I knew it was BS, and found confirmation in her journal later (including all the lurid details!).
Another girl who came back made it seem like she'd been mourning my loss quietly, in a state of romantic tragedy, the poor girl; but I found out from a friend of hers she'd been banging her 50-year-old boss.
In one case, I know exactly when a girl I went no-contact with hooked up with new guys:
- My first time going no-contact on her, she hooked up with a rebound FWB after 3 weeks.
- My second time going no-contact on the same girl, she had a one-night stand with a different guy 1 month later.
In both cases I had put the girl through a pretty emotionally taxing relationship/breakup, so she needed rebounds to get her power back.
The less emotional the breakup, the longer a time you probably have before she goes out and hooks up with someone new (less strong of a need to emotionally rebound, etc.)
But you should always assume that from the moment you go no-contact, a countdown timer begins, and at some point new cock is going inside her.
If she comes back to you after banging other dudes, several unfortunate things happen:
- She has to decide how much to tell you. She is always going to conceal at least some of it from you: some thoughts, emotions, pleasures, etc. That is going to be her private little experience she had with other men between relationship stretches with you. This adds an additional crack into the foundation of the relationship. The more she conceals, the bigger the crack.
- She has settled for you. When a woman leaves, unless you did 100% of the breaking up yourself and made her feel completely rejected, she has it in her head that, "I can find someone like him or better." After she bangs a few other dudes / maybe dates some of them, then rotates back to you, when she comes back her thought is now, "He is the best I can find. Maybe there is a way we can make it work." Even if you were the Super Sexy Stud for her before, her top guy, best guy ever, #1 choice, you are now relegated to the guy she has settled for because reality has shown her she just can't do better than you -- even though she wanted to. Once again, another crack goes into the relationship foundation.
If you're a sexually liberal guy, you probably won't care she snarfed a few cocks in between relationship stints with you.
If you're not sexually liberal, however, or at least not in how you run your relationships, now you have a third unfortunate thing that you have let your "Pure Princess" run off, get pounded out by some dudes, then come back to you, and you are going to have visions of their big hairy dicks pounding her out pop into your head at the worst possible moments (like when she is giving you a nice little kiss and telling you "Have a nice day!" as she sends you off to work. "Man, I hope she doesn't fuck any more dudes while I'm at work!" you think!).
NO-CONTACT PUTS YOU ON MORE EQUAL TERMS
The biggest black mark against no-contact in my book is that if and when the girl comes back, even though she is the initiator, she is now on more even footing with you.
In the original relationship:
- You approached her.
- You picked her up.
- You fucked her.
- You kept her around.
- You let it turn into a relationship.
- You let her go.
But then at some point, after she finished rebounding & recovering, she came back to you, and you were there waiting, willing to take her back.
She now knows that she can leave and return.
She also knows you are not going to swiftly replace her (so no more dread game for you, my friend!).
This is fine if you are running low commitment, open relationships.
It is bad though if you are running high commitment, closed relationships.
You do not want "relationships of equals." You're the man; you must lead.
The fact that you let it fail the first time is a leadership failure:
A Failed Relationship is a Failure of Leadership
Who’s fault is it when a relationship fails? Two words for you: the man’s. Usually. Note: a relationship failure is something different than letting a relationship decline and die, or just breaking up with a girl, because you’ve lost interest or other things in your life have taken precedence or...
www.girlschase.com
The fact that she is the one who initiated and resumed things, once again, is a leadership failure (in this case, she was in the lead).
Sets a bad frame if you are having any kind of ongoing committed relationship.
WHEN SHOULD YOU USE NO-CONTACT?
Here are the situations I recommend no-contact for:
- When you honestly do not care if you ever see the girl again. If you can take her or leave her, you don't care, use no-contact.
- When you WANT her to rebound a bit on her own. Maybe she's being insufferable, and you realize any other dudes she nails are unlikely to outclass you -- and that once she realizes you're way better than her other options she'll chill out. This can be a valid use of no-contact.
- When you're running mLTRs. If you have multiple long-term relationships, and you're okay with girls coming and going and coming back again, no-contact is simply more efficient than sorting out relationship issues. Just let the girl who is having problems go, focus on your other girls who are still chill, and later the problem girl may come back, having resolved her problems on her own, ready to play ball again.
- When you frame it as "all sales final" to push her to come back faster. I have had girlfriends where I know with certainty they won't be able to last even 12 hours going no-contact, especially with how I frame the "end" of the relationship (i.e., that "all sales are final"). In this case, all you need to do is just wait -- within a few hours she will be messaging you to fix things (super fast no-contact).
- When the problem is an unresolvable one. e.g., she's giving you ultimatums about marriage/children, but you are set on being a childless bachelor for life. Or maybe you are just too young and don't want to be pushed into that yet. No-contact can extend your relationship lifespan with her some -- IF she comes back.
WHEN SHOULD YOU NOT USE NO-CONTACT?
Here are the situations I recommend against no-contact:
- When you do not want to let the girl go. No-contact is throwing the dice. If the dice land your way, she'll come back. Roll snake eyes? You'll never hear from her again. Don't roll dice if you aren't cool with losing her.
- When you do not want her banging other dudes. No-contact says "I don't care about you anymore and am not going to deal with your crap." The message she gets is that you have already moved on, so she should too. If you don't want her sleeping with other dudes, don't do no-contact.
- When you're running monogamous relationships and not picking up. If she is the only girl you're seeing, and you are not going to immediately hit the field and start picking up new girls, going no-contact just means you are going to be sitting there sexless and alone while she bangs new guys. If and when she does return to you, it will be a VERY different power dynamic (and not in your favor).
- When you're already clear on what the problem is and you know it's one you can/would like to solve. e.g., she wants marriage/babies, but thinks you don't, but actually you'd be fine with that. Going no-contact there is a terrible move, because you both want the same thing, there's just a communication barrier. Sending her off into the world to meet other men thinking "Obviously he doesn't want what I want" because you don't know how to communicate you actually do is like a tragic love story or something. No need for that.
Instead, use the Olive Rule and fix your relationship:
Relationship Communication: The Olive Rule
Fights and resentment in a relationship can resolve... but not without the right communication. The Olive Rule gives you the ultimate tool to bust relationship roadblocks. Jesus of Nazareth taught his followers one Golden Rule by which to live their lives, if they wanted to live harmonious...
www.girlschase.com
NO-CONTACT IS NOT REALLY ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL
I know for a lot of guys "go no-contact" is the default "dealing with a tricky relationship" strategy.
As a guy who has done it, plus also used the Olive Rule to mend relationships in situations where most guys probably would've done no-contact -- for serious ongoing relationships, the Olive Rule is better.
That's because fixing the relationship
- Positions you as the LEADER
- Maintains good will with her (she feels understood, cherished, protected, etc.)
- Relieves all the bad stuff in her head (no need for her to leave, rebound, recover etc. -- now it is fixed)
- Is alpha-dominant (you force her to stay and fix the problem) vs. sigma-independent (just let her go)
- Is a flex in its own right -- most guys do not have this skill (they either grovel, play games, or do no-contact)
That said, if it is a situation where you just do not care if she still hangs around, or it is an mLTR and you can't be fucked, or the problem is an unresolvable one, or you're only using it as a short-term gimmick because you know she'll fold in hours or a day (and in case you read her resolve wrong and she doesn't, I hope you have your contingency in place!), then no-contact works just fine.
Chase
) around seducing back in women who have wandered off the reservation makes it next to impossible to actually pull off at this point. Either: