Futuristic Words

You know how it goes. You met her out, and you’ve gone on two dates. Maybe there was some casual touching, light hand brushing. Some furtive eye contact. There was a thick layer of sexual tension when you first picked her up– your initial swagger was textbook, man– and when you set up that third date, she texts back those awful seven words:

“I think we should just be friends.”

I know how it is.

Yes, you’re right. It doesn’t have to be this way.

I want us to be on the same page, and I don’t want you to be thrown when I use certain terms, so before I go any further I want you to read my article on frame control.

“A frame is the underlying emotional meaning, usually assumed, implied, or understood, of a human interaction. ”

This is key to how we get out of the friend zone. It’s actually pretty simple:

Hit on her.

Boom. Did I just explode your mind with that knowledge bomb?

If you get friend zoned (or see it coming), it’s because of a tenuous or nonexistent sexual frame. What a lot of guys try to do in this situation is either justify their case for a relationship (kind of like this genius) or say the girl is so right because, yeah, why would you want to tarnish your connection with something weird like sex. Yeah, yeah, you totally see her as a sister. The first one doesn’t work because you can’t appeal to an emotional response with logic. The second fails because you’re setting up a friend frame, and agreeing to adhere to it. This is awful. Remember, the longer you stay in a frame, the stickier the frame is. If you both agree to act like friends, that’s how you’re going to be embedded in each other’s minds. Those of you who have tried this strategy, did you just have an epiphany? I know I did when I figured this out. if you want to take some time to smack yourself in the forehead, I completely understand.

While the first strategy is anathema to Love Systems, and the second one is just strong frame control in the wrong direction. This is where hitting on her comes in. When she turns you on, tell her how sexy she is. If you look at her and feel that little spike of interest because her eyes seem like you could get lost in them, tell her she just took your breath away. And so on. When you do this, she has two options: she can accept the frame or reject it. If she rejects it, it will be an active thing. She will put space between the two of you, consistently aim her body away from you, and if you suggest room for more in your conversations, she will shut it down. Here’s the key, though: there’s a good chance she won’t actively accept the sexual frame. If she doesn’t actively reject a sexual frame, she is passively accepting it.

There is a caveat here that you’re not an idiot. If she tenses her body under your touch and is like stone when you try to hold her hand, you’re doing something wrong. That  is not passive acceptance;  it’s fear.

I’ve been deploying this strategy since 2006, and it works exactly as I’m advertising it to you: you will either lose her or get her. That limbo will be a thing of the past. It’s worth noting that I have accepted friendships when I thought losing the girl as a person in my life wasn’t worth it (especially if I already got some action). You have to make that call. I urge you to take stock of your “friend” girls and see if the limbo is really worth it, if you would spend time around that girl if you weren’t attracted to her.

This only works, by the way, if she means it when she says she wants to be friends. To be more technical, this works when you’re legitimately in comfort, you have attraction, but it’s not sexual attraction. Sometimes you have a connection with a girl, she likes you, and she is uncertain about her feelings. Essentially, you’re forcing her to choose whether the emotional satisfaction she gets from you is worth having on your terms. If it’s not– i.e. if there is no sexual attraction whatsoever– she will just stop the sexual framing and escalation dead. Beyond that, though, this doesn’t work if the girl’s telling you she wants to be friends because your game sucked. Sometimes “Let’s Just Be Friends” is a technique like “going to the bathroom” or “going to dance,” and you have to count it as a solid rejection.

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