Controversial Last Ditch Advice for Snowball 138

[bilyin]

Very well reasoned response.

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Hobbe's wife will call you a snake in the grass but she is wrong. Because girls who will torment nice guys while they date the jerks should not complain about this tactic, at least as far as I'm concerned.

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Assumes facts not in evidence.

How, exactly, is this girl tormenting our hero? To the best of my knowledge, she doesn't even know she's been asked on a date because Snowball keeps muddying the waters by inviting her to group activities like Halloween parties.

Now, maybe she is using him. I speculated about that at the beginning. But because Snowball has not been straightforward, it is impossible to know for sure.

Someone else above just nailed it when he said that what this boils down to is courage. Stop overthinking this. Stop with the games, and just ask her out. If she says yes, great. If not, it's nothing more than a character building exercise. Ever seen a winning no limit player who wasn't willing to push all his chips into the pot? Yeah, me neither.

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but I call bullshit on each and every one of you who advocates not playing games.

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Let me be clear about my position. I'm ok with acting a bit less interested in a woman than you truly are. Behaving like an overeager puppy never gets you anywhere.

What I do have a problem with is mixing the message with all of this goofy plotting. I just can't be anymore adamant about this, so I'm going to type it in all caps. Ready?

NEVER DELIVER A MIXED MESSAGE TO A WOMAN CONCERNING WHETHER YOU WISH TO BE HER FRIEND OR WHETHER YOU WISH TO BEND HER OVER AND RAM HER REPEATEDLY WHILE SHE SCREAMS YOUR NAME.

This is rule number f-ing one, fellas. Don't give her any wiggle room to string you along, play dumb, or just maybe honestly misread your intentions.

Follow this one rule, and you'll save more in time and heartache than you could ever imagine.

[Borodog]

Dating is like poker. Selective aggression pays wonderful dividends. By all means be honest, be a friend.

But be aggressive. Look at her like she is a the juiciest steak you have ever seen and you haven't eaten all damn day. Look at her like you want her. Women love feeling wanted.

As usual, I agree with the Hobbester.

I just have yet to see one female that doesnt play games. It's up to the dude to um, man up and play it straight.

Uh, and when playing it straight works on a college chick.... you lemme know.

Till then I'll act more confident than I feel, and assume they want me till they tell me differently.

[Harv72b]

I skipped out on the original thread a while ago, so I don't know about any recent developments.

However, I see some major problems with your advice:

1) You are not considering the reverse implied odds. In short, you are assuming that Snowball can in fact spend 2 or 3 months working his way up to "bestest buddy" status w/o becoming even more fixated, then make this play and not cave in himself. And, of course, it will be even more heartbreaking for him should she just reply to the non-ultimatum with "okay, I understand" and leave it at that.

2) This is a tremendous amount of effort to expend on something which can just as easily be accomplished by cutting to the end result (not acting like it's a life-changing moment for him when he asks her out).

3) Starting a relationship off by misleading or outright lying to the other person is a sure recipe for an unhealthy and short-lived relationship. If he's just interested in getting her in the sack this is not an important consideration, but I got the distinct impression that he was interested in something longer-term than that. At some point, she will discover that she was duped into dating him (or he will feel it necessary to confess it to her), and will either be outraged that he tricked her like that, or find it rather pathetic that he needed to go through such an elaborate ruse rather than just asking her out in the first place.

4) In poker terms, this seems a lot like giving a free card with a flush draw showing. It is entirely possible (even likely, if she truly is as wonderful as Snowball portrays her as being) that she will meet someone else during the time that he is "working his way up the ladder" and become involved with that person. Not only will that make it less likely that she would give in and decide to date Snowball, but it would probably throw a pretty big monkey wrench into the whole "indispensible friend" aspect of the plan, as she would have this new beau.

5) You ignore the possibility that, rather than being dejected that she might lose her friendship with Snowball, she will instead be hurt and angry that he would give the friendship up over something as trivial as a jealous girlfriend or physical attraction to her.

It seems to me that the direct approach, as always, is the best one.

[LearnedfromTV]

Harv's post is good. The thing most guys don't seem to be getting in these threads is that the main reason to man up and get it over with one way or another is that no woman is going to respect a guy who wastes a lot of time pretending, because it shows that you don't have anything better to do with your time. It isn't that women like a-holes, it's that they like guys who have interesting enough lives that they don't have time to waste bsing.

[Malachii]

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The idea is to get to the top of the friends ladder, have her become emotionally dependent on you and then VERY DECISIVELY announce with NO WARNING and NO SNIVELING that you realize you are attracted to her and that it is best if you don't see each other again. Do not make it sound like it is an ultimatum! Make her think that you totally assume you have no chance with her. You are just making an announcement. Period.

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Mmmm... maybe he SHOULD write The Theory of "Poke-Her"

Sklansky's elaborate plan is excellent. All of you who propose using the "this is not an elaborate plan" plan are walking into battle blind.

This whole this is about plans. She has a plan and god help his soul, he better damn well have a plan too. The more elaborate and unexpected his plan is, the better. Its gotta be like at least 3 steps and maybe even more than that. If one of the steps involves her getting drunk, you've got a whole bunch of backdoor outs to the backdoor nut.

Worst case scenario, you can try to get in on one of her friends, and then use her friend to jump ships. This works even better if her friend was cheating on a boyfriend with you.

[Warren Whitmore]

Which do you suppose would sell more copies? Dating for advanced players by David Sklansky or Dating for dummies by The guy who wrote men are from mars woman are from venus.

I used to think it would be the advanced players version but after seeing pumping iron being out sold by sweating to the oldies I am not so sure anymore.