The Art And Science Of Compliance Tests: “Yes, but…” Edition

Henry Mueller (this guy again!) discusses an important Game concept, relating to the post about a girl sending a text pic of her newly painted goth nails as a ruse to fish for a compliment from a man.

“Red would’ve gotten my attention better.”

Even if you like the black.

There’s a subtle art to teasing a woman’s ego while still dangling the carrot to keep her interested.

If you say it looks nice, that’s alright. Not a fatal error but not terribly interesting. If you say “that looks like sh!t”, you run the risk of sabotaging it.

I say things like this in a “yes, but…” way so there’s always an implied compliment within a criticism, and vice versa:

“You look good now as a blonde but I prefer brunette.”

“The black nails look nice but __ would be better.”

I dated a beautiful Southern girl for 3 years who was obsessed with girly things like taking thousands of pictures of her nails and hair, and I used this kind of thing effectively on her whenever she was fishing for compliments.

It sets a win-win frame: I’m attracted to you, but there’s still a lot of room for improvement. Done in the right way, women will happily fall into this like a hypnotic subject.

She’s asking you for an opinion on her beauty. You can act indifferent, but why not use it to your advantage? Even if I have no opinion, I always give girls specific instructions and frame it like it’s self-evident that it’s all being done to please me.

A woman who will dye her hair or change her nail color at your whim just to please you is a woman who will do damn near anything to please you.

Related, from the world of highbrow literature: In Story of O, O had her labia pierced with a heavy dangling chain for her man, and gave herself over to another man on her own man’s insistence. Lesson: Women will only love you with wanton obsession if they are working to earn your approval. So keep them on their painted toes.

Fashion photographers and sleazy professors know this “yes, but…” compliance test trick and exploit it to great personal benefit. “This shot of you is great, but if you did this or moved there or smiled like so, the photo would be much better.” “You have a lot of creative ideas, but if you edited your thoughts you would persuade me better.”

In PUA lingo, this Cockiavellian tactic is called Compliance Tests. Similar and related concepts are Hoop Theory and Qualification. All have the goal of altering the usual courtship dynamic to one in which the woman is seeking the man’s approval. Old timers would call it “chasing the carrot”. The idea behind it is that women who do something for you, by being subtly encouraged to self-improvements to please you, are psychologically groomed to think that you are higher value and therefore worth pursuing as a lover.

There’s nothing wrong with trying to please a woman….if you already know she wants you and the act of pleasing her will validate her feelings for you. Men who are over-qualified to women will want to make a few sincere efforts at complimenting and pleasing them, so as to increase their attainability. (Surprisingly often for very HSMV men, women will bow out of a conversation early on with them to save their egos the frustration of potentially getting pumped and dumped or overlooked for a hotter friend.)

But trying to please women in the conventional sense is self-defeating when the dynamic is uncertain and unstable, and your efforts liable to be perceived as the try-hard supplication of a lower value beta male. Before she has fully opened for you (in every way), you want to keep her guessing, chasing, and pleasing you, so that she goes to bed at night eagerly awaiting your next date and all the ways she can impress you, instead of bemoaning the dullness of humoring another cut-out average joe who tells her nice predictable things and vouchsafes his submission to her whims.

“Yes, but…” is a devious sales technique that works as well in seduction — the arena in which you are selling yourself to women — as it does on the car dealership floor. As you persuade your woman to do things for you, over time you increase the frequency and intensity of your demands until wake-up BJs are given without waiting to be asked, just as a message to you that she is always ready to take her next order.