Firends or NC?

[darkblue]

I see many posters seeking advice on how to interpret these sorts of 'mind games'.

 

Expect to reply to his ex, once your plans come into action.

[jigsaw]

what signals do you mean? if you dont mind me asking. can u provide me some examples

 

They are important, but not your priority. When you have time for them, give it graciously. If you don't, do not go out of your way.

 

I think that sending mixed signals means to show your interested, but not putting yourself out to show that interest. Like if your happy to talk to them, but you get off the phone because you want to go to bed. I'm not sure how to explain it.

[Beec]

I see many posters seeking advice on how to interpret these sorts of 'mind games'.

 

Expect to reply to his ex, once your plans come into action.

 

And how would you interpret them? You would not know what it meant, although it would be safe for her to do likewise, right?

 

So, you show a little interest, then act a little aloof, and turn it on and off. Then she shows a little interest, then you show mroe, then she show smore, and you are on a lsippery slope to happy town. Sooner or later, you end up sitting somewhere together with you legs or hands touching and no one retreats from the touch, so you know you are fairly safe to bust a move, because you have already been told it is welcome.

 

Each of you has made a series of babysteps toward the other, no one being over extended and really vulnerable. And if she was not interested at first, your attention has become something she enjoys and wants, which emans she came looking for it, and WOW, you have a woman (or man) who wants you, adn you want them too.

 

Sounds pretty good to me. What is the problem with it?

[darkblue]

You're giving hope - then taking it away.

 

Headgames are not fun for the recipient.

 

"He's going hot/cold"

"NC or what!?"

"He's talking to me again!"

 

etc etc etc.

These posts come up all the time and achieve nothing but confusion on behalf of the receiver.

[Beec]

Well, you are showing interest at the same time as showing they are not the only person they are interested in.

 

There is no taking away of the hope. It shows independence. And, why would the dumper have no hope? That hardly makes sense?

[biacd]

why would the dumper care? they dumped us in the first place(for those who got dumped, like me), and it's not like they really care if "HEY! he's talking to me again!"

[cb2000]

By purposely sending mixed signals your are creating a state that can be called frustration attraction, the person is drawn to you by the frustration in their relationship with you. The problem with this kind of attraction is that it can be satiated quite easily so the manipulator must constantly keep the other person in a constant state of deficiency only providing enough positive re-enforcement to keep the victim hopefull. In the most basic sense the attraction that this generates is not a true attraction towards you as an individual it is a situational attraction were you are just an object goal to satiate the deficiency that you generated by your manipulative behavior.

[biacd]

By purposely sending mixed signals your are creating a state that can be called frustration attraction, the person is draw to you by the frustration in their relationship with you. The problem with this kind of attraction is that it can be satiated quite easily so the manipulator must constantly keep the other person in a constant state of deficiency only providing enough positive re-enforcement to keep the victim hopefull. In the most basic sense the attraction that this generates is not a true attraction towards you as an individual it is a situational attraction were you are just an object goal to satiate the deficiency that you generated by your manipulative behavior.

 

 

 

so basically it's like she's just coming back for the pie and not me? >_

[Iceman26]

dont know, I just want her back at some point and have her miss me.

 

Buddy, why would you want a girl back that dumped you for someone else? Don't you want the person you are with to want to be with you as you want to be with them?

 

Shes contacting you and asking you to hang out for 2 very likely situations:

 

1) You are the fall guy. If things don't work out with this other guy, you are there and waiting with open arms.

 

2) She feels guilty about breaking up with you. As soon as things get serious (if they do get serious) with the new guy, he (if hes smart) won't want her hanging out with you.

 

The best thing for you would be to move on with your life. Good luck and sorry for what happened.

[iamconfused5302]

when she broke up with me i dont know if she was involved with another guy. but it took her a month or so. so the best bet is to move on?

[Iceman26]

Well she certainly didn't waste any time grieving. She moved on and so should you my friend. Don't waste any more time. Get out there with your friends and start meeting some new people.

[Beec]

By purposely sending mixed signals your are creating a state that can be called frustration attraction, the person is drawn to you by the frustration in their relationship with you. The problem with this kind of attraction is that it can be satiated quite easily so the manipulator must constantly keep the other person in a constant state of deficiency only providing enough positive re-enforcement to keep the victim hopefull. In the most basic sense the attraction that this generates is not a true attraction towards you as an individual it is a situational attraction were you are just an object goal to satiate the deficiency that you generated by your manipulative behavior.

 

The fact is that in almost every realtionship I have ever been in, and in almost every one I have ever seen develop into anything good, the people give each other mixed signals. One shows interest, then backs off, then the other shows interest and backs off. It the other shows no interest, then the first goes back, shows more and backs off again.

 

If one person shows into and interest and continues to do that, then they are acting much like a puppy dog. Puppies walk up to you wagging their tail and asking for attention, and that works for them. It does not work for humans.

 

The amount and kind of interest one shows another person is important. If iw alk up to a woman and hit on her heavily, then back off and act aloof, i cannot see where that gets me. If I walk up to her and we begin a conversation and I listen well, then I have shown interest in her, without disclosing any sexual desire.

 

If she never wants to listen to me, then I probably won't want to be near her. if we each demonstrate some interest, and each demonstrate that we are not both in a rush to go have sex or hook up or whatever, we are both doing the same thing. Showing interest, showing some independence and providing fertile ground for something to begin.

 

In short, we all do it in the relationships that work. Now if I was talking to Ms. Flrity one day, who became Ms. IceQueen the next, then I would not want to be with her, because I would see her as unstable and moody. But if she showed interest one day, and was a bit alof the next, then she would get me wondering.

 

As far as keeping it up, no sooner or later she would know I was interested. What you do need to keep up is a recurrence of some level of tension. Hopefully, a low level, but some is needed so as not to be taken for granted.

[cb2000]

Beec

 

I don't think that we share the same ideas as to what mixed signal are.

For the purposes of this forum "Getting Back Together" I would hope that you would be for the establishing of a relationship devoid of purposeful manipulation.

 

If you listen to the people here trying to get back with their ex one of the greatest pains is trying to figure out what the mixed signals the other person is sending them means. Telling people that mixed messages are part of every relationship that works is completely insensitive to the pain that mixed messages have caused many participants of this forum.

 

Quite frankly I don't buy your argument as to the necesity of mixed messages in relationships as you only have offered the weekest of anecdotal evidence.

[renaissancewoman101]

I do agree with Beec that if you give someone mixed signals, one day you are hot, another day you are lukewarm, then yeah, you are going to have someone chasing you. That is what happened to me at first, but I wasnt really playing a game. My feelings for my ex changed, why I still dont know and I began to pull away from him, and that caused him to chase. I gave a lukewarm reception every so often and it drove him crazy and he chased harder. Unfortuanetly, my ex broke up with me too, because he could sense that, at the time, I really didnt seem like I wanted to continue a relationship with him.

[Rickster]

I believe in Beec. But you have to be strong to encounter the unexpected reply you might get from your ex.

[biacd]

beec could u explain what mixed signals mean? as in how do u go about doing it?

[iamconfused5302]

I thank everyone with the replies. This helps out greatly.

[Beec]

Well, first of all, if you are heart broken over your ex, and you want them back, it will be nearly impossible for you to avoid all signs of interest in htem. Why? Because very few people in the world can really control their body language, and your body langauge shows signs of interest. When you are looking repeadatedly at the person you want, do you really think you are in total conscious control of your body language. You're not, your eyes are telling the other person of your interest. So, there is a signal of interest.

 

You wanting to talk to them, reacting even a bit excitedly to their interest, etc., all indicate that you are interested. Ever see how a girl reacts when she likes a guy, but does not know how he feels, when he walks up and talks to her. Envision it for a few seconds, think about if you were to act that way. What would you look like, how should your body move to imitate hers.

 

I called an ex a few years ago on her birthday, and in the background I heard her friends excited because "he called." Well that he was me, and that excitement told me she was interested.

 

If you think about it, you can figure out how a man, woman, boy, girl, etc., wahtever acts when they want someone. Body language is always better to read than actual words, but words can confuse things well.

 

So, you have all these signals of interest. Some of which you just cannot help but give off. How do you signal that you might not be interested? How do you mix in a message that makes your message of interest vague, that brings into question your very interest itself.

 

You act aloof. Aloof meaning what they do does not affect your, does not change how you think or feel. Aloof approaching indifference. When you see her walking in your direction, you watch for the moment she notices you and then begin a conversation with someone else. When she tries to get a reaction from you, nothing changes in your demeanor. When he complimens you, your say Thank you, but do not act excited that he noticed you.

 

Indifference is the worst thing you can get from someone you want. And you will really never pull off total indifference, but acting aloof brings into question interest.

 

cb2000, I am not for relationships devoid of manipulation, simply because they do not exist. THEY DON'T EXIST. My relationships with everyone I have ever been involved with on any level beyond mere acquaintance has had active manipulation in it. It is there. People want to persuade you to do things every ngiht and every day. My mother tried to persuade me to eat strained peas as a baby with the spoon moving like an airplane, that was manipulation. My father convinced my sister and myself to like different parts of broccolli, so she ate the stems and I ate the top. He was manipulating us. My sisiter tried and still tries to convince me to do things. My girlfriend tries to get me to do things. This is all manipulation. There should be limits to it. Limits as to how far or how much one can go are good. But you cannot get rid of it.

 

But you should see it, you should see when you partner wants and is trying to convince you to do something. You should see it and do it, at times. You should know when she is being passive aggressive to get you to chase her, etc. Seeing it allows you to deal with it.

 

That said, it also works. If I walked up to a woman asking for attention, like a puppy wagging its tail, I would never get any sexual attention from her. So, if I want that attention, I need to some how tell her I want it, while at the same time demonstrating some restraint, some aloofness, etc. When all is revealed in the first moment we lose interest quickly, when something remains vague, we try to figure it out.

 

cb2000, think about the ideal relationship with no manipulation, and dream about it, because it won't exist on this planet.

[iamconfused5302]

Acting aloof and body movements will make the othe wonder?

[Beec]

It's not that acting any one way will make them wonder, it is that acting is ways that seem to be contradictory will make them wonder.

 

The people who really fascinate us are engimas, they are vague. We see things about them and when we try to make sense of them we cannot. It creates a puzzle. And we try to figure it out.

 

Say you have a woman who is very feminine, she dresses well, acts like a woman, pursues feminine activites (or what most consider to be feminine actvities). Then one day you see her in her driveway, with the hood of her car up, holding a wrench in a dirty and greasy pair of hands, while drinking out of a can of beer. Does this make sense? Could this be the same woman? How she could be both of these things, which really do not fit together at all, creates something called cognitive dissonance. We have two ideas about one thing and they do not fit together, there is a conflict in our ideas. "This conflicted state of mind will, necessarily, seek to attain psychological consonance, i.e. a balance between competing cognitions." We will seek to solve the puzzle, and in order to do that we need to think about and be near the puzzle, in this case, a person would need to be near you. See: link removed

 

There is a guy Dave D'Angelo who has a sight called link removed, and he advocates guys being "c0cky and funny" when they approach women. Now, if you really have no skills with talking to women, it's not a bad thing to use. But is is also a classic sense of mixed signals. If you are really arrogant, you won't show any interest in a person. But if you act c0cky, with a sense of humor thrown in (If you are not funny, it won't work), then you can both show interest and at the same time show independence. So, a woman knows the guy using c&f (as he calls it) is interested, but does not know how interested.

 

These are mixed signals. Use of them is not a bad thing. When you use them and show interest and at the same time show independence, then you have a much better chance.

 

There is a good chapter on this stuff in "The Art of Seduction" by Robert Greene.

 

In my own experince, I have interests that create cognitive dissonance and it seems to work for me. Now, these are real interests, so I am not faking anything. Some of my pursuits that are very intellectual. How many people do you know who would pick up and read 1/3 of Shakespeare's plays of their own volition is a given year. At the same time, how amny adults do you who still regularly watch cartoons. When you put the childish pursuit into me with the intellectual, then you create a puzzle. Some women have loved trying to figure it out. Lucky for me.

[Rickster]

Beec that's exactly what I was writing in my thread the last time. I didn't know it was mixed signals. Basically mixed signals is like being true friends and not ex lovers trying to get back with their ex's.

 

If you were a true friend you would be basically doing mixed signals without you knowing it.

 

I believe that mixed signals show her that you are over the break up. And that you are perfectly what you used to be before. She'll start to gain the trust in you again. And that you just want to be her friend again.

 

One more example could be calling her off and on. It shows yes you want to be friends, but it doesnt show that kind of interest that you still want to be back together. Its like basically not doing everything too much.

[Beec]

Rickster, I think you are right, but there is one another thing you need to keep in mind. The indirect approach. If you approach someone with clear intentions of you wanting them, you are less likely to get them. So, your actions around her need to be such that you do not give lots of indicators that you want her back. Indeed, you should be giving some indication that you are moving on, AND you should be trying to move on.

 

When I met my current gf, I was dating a few women at the same time. I had what I called a "rotation", a reference to baseball having different starting pitchers for each game, and rotating them every four to five days, or so. It worked well in keeping me aloof and independent from any one woman. I could not be too clingy, needy, call too much, etc., because each of them took up some of my tiime and some of my evenings.

 

My point is you seeking out other women to date can help you out here.

 

The other thing is you really, really need to control your emotions and showing them around your ex. You need ice water in your veins. Good luck.