A reader asks:
Is it possible to win back an ex after overgaming? My cocky/funny became cocky. The only time I was beta was at the three week mark when I tried to ger her back – I cried. Is there a more long-term strategy to win an ex back?
Have you ever been with a girl who was incredibly sarcastic? Where every word out of her mouth was some sort of cutting riposte, usually of the annoying “exaggerate for effect” kind of sarcasm, her sneer permanently plastered to her face? What did you think of her? You probably thought she was amusing at first, but then, after a full night listening to her bitter ironies, you became irritated by her company. She was obnoxious, and, more importantly, less feminine than when you knew her before she opened her mouth.
Girls feel the same thing when they meet a man who is too cocky. They are attracted at first (who is this guy who dares speak with such insolence!), then, as it becomes clear that cockiness is the only gear he knows, he loses his alpha allure. Finally, the girl will want to get away from him and his arrogant posturing.
Cockiness that isn’t leavened with knowing humor or calculated flashes of vulnerability can quickly burden a man with the perception that he is an arrogant, insecure prick. Or worse, a weak, insecure try-hard. These things are anathema to women’s attraction triggers. A woman is likely to think an overly cocky man to be compensating for some shortcoming. An overly cocky man reveals his flaws just as surely as a supplicating man does; approval seeking is at the heart of all insecure behavior. Whereas the supplicating man’s “tell” is obvious, the cocky man’s tell is discernible through the thick smokescreen of caustic one-liners he belches up around himself.
If you watch the great alpha male characters on TV (Don Draper comes to mind, atm), ask yourself how often they are verbally cocky? The answer is not often. (Nonverbal cockiness, otoh, is a trait that should wear on you like a custom-tailored suit wherever you are.) They will intersperse their cockiness with, in turns, humor, sincerity, wit, genuine anger and laconic bemusement. In general, per screen minute, they speak less than other male characters, but when they do speak their words carry weight. They are not dancing monkeys or butthurt douchebags, which are impressions the perpetually cocky man usually brings upon himself.
This reader has problems with his frame of neediness that go way beyond excessive cockiness. A man who cries to a girl three weeks after a breakup is a man who is far too emotionally invested and clingy to effectively imbue himself with the proper tingle-generating mentality of pussy abundance. No amount of tactical game will help him with his ex. He needs to rebuild from the ground up.
Once he’s mastered the correct frame (or masculine psychological balance, in more explanatory words), he’ll find it effortless, and natural, to tinge his cockiness with humor, to approach women, including his ex, from a place of emotional distance, and to set the stage for a reconciliation should one be possible.
In his case, I do not think one is possible. He needs to extract his ex from his life at once, and begin the journey away from her and toward other women. How will a man know when he’s got the right frame? Here’s a simple test: One hour after a breakup, are you able to go outside, meet a new woman, smile at her and have a conversation with her like a normal cool dude? And after that conversation, do you mentally rewind to yourself “Boy, I wish my ex could’ve seen me with her”, or do you say to yourself “Cool chick. I should have gone for the number close.”
Get the answers to the above right, and you’ll be in the winning headspace.
