I am an island. Ok, enough of the Simon and Garfunkle reference. Marquis has a post up about maintaining frame with some great observations. Specifically,
Be warned. Once you don the hat of an Alpha, the expectation is that you remain thus.
This is great advice and it inspired not only this post, but another one I am working on about screwing up past relationships by switching hats.
Saturday morning the LTR and I are headed out for a weekend together. I was making a left turn in front of an SUV. I judged the distances and the relative speeds between the two of us and decided that I could cut the corner and make the turn with room to spare. I didn’t consciously think these things, it was more instinctual. The LTR got scared. When it comes to driving she’s an #A1 backseat driver. Several years ago, before I met her, she was in a bad accident that was her fault. Since then she’s a bit skittish.
After I made the turn she says to me, ‘Do you think in the future you could wait for a larger opening in traffic?’
I glanced at her out of the side of my eye, but kept driving. I was just about to answer ‘no’, when she says, ‘What’s there to think about? Why can’t you just tell me you will do that? Nevermind.’
I keep driving. I can tell she’s pissed off. I am amused. I play the scene over in my head and I think about her reaction. I know that she’s going to explode, so I wait. Children throw temper tantrums. The key, I’m told, to diffusing said tantrum is to not allow your own emotions to escalate in response to the tantrum. To use NLP terminology and referencing Marquis post, you must maintain frame. For the next 10 minutes, I visualize how I will respond to the coming storm. I’m driving down the interstate and I realize I’m still smiling.
Before I learned about game, I would have been worried, I would have been trying to draw her out, and apologizing profusely. I would have been afraid of her anger. A typical nice guy, beta reaction. A defense mechanism that my parents and societal memes had told me was the proper way to ’solve’ the conflict. Like most things our culture currently teaches, that type of behavior always makes a woman more angry not less.
Ten minutes down the road, the LTR very dramatically slams the off button on the radio. I guess she figured that way I’d know how ‘infuriated’ she was. My smile widened. Nice touch, I thought. She does have a flare for the dramatic.
She spends the next minute venting her anger at me and telling me about how she ‘feels’ about my refusal to acquiesce to her demands. When she ran out of steam, I replied, ‘I’m sorry you felt scared.’ That’s it. I didn’t apologize for making the turn, nor for not answering her right away.
I passed the test. Half a minute later she’s apologizing to me for being too dramatic. She thanks me for listening to her. She’s grabbed my hand and is telling me how much she loves me.
