Was out at a bar with my wife and two of our married friends when a couple of single dudes making the rounds stopped at our table and starting chatting us up. Our wives were easily the hottest girls there that night so it was obvious what they were up to.

They were good looking guys. Imposing. Tall (quite a bit taller than me actually) and they were doing what I do when I'm trolling for pussy: moving from table to table and group to group making friends with everybody (or at least appearing to). It's an incredibly effective way to build social proof when you're alone or only with a friend or two and you're not already known for something else generally (athlete, musician, etc).

I'd never been the guy on the other side of this before and I felt the power dynamic shift away from me and my friend and you could sense our wives instant, primal, autonomic reactions to it, then sudden recoiling when their brains took back over. They shot us these looks that seemed to say "I can tell what they're doing, you can tell what they're doing, please make them go away, but please don't embarrass me."

Do I think my wife would leave with either of them? No. But if I wasn't me she might. Not that I'm that special but my game is solid enough that's not a concern I have. Admittedly they're not the kind of guys I want her running into on a girls night, but these are the chances we have to prove ourselves so that when we're not around, guys like that fail to adequately impress them.

My natural instinct was telling me to resist these guys. To take my wife's hand and make a hard exit. Or to ask them to leave, or to tell one of them he had something in his teeth or some shit like that (the teeth thing is great response to someone insulting you in some way--in that instance, since he hadn't insulted me, it would have looked really weak).

But my brain, luckily, was there to bail me out. Instead of resisting these guys, I EMBRACED them. I asked where they were from in order to retake the position of asker (they were asking way too many questions for my liking). I paid them a couple compliments. ("Man, you're a big motherfucker, aren't you? Did you play football??") I stood up. I told my wife and the other couple with us to make room, and I told them to grab a couple chairs and join us.

This threw them off. You could actually see them shrink somehow. I made my offer grandiose. I was louder than them. I made bigger movements. It felt somewhat like agreeing and amplifying, but in actions, rather than words. I wasn't threatening at all. I was warm. Too warm for their liking anyway. Because it was obvious that they weren't actually there to make friends with me.

It was like I had suddenly turned into a king who was welcoming some exotic visitors into his court, and that's what they suddenly became--my entertainment. A part of MY show. They had lost their identity within mine. They felt the shift, and they excused themselves quickly. Threat neutralized. Frame maintained.

When I sat down my wife winked, smiled, and squeezed my hand. Sex was good that night.