Summary

When you stop associating with someone (whether it be a woman or man) their opinion of you will drop. Many people attribute this to a form of Briffault's Law and that you aren't doing things for people and therefore they like you less. There is more to the story, however, and it involves Benjamin Franklin.

Body

In Benjamin Franklin's unfinished autobiography he wrote a passage about how he dealt with a rival legislator:

"Having heard that he had in his library a certain very scarce and curious book, I wrote a note to him, expressing my desire of perusing that book, and requesting he would do me the favour of lending it to me for a few days. He sent it immediately, and I return'd it in about a week with another note, expressing strongly my sense of the favour. When we next met in the House, he spoke to me (which he had never done before), and with great civility; and he ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great friends, and our friendship continued to his death."

To put it simply, Franklin asked a small favor of his rival. The rival fulfilled the request, possibly out of a sense of politeness, and Franklin expressed gratitude for the favor. Humans don't give value to people they dislike and the rival's subconscious understood that and changed his perception of Benjamin Franklin to match his actions.

Benjamin Franklin had just stumbled on a technique to use cognitive dissonance to his advantage. This is an extremely useful technique to use in social networking but is not the focus of this post (another time perhaps).

Today, instead, we are going to focus on what happens after you stop associating with someone. To make my point easier to convey I'm going to assume we are talking about a woman that you were plating and wish to stop. This does apply to men as well so don't forget about that.

When you are plating a woman you are using a combination of traditional value exchange and the Benjamin Franklin effect to make a woman invest in you (and be attracted to you). If you're doing it properly a woman will essentially believe that your shit smells like roses and that you can do no wrong (or will overlook things she doesn't like).

If you stop plating a woman, however, their opinion of you drastically changes. They will speak negatively of their experience with you and may even act negatively while around your presence for some time. Expect her to spread negative information about you, or at worst neutral information that will paint you as less than the image that you wish to present.

We tend to attribute this to you not investing in her anymore and her reacting negatively to this. But that's missing out on the full story. A woman needs to invest in you to be attracted to you. By combining the removal of your investment and her investment she is being subjected to two different negative stimuli. Her opinion of you will drastically lower for the short term, with only a chance of recovering long term based on how effectively you were able to excite her.

There are times, however, when a woman doesn't remove her investment from you. When you stop investing in a woman they may still be attracted to you so heavily and invested so heavily that their cognitive dissonance maintains their attraction regardless of your investment (to a point). These are the women that will act like stalkers, or be baby crazy, or other things akin to personality disorders.

It is important to remember that this doesn't just happen with woman. Men can and will act in similar ways, especially if they aren't introspective enough to understand what is actually going on (the clueless according to The Gervais Principle).

Lessons Learned

Women's attraction to you is a combination of your SMV, your investment in her, and her investment in you.

When you remove your investment in her, she will react twice as much as rationally expected because her investment in you is also removed.

Her reactions will impact her perception of you in negative ways, and twice so. Expect her to spread negative or neutral information that affects others' perceptions of your image.

If a woman doesn't remove her investment she will act in strange and potentially dangerous ways. Baby mania, stalking, covert sabotage, among other things.