She said she has a boyfriend – Q & A Tuesday

6 comments

by Nick Hoss

You approach a girl, daylight or nightlife, and you’re told she has a boyfriend.

Is she telling the truth?

Is she blowing you off?

What do you do in this situation?

[quote]Hi Nick,

I like reading your question and answers on Tuesdays. It’s good that you can reach out to guys. I have a quick question.

Sometimes when I approach a girl during the day, she says she has a boyfriend. Sometimes this seems true, but other times I can tell she is lying. How do I know?

–Sgt. Pepper[/quote]

Hi Sgt. Pep,

Thanks for the props. I, like you, have heard the “I have a boyfriend [husband]” line many times before, day and night. I’ll break them down individually.

Day

Jeremy (Soul) found some study that said 66 per cent of women in this world are in some form of a relationship. I don’t think that directly translates to every six or seven out of 10 on the street, but realize this: there will be more single women in a nightclub than on the sidewalk. If a woman is married, she won’t be trolling around in the dark with a bunch of horny lurkers and lotharios… Well, most won’t. 

However, she will be out shopping, on a coffee break, etc. My rule of thumb: If a woman says “I have a boyfriend” during the day, I believe it. Why? The odds are much higher that she actually does have a boyfriend, and it’s just as simple for her to say thanks and walk off because the frame is different. It’s not like a nightclub where a lot of girls will use that as their brush-off line. It’s daylight, on a sidewalk and there is no pre-conceived context that she will get hit on (such as a bar would be), so she can be more straight up. It’s also much better for your inner game to just believe her.

Now I won’t bullshit you–you’ll still get brushed off when you’re learning. It usually doesn’t happen until you’re a bit into the conversation, probably when your transitioning off of your opener. She’s nice, but she won’t sit around and listen forever and it’s a convenient way to end a conversation.

Once you get good at day game funny things start happening. Your frames become so strong that you don’t get the boyfriend objection until you go for the phone number. She doesn’t expect to have some guy approach her on the sidewalk while she’s going to meet a friend for coffee and your belief is so strong that she gets sucked into your reality… until you ask for the number and the frame snaps from unconscious enjoyment of the experience to the conscious thought of “wait I have a boyfriend.” Then the objection comes up.

(I once asked a girl why she talked to me for 10 minutes when she had a boyfriend and she replied, “I don’t know. You’re just so interesting.” This is what we mean when we say she was caught/living in the emotion of the moment.)

So voodoo stuff: what do you say? Generally speaking, if she’s pretty blunt about having a boyfriend I won’t push it. I’ll just thank her and move on. Not my style to wreck homes. However, if she is like “Well, um… I like, have a boyfriend,” I read between the lines and I’ll say something like:

• “Ya, but you all have boyfriends. There will always be some guy chasing you.”
• “You probably have a couple of boyfriends. I’m sure another won’t hurt.” 

The idea is that I’m trying to show her that I know she isn’t too serious about this guy yet, JUDGING BY THE WAY SHE MENTIONED HIM. I’m not using this as a catch-all for every girl. 80/20 it.

One very interesting thing I found when I started dating girls with options is that they always have options. They’ll casually lure an 8-guy until they can find another 9-guy, or they’ll have a guy that makes them feel really good and safe and in control, but when they need a wild romp or go partying on girls night they want to end it with somebody who gets them fired up. The key phrase for all you English majors out there is that they “have options.” It doesn’t mean they’ll exercise them if they are a true exclusive relationship where the guy is doing his job. It can be quite the opposite, so don’t don’t get into a negative mindset.

If you can show her that you get it, it may help your cause. Realize too that many single girls are casually dating, not looking for a guy (or certainly not admitting it), but willing to see where things go with the right guy. If she’s went on a couple of dates with that possibly-right guy, she may be single but still have a boyfriend depending on how well you approached. Ya dig?

I’d also be doing you a disservice if I didn’t lay out the truth… It’s rare, but if a girl does have a boyfriend and she is going to cheat on him, you won’t find out until LMR time or until after… if ever… or so I’m told. (Savoy has a nice little system for telling if a girl is liable to cheat, by the way.) She doesn’t want you to know, or more accurately, wants to put off  you knowing until the last second/not at all to avoid self-guilt.

That really went deep/off-topic, but to sum up: I like to think she is telling the truth during the day instead of beating myself over the head wondering if she did or not. It’s best for the inner game.

Night

Night is a different arena. 

If you’re getting “I have a boyfriend” off of the opener, you’re subcommunicating something wrong. Your body language, tone, etc. are off. She may very well have a boyfriend, but it’s more unlikely than during the day. When I used to get this line, I’d use it as a signal to figure out what I did wrong just before I got it. You always get it early, not later. She’ll magically have to go to the bathroom or to dance or whatever if you’re past your opener and she isn’t feeling you.

I’ve heard a ton of lines for dealing with the objection. The lines never worked for me, but here are two things that have.

1. Plow ahead–Future’s “No seriously, [stack forward]” can work if the girl is saying she has a boyfriend in order to weed out the weak guys from the playfully persistent ones. 
2. Shift attention–When I was just getting the confidence to talk to 9s, I remember opening this one girl direct and she said, “I have a boyfriend.” It was such bullshit. Without reason, I turned to her friend and said, “She actually thinks I’m going to believe the oldest line in the book,” and started talking with her friend. Another time, on a particularly tough night with Tenmagnet and Vercetti, I got this objection and I just said, “Pfft, I don’t need this.” I was so genuinely not in the mood when I turned away that the friend’s eyes lite up like her friend made an epic mistake. (It was a genuine willingness to walk away.) I don’t recommend using those words, but the main takeaway is to adopt an “If you don’t want me, somebody else will” stance, and make that somebody else the friend she is unconsciously competing with. Works particularly well with the best looking women who aren’t used to playing second fiddle.

I’ve heard shit like “You have a boyfriend? Well, I have a goldfish” as if to say “You’re boyfriend doesn’t matter,” but usually the girls just looked at me with a WTF did you just say look. Maybe others have had better experiences.

Regardless, whatever you use, be playful, and don’t stack forward like you’re going to penetrate her mind with your serious cunning. You’re just setting us all back in evolution because it shows you can’t read social cues. A bit of playful persistence on an out-and-out objection can occasionally work, but usually it will not.

When you get really good at night game, you very, very rarely get the boyfriend objection. Even if the girl has a boyfriend, she may throw you in front of the single friend who she is there to support and say, “You should talk to my friend.” (Side note: The friend is never the pretty one. That’s why you didn’t approach her.)

The best way to overcome the “she has a boyfriend” problem, like most things, is to fix the problem before it occurs. If you open competently, you’ll lessen the chance of the objection significantly… or at least to where it is legitimate.

–Nick