You had sex. Now she has gone quiet, and you are staring at the phone wondering what changed.
How do you keep her interested? How do you avoid the flake after sex? Why does the second date suddenly seem harder than the first?
I kept getting versions of this question. The part that surprised me was how often it came from guys who had already read The Close. A large part of that book deals with the foundation of this problem.
Frame Control. The rocket fuel of seduction.
What are you actually communicating?
In this episode I use survival and replication value as the starting point. It is the model through which I discuss attraction and the relative position people take in an interaction.
The average guy tries to communicate his position through things. A fast car. A watch. An expensive dinner. A story about the Maldives that nobody asked to hear.
Girls know you can lease a car. They know you can dress well. If nice clothes were enough, every well-dressed man would be getting the results he wanted. Look around. That clearly isn't happening.
The problem is relying on those things to do the work for you. You can own the Ferrari. You still need to know how to behave when you get out of it.
Active and Passive Frame Control
The distinction in The Close is between Active and Passive Frame Control. In the public episode I point back to both, including setting frames, dealing with frame tests and arranging logistics.
I am interested in what you communicate directly through the interaction. How you carry yourself. Whether you have a direction. Whether you immediately abandon your position because you are afraid of losing her interest.
An expensive cocktail doesn't answer those questions. Neither does the fact that you had sex once. You still have another person deciding whether she wants to see you again.
Look at the interaction before the message
Think back to a date after which you already suspected you wouldn't hear from her again. Often the feeling arrived before the unanswered text.
That is the point I ask listeners to examine. What happened on the date? When did the interaction change? What did you do next?
It is tempting to treat the final message as the entire problem because that is the part you can still edit. The premise of this podcast is that you need to understand what happened earlier.
The public recording introduces that question and the Frame Control foundation. The detailed discussion continues in the longer member recording.
Start with the book the episode refers to. Get The Close, understand Active and Passive Frame Control, then review the actual interaction. Another watch won't do that work for you.
