Love Systems Insider

Date: August 2009

A Complete Guide to Flakes and How to Prevent Them

From the desk of Savoy, 10am, Friday August 14:

Hey guys,

Finally – a solution for one of the most FRUSTRATING parts of dating beautiful women.

It’s Friday night. You see a woman you like. You spend the night talking and flirting, you feel
like you’ve done everything right, and you get her phone number. You’ve even planned a date
for next week...

... but it never happens.

Maybe you never actually get her on the phone to finalize plans. Maybe she “remembers” that
she “has to work.” Maybe you get a last-minute cancellation in a text message. It all adds up to
the same thing:

SHE FLAKED.

Most men could be TEN TIMES BETTER with women if they stopped women from
flaking. Think about it – a flake isn’t just a random rejection. You might have spent the whole
night talking to her. Add in the time getting ready, going out, coming home, calling her,
organizing your schedule – how many other women could you have met in that time?

The world is a busy place. When you go meet women, make your time count. Don’t get near the
finish line and have a flake turn all of that into wasted effort.

If eliminating flaking is so valuable, why don’t more men do it?

Here’s your chance to get ahead of the competition. Most guys don’t think they have a problem
with women flaking on them because they take women’s excuses seriously. If you’re really into
a girl and she cancels on your first date because she says she’s sick... well, you really want to
believe her. And you’ve been sick before. It happens. So... all systems go, right?
Wrong. And worse than wrong, whatever mistakes you made with her, you’ll keep making,
because you didn’t recognize the flake.

Fortunately, we have Love Systems expert Chris Sheppard (aka “Tenmagnet”) to the rescue,
with some great techniques we’re about to get into.

Preventing flaking is one of his many specialties – so much so that at the 2008 Super-
Conference he was chosen to present on the main stage about preventing flaking. Even other
Love Systems instructors were taking notes.

(If you’re just joining us, the Love Systems Super-Conference is the pick up event of the
year. Guys fly in from around the world to learn all the latest breakthrough from about 30 of the
world’s best pick up artists. Check out video from last year, and there’s more on the LS
YouTube Channel.

****

TENMAGNET AND CAJUN ON PREVENTING FLAKES

So, we recently got Tenmagnet in town to do an interview with Keys to the VIP winner Cajun
specifically on preventing flaking. He’s written articles and done speeches before, but you can
cover a subject in a ton more depth if you have about an hour to talk about it (boiled down to its
biggest and most usable insights). You can listen to the first ten minutes for free here.

There are a ton of great usable techniques on the interview – to give you a taste of where he’s
coming from, check out the classic Tenmagnet article on Treat Dates Like an Option in his
blog. (And Braddock returned the favor with his comprehensive Ultimate Guide to Text and
Phone Game.)

Here’s one of my favorite quotes from that article (they go into much more detail in the
interview):

Cool people who have stuff going on in their lives don’t treat dates like priorities. Hot girls
don’t pull out their Blackberries and write “Tenmagnet, 8pm Thursday” into their calendars
when I invite them out, and they don’t expect me to do so either. Even if you’re a really cool
guy, and she really likes you, chances are any plans you make together are still options, not
priorities...

A priority is when you mark off a date in your calendar, cancel your other plans, and start
tidying your apartment just in case she comes back to your place. Implicitly, when you treat a
date like a priority, you’re presuming that the other person is treating it like a priority
too. When you make something a priority, you get disappointed when the plans change or get
canceled.

An option is simply the possibility of doing something, with real plans TBA. When you have an
option open with a girl, there’s no pressure, there are no real plans, there’s just an agreement
that you like one another and will hang out as soon as your busy schedules work together. An
option is when you have plans for Thursday, but you call her up on Wednesday and say “let’s
grab a pint tonight.” Options are not real plans; they only become solid plans a few hours
before the event, when you call up and say “Hey, it’s Tenmagnet. You still down for some
Vietnamese food in the market?” They are emotionally driven – we will meet up when it feels
right, and we will do what we feel like doing at that time. Any plans are really only guidelines
for what is going to be an emotionally driven activity.

The great thing about treating dates like options is that they’re low-pressure, comfortable, and
make you look like an easygoing, busy guy who doesn’t care too much about the interaction. By
treating dates like options, you’re preventing the logistics of the situation from interfering
with the emotions of the situation. As long as the emotions are good, as long as she’s attracted
to you and wants to meet up with you, then you can be confident that the logistics will work out
eventually.

(I emphasized the middle sentence of the last paragraph because it ties everything back to the
Love Systems Triad – our complete model for seduction – and the principle that there are three
key places you need to succeed with a woman and you need to keep the momentum going on all
of them: physical, emotional, and logistical. If you don’t have the free download of the Love
Systems Triad yet, get it now.)

Tenmagnet goes on to share some more hard-hitting practical techniques:

If you treat a date as a priority, or worse, try and make her treat your date like a priority, you’re
going to damage the emotional momentum that is driving her to want to meet up with you. Some
gurus advocate calling women out on their flakiness. That’s a great idea if you don’t care about
talking to her again. Likewise, trying to pressure or guilt a girl into going on a particular date
with you is a great way to ruin attraction and ensure she doesn’t answer the phone when you
call next. The fact is, unless you have tickets to a Bob Dylan concert or something, it’s really
lame and needy to expect a woman to treat your casual date plans as a priority.

Treating dates like options can sometimes be a bit of a pain. Sometimes, you have to wait a week
or more between getting a girl’s number and meeting up with her. You can’t plan really
complicated dates, and you often need to have some decent phone game to keep the emotional
momentum going in between meetups, but in the end, it’s a much more effective strategy.
Eventually, as long as she’s attracted to you, she WILL meet up with you in the end. And the
hard-to-get, busy girls are usually the most fun anyways.

(Source: Tenmagnet’s Blog)

Most of you are subscribed to the interview series already (if not, check out how it works here)
so you’ve already been listening to the Tenmagnet/Cajun interview and using it in your own
dating life.

So, I’m going to go off in a different direction here and answer a couple of similar questions I
get a lot: 1) How do you tell if a woman is ‘flaking,’ and 2) What do you do about it when she
does. These are kind of damage-control questions, because if you’ve followed Tenmagnet’s tips,
you shouldn’t be getting many flakes. But, if you can’t recognize a flake you can’t deal with it,
so let’s start there.

HOW TO TELL IF SHE IS ‘FLAKING’

If a woman cancels on a first date, she’s probably flaking. She didn’t have to cancel; she chose
to.

I’ve been lucky in that I started learning Love Systems several years ago, so I’ve spent years
now surrounded by beautiful women. These are actual direct quotes from “9s” and “10s” about
cancelling on dates:

“I don’t get into a guy easily but when I’m really into someone I’ll make sure I’m there.”

“Sometimes you have to say okay just to get him off the phone but I know I can cancel later.”
 “If he wants to make plans for like next week, everyone knows that things can come up so it’s
not that serious.”

“If I don’t know what I’m doing on the weekend I might make backup plans or keep my options
open and see how I feel later.”

Of course, not every cancel is a flake. (And not every flake kills your chances; we’ll get to what
to do when she flakes in a moment.) Here are some indications that she ISN’T flaking:

* She phones to cancel instead of sending a text message.

* She cancels as soon as she realizes the conflict instead of the last minute (no one who is
genuinely planning to go on a date all of a sudden remembers at 7pm that she has to work that
night).

* She suggests alternative plans (e.g., “are you free Sunday?”) or makes a point of telling you
that she really wants to see you. It’s funny sometimes – beautiful women who flake a lot to get
rid of persistent “nice guys” will sometimes tell you explicitly that they are “not flaking” when
they do actually want to see you.

* She continues the conversation (onto other subjects) after she tells you she can’t make it.

* She gets in touch with you in the next couple of days.

She may still be flaking and do a couple of those, but if she doesn’t do any, she is almost
definitely flaking.

So, what do you do now? Sulk? Write her off? There’s no reason to let a flake be more than a
temporary obstacle. My current girlfriend flaked on me the first time we were supposed to go
out. I was dating enough other women that I didn’t really notice or care (something Cajun and
Tenmagnet also talk about in the interview).

WHAT TO DO IF SHE ‘FLAKES’

 I’ll copy this bit straight out of my book, Magic Bullets. Magic Bullets has 24 chapters, from
Approaching to Seduction, with full chapters on all the key skills you have to master: winging,
dates, fashion, storytelling, social circles, physical escalation (“kino”), and much more.

The section below is from Chapter 22 on Phone Game:

Here’s what to do when a woman flakes:

Nothing.

And that’s it.

· Don’t be upset. Don’t lecture her. She doesn’t care. If she cared about what you thought of
her, she probably wouldn’t have flaked in the first place. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself if
“feeling tired” would have kept her from a date with Brad Pitt. All that punishing her will do is
to associate yourself in her mind with bad emotions, and momentarily make her feel badly. But
don’t worry; she’ll feel better when the next guy gives her attention.

· Just in case that wasn’t clear... You planned to meet her at 6pm? You had to leave work
early? Fight traffic? Cut your workout short? Miss your favorite show? Tough. She doesn’t
care. That’s not her problem. If you tell her all of this, you just lost value in her eyes because
you rearranged your life for a date with her when she’s clearly still iffy about you.

· Remember Pre-selection (Chapter 3) and act like a man who has lots of women interested in
him. Such a man wouldn’t be especially thrown off by a flake. He has other women in his life
who would love see him, and more likely than not, whatever it was that he was going to do with
her was something that he would enjoy doing anyway with cool friends (see Chapter 16 on
dates). If this frame is not perfectly clear and obvious to you, cancel the next time you set up a
date with a random woman. I’m serious. Listen for her reaction and learn to copy it. It didn’t
ruin her day. It shouldn’t ruin yours.

· A phrase I’ve had a lot of success with is “No problem, I’ll invite someone else.” This is best
used when your plans were obviously for two people (e.g., you had two concert tickets and
 invited her). Don’t use this on a third or fourth date, but when the relationship is still casual, it’s
perfect.

(Excerpted from Chapter 22: Phone Game of Magic Bullets version 1.5, released 2009)

ADVANCED – THE PRE-FLAKE

Don’t use this until you’re comfortable with all of the great anti-flake techniques from the
Tenmagnet and Cajun interview.

If you meet a woman and for whatever reason you don’t get to use all of the anti-flake
techniques, try this out:

1) Suggest plans that are much easier for her to agree to than not (e.g. “coffee... next
Tuesday.” She’s probably planning to cancel; don’t worry about it.).

2) Cancel the night before, before she can cancel on you if she still remembers your plans, with a
reason that piques her curiosity about you (“Doing an interview” / “At my friend’s restaurant
opening” / “My friend Amelia is going back to London”). Promise to make it up to her, but don’t
suggest anything specific.

3) In the next couple of calls or text messages add value without suggesting plans. Then go to
Tenmagnet’s “date option” technique.

ADVANCED – THE DOUBLE FLAKE

Use this if she flakes on you with a late text message, voicemail, or if she doesn’t even contact
you.

Pretend it never happened.

Pretend YOU were the one who couldn’t make it.

Call or text to apologize.

It sounds absurd, but it works. Whatever you do, do not shake your inviolable frame that, despite
any and all possible evidence to the contrary, you were the one who couldn’t make it. If she
insists on pointing out that she cancelled too (which is rare), act relieved.

For bonus points, slip straight into the “make it up to you” technique we just covered.

It’s astounding how well this works. It doesn’t make sense or fit any nice neat theories, but it
does, so have fun with it.

For more great things you can do like this, check out the Cajun and Tenmagnet interview on
flaking here, which includes things like:

• How to timebridge the date so that she is more likely to agree to meet up.
• How to match your communication style to a woman’s to create comfort on the phone.
• How to show interest but not neediness over the phone.
• How to suggest a meetup.
• How to deal with flaking when it happens.
• Treating dates like options and not priorities and why you should do it.
Take care,
Savoy
http://www.lovesystems.com/dating-advice/a-complete-guide-to-flakes-and-how-to-prevent-
them