Author: Regal
Subject: Rewarding and Punishing Girls

Whether during the initial pickup or in a relationship of any kind with a chick, rewarding and punishing is crucial. A lot of guys will make the mistake of trying to alleviate bad behavior by kissing up to a girl, trying to distract her, or going overboard and getting angry or reactive. None of these are the correct solution for maintaining both your value and your attainability in the interaction or relationship.

Most guys in the pickup community who are successful at picking up girls recognize the importance of rewarding and punishing during the pickup: if you don't punish bad behavior, she will think you are a pushover, lose interest, and blow you out. If you reward good behavior, she will try harder to make you happy and hopefully the night will end with a romp in the sack. Where a lot of guys drop the ball later on is in the relationship stage.

The fact is, most of the guys you will talk to simply don't think of their relationships in terms of mapping a girl to behave the way they want. But it can be done, and it's not terribly difficult - and it will make your relationships that much more enjoyable, supportive, and strong.

So here's a challenge: begin looking at your relationships in these terms. Everything your girl does can be interpreted as either good behavior or bad behavior. If you like what she is doing, you MUST reward her, or else she will likely stop doing it, forget about it, or just think you don't care. If on the other hand you DON'T like what she is doing, you must punish her, or she will keep doing it and lose respect for you all the way.

Rewarding is easy. Reward girls with the three A's - affection, attention, and appreciation. With but a few exceptions, every girl wants to be loved and held and cherished. If you thank her, touch her, kiss her, or fuck the daylights out of her for doing something good for you - do you think she will want to do it again? You bet. In terms of the actual pickup, kinoing on the highpoints, qualifying her when she says/does something that impresses you, and giving her an SOI are all rewards. Together, they reinforce the behavior that they are being used to reward.

Punishing is a bit tougher. When a lot of guys say "punish", what they mean is "take". You should never "take" anything. This is key:

REWARD, in the context of relationships, means to choose to give. PUNISH, in this context, means to choose NOT to give. A high value guy has no need or desire to ever take from anyone - only low value guys try to take from others, because they are trying to make up for what they lack.

Punishing is done with freeze outs, zoning out, becoming distant, withdrawing kino. Things of that nature. You aren't insulting her or getting mad at her or telling her to get lost, you are just not giving of yourself to her.

If you get angry and react emotionally to anything a girl does, that is not punishment. It is actually, in a twisted way, a kind of reward - you are giving her validation by showing to her that she has emotionally affected you.

The interesting thing about rewarding and punishing is that it is so subtle. Unless you are blatantly obvious about it (which you really shouldn't be), girls will likely never realize what you are doing... it simply builds unconscious connections in their brains. They learn pretty quickly, "Okay, don't give this guy shit, I don't get good feelings when I do it with him like I do with other guys who kiss up to me when I give them shit." Especially in relationships, the effects build up over time. As you reward and punish, reward and punish, you can get a girl's behavior to the point where she is pretty much always happy and positive and supportive around you, which is what you want. Unless she's a fucked up psycho girl, in which case hopefully you realized that before you got involved with her and you know what you are doing. But I guess hey, psycho girls need love too.

Anyway, a big key to all this is to make sure that you reward the right things. If you reward bad behavior (even inadvertently), you are reinforcing that behavior and you will see it more and more. So if a girl is doing something you don't like, punish it using the two I's - ignorance and indifference. Ignore her a bit, be indifferent. It will show her that behaving badly around you gets her nothing - and if you usually provide affection and good feelings to her, she will want to get back to that.

Rewarding and punishing is vitally important from the moment you meet a chick all through pickup, seduction, and into the relationship. So long as you remember to reward good behavior and punish bad behavior, you life will be so much easier. Try it. You'll like it.

Always,
Regal

Author: Regal

Hey cats, thanks all for the replies.

hangman wrote:

This is an important topic
that does not get enough
attention. Good job, Regal!
Validation vs. punishment to
create compliance is an
enormous part of my game.

Yeah man, it's huge. It's a big part of the core of my whole approach to pickup and relationships in general.

One thing I would like to add
is that you have somewhat more
powerful tools for punishment,
besides the distraction,
indifference you talked about.
You can give your attention to
others. My standard solution
to bad behaviour in
relationships if I am out
with her somewhere nowadays is
to sarge the venue. Not
necessarily "pick up", but at
least have fun. Its amazing
how horny this makes her, and
how much she wants to please
you when you get back.

That's definitely a very valid and powerful option, hangman, depending on why she is behaving badly. Personally, I make the distinction of what the root of that bad behavior is: if it's because my value is too low, then going around charging the venue will fix it swimmingly. If on the other hand it's an attainability problem and she is feeling insecure about her chances with me, charging the venue will have the opposite effect (she will feel she has even less of a chance) and will tend to behave worse. I guess it's like anything... it depends.

The same strategy works during
PU too, but usually only after
enough attraction has been
built.

Definitely. She has to be intrigued enough to follow your movements and watch you social proof yourself.

The whole PU is about building
enough compliance for me.

Compliance is key to my game too, bro. Getting girls to put lots of work in is just plain fun to boot

Sterling wrote:

$$$ post Regal.

I have been going out a lot
lately, lots of clubs (night
life)and all guys do is GIVE
GIVE GIVE.

Doesn't matter if the girl
behaves like a child or a
WOMAN, they reward everything
and are blinded by the fact
the chick is playing them hard
(bad behaviors).

Yeah man, typical AFC behavior. Girl behaves bad, guy gives her more trying to sway her to like him, so she is validated and the behavior is rewarded and she behaves even worse. Then he sucks up harder. It's a vicious cycle, and pretty sad to watch :|

ijjjji wrote:

Regal wrote:

to distract her, or going
overboard and getting
angry or
reactive.

Going overboard is great. When
a girlfriend is non-nice, I
kick her ass out and refrain
from answering her calls for a
day or two.

-Naging after I point out she
is nagging.
-Tries to force me to talk
about anything.
-Saying something negative
about me.
-Showing disaffection.

In my experience, emotional reactions will cause the bad behavior to escalate, not abate. She may stop bugging you about one thing, but she will bug you twice as hard about something else because she knows she will get a reaction out of you.

I think what you are talking about is creating drama in a relationship, ij. Have you managed to permanently stop bad behavior with these kinds of responses, bro? Or does it keep cropping up (even if in different forms)?

RicardoCB wrote:

Excellent post bro.

I dated a girl who would do
shit to piss me off or would
try to start drama over little
bullshit things. After almost
going crazy for awhile i
figured out if i just froze
her out and ignored her she
would almost always apologize
and try really hard to get my
attention after a period of no
contact. On the other hand if
I got angry and reactive I
just fed the fire and gave her
the drama she desired.

Kyle

A lot of chicks will do that stuff to get a response out of you. They're like little kids. Sometimes it's cute but usually it's annoying. If they see they are getting to you, it encourages them to do it more, which is why it's usually better to be unreactive and stop giving her validation (which is all she really wants, and it's what she's trying to get by giving you a hard time - so when you show her she can't get it that way, she will try other ways... like doing the things you actually WANT her to do, for instance!). [abcd_z's note: That sounds like the perfect time for a Soft Next, hmmm?]

Cheers all,
Regal

Author: Regal

Wow guys, looks like this struck a chord. Glad everyone found this a good post. I should note that I first heard about this idea of reinforcing behaviors from Dimitri, because in my very first class with him he told us to always "reward good behavior and punish bad behavior". Just thinking about that over the past year and a half and putting it into action has taught me a whole lot, and what I have learned and figured out on my own has been incredibly valuable to me personally... probably one of the best things I've gotten out of my time with pickup.

DogSoldier wrote:

Yo Regal,

I guess you know how I rated
this one, right?

Dammit DS, stop giving me those one star ratings! I'm tired of getting harassed by you! :)

What if the girl you're in a
LTR with feels your value is
too high for her and she
starts shit because of that?

You need to recognize that and repair your attainability (make her feel like she has more of a chance).

The tricky thing about it though is that you can't do it immediately. If you start trying to build attainability back up immediately after she gives you a hard time, then you are 1) being reactive, and she knows this and 2) reinforcing bad behavior by rewarding it (by saying or doing something nice to repair attainability). So just ignore it or deflect it or whatever, but make a mental note to start repairing attainability after that. Later on, start qualifying her and letting her know why you like her, give her more physical affection, etc. but wait long enough that she won't associate it with throwing a hissy fit.

Also recognize what behavior patterns you may have that are lowering your attainability and address them (maybe you act more playerish than she can handle, for example. Either be less playerish and/or let her know that she interests you much more than most other girls you meet, for example).

Won't removing attention,
affection and appreciation
only run you the risk of her
withdrawing completely from
you? (IE: "He's not into
someone like me... I could
never keep him...")

Yes, but you MUST punish bad behavior, or at the very least not reward it. Even if you caused it, you can't reward it by immediately trying to make her feel good. Just handle it when it happens and take it as a sign that you have to start letting her know that you care more and value her more.

And I'm so glad I spawned this
storm of quality thinking from
you, lol!

DogSoldier.

Yeah man, haha, that was a massive post I made for you originally. I went back and looked at it and was like, "Wow, I wrote a lot of shit in there."

LowRider69 wrote:

Hey homie,

How do you know for sure if
its bad behavior or an
attainability issue?

The lines can be a bit
blurry...

cheers,
Lowrider

Yo LR. Yeah, the lines can be pretty blurry. If it's a relationship you can figure it out over time, but I assume you're talking about a chick you are gaming that you have just met that night, etc. Typically, attainability problems have some kind of emotion in them (she crosses her arms, looks angry/frustrated/upset, insults you, etc.). Plain old bad behavior that's unrelated to attainability lacks any kind of bitterness or emotional frustration, such as she yawns or wanders off or says dismissive stuff, or just seems uninterested.

joseph_went_south wrote:

Very very nice! A small
semantic quibble: the most
valuable thing the woman
possesses is YOU - your time,
your energy, your mind and
your body. So you definitely
are TAKING that away from her
at the appropriate time.

Man, Joseph, now you're making me go back and try to think about that and make my brain hurt. I guess the way I see it is that she doesn't own your affection or your time, just as you don't own hers... you give them to each other. Either partner could choose to leave at any moment and not give of themselves any longer. Is that taking? You could say she is taking her love away if she lives, but you could also say she is choosing not to give it to you. I guess it's all in how you view things.

I personally don't like to view things in terms of ownership because then I would be more dependent on someone else's caprices... if I feel I own her time but she gets a new job and can't see me as much, I will feel resentful and a bit afraid/helpless because I believe something is being taken from me. I feel more in control by viewing a woman as free to give of herself as she pleases, my responsibility being to give her the reasons and motivation to want to give of herself to me.