I received the following article request:

Can you discuss how to deal with women who give off mixed signals? I’m not sure if mixed signals are the same as push/pull, hot/cold and playing hard to get. I’ve met very few women who have often given me mixed signals where one minute they are into me and the next minute they are withdrawn. In some cases, I’ve gotten laid, but I just don’t understand why women resort to this behavior. How would you deal with this situation.

Dealing with mixed signals is a key skill of any seducer. There is probably not a single guy out there who got anywhere with women and who was not initially thrown off by mixed signals. The core motivation behind mixed signals is that women want to maintain plausible deniability. This also applies to very outgoing ones, which academia refers to as “socio-sexual” but the man on the street simply calls sluts. No slut wants to feel like a slut.

Even the sluttiest girls have a self image according to which there surely are some sluts out there but she is not one of them. If she is into a guy, she will drop plenty of hints, and she may even give off some highly sexually aggressive signals, such as leaning into you and rubbing her tits against you, but there will also be a bit of push/pull because she cannot make it too easy for you. If she did, she could no longer tell herself that “things just kind of happened”. Her strong preference is for sex to somehow just emerge, after all.

Push/pull, hot/cold and playing-hard-to-get are all just synonyms for the same kind of female behavior. I think there is a minor semantic difference to mixed signals, though: a woman can do a push/pull over the course of a longer interaction, but as part of it, she may give you a number of mixed signals. Thus, you can view mixed signals as a tactical means, serving the larger strategic goal of her throwing herself at her without feeling that she is a slut.

Dealing with mixed signals is not trivial. A problem a lot of men have is that they take a woman’s actions at face value. Imagine a woman is really into you, climbs onto your lap and makes out with you. All is well and good at this point, but then she slaps your chest and says, “I shouldn’t be doing this. I mean, you are, like, totally gay, right?” This is just a playful tease but there are some guys who will then protest that they are not gay and clearly cannot be because they just made out with her, but by doing so, they literally end up talking themselves out of a pretty sure lay.

Another common mixed signal is given by women who enthusiastically greet you before class on some days, but not on others. I used to chalk this down to women having their fertile days, or not, and this is probably a perfectly fine albeit perfectly non-politically correct explanation. If you get mixed signals based on horniness, you need to capitalize on them quickly. This is even more true if you do not get the opportunity to interact with her daily. Let’s say you only bump into her once a week. In this case, she may give you the cold shoulder again one week later as her fertile days will be over as well.

Of course, there are plenty of women who are less visceral and who systematically use their womanly ways to ensnare a man. They still have the problem that they do not want to feel like a slut. Thus, on one day she smiles at you and the next day she may not. The same issue as above applies, though: strike the iron when it is hot, and don’t needlessly waste your time. If you are playing some kind of long game and she is playing along, however, you need to learn to stoically tolerate her fickleness because this is what her mixed behaviors essentially boil down to.

Any woman who gives you mixed signals by definition has indicated her sexual interest in you. This is what you will focus on! You do not second-guess her actions because of her erratic behavior. Instead, you just shrug this off, in a Chad-like manner, and keep pursuing her. There is also the angle that women want to feel pursued, so you will not be able to sidestep this part of the mating dance anyway.

Brushing off a woman’s mixed signals is probably more art than science. You should not think that you need to tolerate absolutely anything she throws at you. Instead, if you think she overstepped a line, just call her out on it. There is a very high likelihood that a woman who does that wants to be put in her place anyway. Probably she is only giving you a chance because there is something about you that reminds you of her father, who is a very stern person. Thus, if you look her straight in the eye and tell her to behave herself, she will soak through her panties, and later on, she will get an orgasm during foreplay as you spank her.

Mixed signals can be pretty annoying and, quite frankly, the more experience you get, the more likely you will be to ask yourself if you really should bother continuing with a particular woman. To some extend, they all put up playful resistance, but there is a big difference between a woman flirting with you and one who thinks she can let you jump through one hoop after another. Knowing how to deal with mixed signals is just one technique for your toolbox. It does not mean that you need to play along as there are plenty of women who are playful rather than manipulative and therefore much more enjoyable to interact with.