The Heart of game part 3

It was not my intent to go on such a long hiatus, but after writing heart of game part 2 I lost my job (unrelated to the post) and getting new work, finding ways to cut expenses, getting a new room mate, and things like that all take a great deal of time and energy. Things are not back to normal yet, but I'm going to make a better effort to keep posting some what regularly.

So on to the heart of game part 3.

The first two parts if you need a refresher were state control and frame control. In keeping with the control theme, the third part is validation control. What I mean by validation control is recognizing how, when, and why you validate other people. By validation I mean anything that is done in terms of speech, body language, or other forms of communication that lets someone know that they are good or okay or something that they have done is good or okay.

I'm guessing that most of my readers have been trained since they were very young to give out excessive validation all the time whenever interacting with anyone. I certainly was always taught to do things like always say thank you to people who check me out at the store, even to the point of being a communication breakdown as they said it first.

Although there is certainly something to be said about validation control in general and the need for men to withhold validation much more than they do, the biggest application of it in the realm of game is how you validate the actions of a girl that you find attractive. A good rule of thumb is to ask your self how you would react in the same situation if instead of an attractive girl, the person you were interacting with was a man, or better yet an unattractive girl. Would you still have big stupid grin on your face whenever you saw them? No? Then by having one you are projecting the idea that they can do better than you.

Contrary to the idea that validation control is manipulative, for most guys it should just be bringing things back to normal. In actuality, really awful validation control is an instinctual attempt at manipulation that just does not work very well. If you are laughing harder at a girl's jokes, smiling bigger when they enter the room, or any of the other common mistakes that most guys make, that is an attempt to manipulate the girl in question into liking you. By treating her like any other person, male or female, you won't be manipulating anything and you'll do better than if you had.