So what do I do when I hear IHAB? I switch gears entirely. IHAB is a major sign from a girl, an ambiguous sign to be sure, but a major one nevertheless, so I see little point in continuing as normal (which is the "enlightened PUA" response to IHAB). So, first off, what exactly could IHAB mean?
- It could mean that, well... the girl has a boyfriend. Simple as that.
- Or it could mean that she's just trying to get rid of you because she doesn't like you, so she made one up.
- Or it could mean that she's flustered and just spouted this line because she doesn't know what to say.
- Or it could mean that perhaps you teased or negged her too much and she's trying to regain some face by pretending to have a boyfriend.
- Or it could mean who knows what the fuck. Bitches be crazy. And, honestly, I don't care what it means anyway, because, in the moment, I have fuck-all means to determine it to any degree of certainty.
My goal, at that point, was simply to end the interaction gracefully, in order to "preserve my state", as the PUAs say, so that I could go in the next interaction having "gained some state" from the previous one, instead of having lost some, which is the normal consequence of "failure". Being able to end interactions gracefully, as opposed to feeling ashamed or angry about how they ended or whatever, is a major skill for advanced PUAs, and it's part of what allows them to grind out dozens of approaches per day without "state crashing", as the parlance has it. And that's where the boyfriend-focused smalltalk comes in. By refusing to lose my cool, or engage in any shenanigans, when she brings up the boyfriend—real or imaginary—I demonstrate to both of us that I don't give a fuck, and also that I am a socially well-adjusted enough person to react appropriately to the situation. After all, that's what people do in an interaction when someone brings up another person: they talk a bit about them. They don't fucking pretend the person was never mentioned, as the PUAs would have you do! And I mean, if the PUA stratagems worked, with a reasonable rate of success, I'd be willing to break social protocol and use it. But since it rarely works, if ever, what's the fucking point? You just end up making yourself feel like some inferior loser who's trying to chip away at this phantom person that you'll never get to meet, and who, in my case at least, is most certainly inferior to me, so why the fuck am I trying to chip away at his status with this girl? It's lame as fuck, and there's no way to spin it, at the end of the day, that won't make me feel lame for trying it.
Now, the smalltalk that I advocate is only a couple minutes long. I've already written off the girl when I hear IHAB, and, as mentioned, I am just trying to wind the interaction down gracefully, not waste half my day talking about her personal life. However, after a few hundred approaches of doing this (since practically half the girls say IHAB sooner or later, as you will know if you're doing approaches yourselves), I figured out the next level of this tactic, and it is this that I call my "ultimate boyfriend destroyer". I basically friendzone myself. I'd already started on this path when I began discussing her relationship, but now I take it further by:
1. Playfully asking her to set me up with one of her single friends that "looks like you", and
2. Continuing the chat for a few more minutes to try and find commonalities we can connect over so she can start seeing me as a friend she might want to spend time with and invite to social functions, etc.
And, ironically, if there was ever any chance of actually "destroying" her boyfriend, it is this friendzoning that gives me the best chance, because this way she gets to know a lot more about me, over time, and perhaps come to realize that I am a much better man than her boyfriend. So this approach is win-win-win because:
1. It turns the interaction into something a lot deeper and more meaningful than a simple pick-up attempt: you become potential friends who've discovered commonalities, and even if you never end up meeting again you will still have gotten the maximum "state boost" from the interaction that you can possibly get from a "failed" approach,
2. There is a very real chance, if the girl likes you AS A PERSON, that she will indeed try to hook you up with her friends, some of whom may even be hotter than her, or know other girls who are hotter, etc. etc. This has actually happened to me, and it's by no means a sci-fi scenario. It is in fact far more likely, in my experience, than "destroying" anyone's boyfriend with a line, so it is THIS that you should be chasing, since it's more efficient. Just make sure that, when you ask her to hook you up with her friends, that you do it gracefully enough and cheekily enough, not needily as in "PLEASE HALP I CAN'T FIND A GIRL TO SAVE MY LIFE". And this is the reason that this whole tactic is, in my opinion, an intermediate-to-advanced tactic. I don't think a beginner can pull it off successfully, unless perhaps he's a very chatty, extroverted person by nature (which most PUAs are not, and certainly not the beginners). The ideal here is to deliver this line as a half-joke, the very moment she spouts IHAB, or soon after, as a playful response to it. E.g. "Damn, and I thought I had found my soulmate... Oh well, perhaps you have some friend who looks like you that you can hook me up with ;)" And then, even if she responds positively to this, you should pretty much ignore her response and press on with the friendship-building attempt. I.e., if she says, "Sure, I have a friend who's available", don't be like "Awesome, what's her name and number, I can't wait to meet her!" Be more like, "Cool, we should all get together for drinks sometime", and then divert back to friendship-building. It is this friendship that will net you the invitation to join these girls on a night out, not your attempts to try and set up a date in advance with a person you haven't even met yet and know nothing about. Hell, for all you know her friend could be disgusting, so you definitely don't want to appear too eager, or eager at all. You want to keep all your cards to yourself while infiltrating their circle, so that you'll have as many options as possible once you've seen the kind of talent it contains. So keep playing the chilled out friendly guy in the street, get the number, and get out of there. And if you want some material to study about how to achieve the ideal attitude for this tactic, check out Yad's videos. Yad is the king of the friendzone, and, as I explained in my review of his work, I mean that in the best way possible.
3. And finally, never forget that the original girl could break up with her boyfriend at any time, and you could be the interesting stranger that's there to pick up the pieces, in true orbiter fashion. Imagine if you could friendzone even a mere 10% of all the girls in the street that give you the IHAB line. For a hardcore daygamer, that's hundreds of girls a year lol! If you play your cards right, you could be the most popular guy in town, and, over any given year, many of these girls will be breaking up at some point.
In summa, forget about PUAs' pathological fear of the "friendzone". Speaking for myself now, you could put me in any retarded "zone" that you want, but it'd still be obvious to everyone around that I am the coolest guy there, and the girls can see it too, especially if they get a chance to spend any significant amount of time with me, and compare me to their friends and boyfriends. And the dreaded friendzone allows me, and them, to do precisely that. And that's how I destroy their boyfriends.
NEXT: CAVEMAN DATE METHOD