Winning the No-Win Game

Now, I absolutely love no-win situations. This may explain why I tend to find women relatively easy to deal with, since the conventional female power play is to attempt to put the other party in a no-win situation, at which point the other party is supposed to turn to the woman and submissively ask her for direction. This behavior tends to confuse most men, since they don't understand why the woman doesn't simply ask for what she wants in the first place when he has already signaled that he is willing, perhaps even eager, to please her.

What these men are leaving out of the equation is that the No-Win Game allows the woman to get what she wants and also gives her the sense of being in control of the relationship. If she asks for what she wants and then receives it, that makes her a supplicant and forces her to bear the dreadful burden of being appropriately grateful to the person who granted her request. If, however, she plays the No-Win Game successfully, she not only assumes a position of control over the other individual, but also removes herself any obligation to feel grateful to the other person. She is now providing the answer, not the request. She is the problem-solver... and it is to be left unmentioned that she created the problem in the first place. This is classic ordo ab chao manipulation.

It all comes back to female solipsism. Most women are less grateful than Charles DeGaulle or Camillo Cavour, both of whom are said to have declared how their nations would astonish the world with their ingratitude towards their foreign benefactors. Women absolutely hate feeling materially obligated to anyone - witness yesterday's post, for example - and they will go to much further lengths than most men imagine to avoid it. Throw in the dark Machiavellian pleasures of manipulation and the heady feeling of relationship hand, and it's not hard to understand why the No-Win Game is such a go-to tactic in the female playbook.

And yet, the No-Win Game is more easily countered than Darth Hoody shutting down The Miracle of Tebow. Consider this. If you happen to find yourself in a no-win situation, then what difference does it make which option you choose? Either way you lose, right? This means it makes absolutely no difference what you do! Therefore, a more useful way to look at the No-Win Game is to think of it as Carte Blanche instead. Ironically, once a woman has successfully maneuvered you into a no-win situation, she has granted you the unrestricted freedom to act at your own discretion. The game is flipped. Chao ab ordo. Remember that control freaks, by definition, cannot handle chaos, which means their manipulative machinations can be disrupted easily, either directly or indirectly, at will. Anything you do that is outside the script is almost guaranteed to produce better results than obediently falling in line with it.

What got me thinking about this was the unconscious attempt of one of Badger's readers to create a no-win situation with regards to what Badger refers to as "plate theory". Juxtapose these two statements from the same individual and figure out how men are supposed to balance them:

1. "I always notice the reactions to rejection, whether it was a playful one to slow him down, or a REAL one. The last reaction you wrote about, the calm, is incredibly appealing. It comes across confident & can make a woman feel like the guy really wants her (since he persists, despite her resistance) and he doesn’t give up that easily."

2. "Wow.. For some reason, I found Mike C’s comments really distasteful… I have no use for men with “spinning plates”

In other words, she finds the ends "incredibly appealing" but she finds the means "really distasteful" and claims that she has no use for men who accomplish those ends through such means. The problem, of course, is that it is very, very difficult, and for most men, impossible, to achieve such desirable ends through any other means. While there are certainly men who could meet sexual rejection while in a completely celibate state with zen-like indifference, Tibetan monks are seldom known to hit on Western women.

If we apply the concepts laid out above, the solution is obvious. A no-win situation has been constructed, therefore carte blanche applies. The correct thing to do is to apply the means and achieve the desired end without informing the woman of the means utilized. There is no need to lie or be dishonest, as that would be counterproductive. Simply don't talk about the means and don't offer any explanations for them or answer any questions about them. And even if one is subjected to the third degree and pinned down, carte blanche still applies. By setting up a No-Win Game, she is quite literally requiring that men lie to her.*

The confident calm that is more accurately described as indifference comes only from having options, and more importantly, knowing that you have them. This is just one of the many applications of how you can play Carte Blanche to win the No-Win Game. The downside, of course, is that if you are involved with a sufficiently intelligent and self-interested woman, she will soon begin to grasp how Carte Blanche works and you will run the risk of finding yourself in an adult relationship where requests are communicated in a direct manner, mutual obligations are established and respected, and you no longer have the freedom to do whatever you please whenever you like.


*With regards to the moral aspects of telling the truth that could be raised, my answer is that we are so far outside the limits of morality here that it would be nonsensical to attempt to bring them into the discussion at this point. In demanding the sort of interest that can only come from sexually incontinent men, to say nothing of indicating her own intention to engage in pre-marital sex, there is no room for morality in this discussion. This, of course, is why those who dabble in immorality are always bound to be trampled by those who are rationally amoral.