Orbiters and Obstacles: Handle The Guys In Her Life.

Distract The Orbiters

Orbiters are one of the most noxious forms of male obstacles that you can encounter when meeting girls. These are the dogged “nice” guys who firmly believe that if they just hang around long enough, the girl they like will finally realize how much she loves them and they’ll float off into a make-believe wonderland filled with flying cherubs and bunnies who fart candy cane clouds and piss rainbows. They instinctively see any other man as a threat and will actively work to sabotage them; after all, as long as she’s single, he has a chance. If the orbiter isn’t getting any, ain’t nobody gettin’ any.

Orbiters are tricky to deal with; they will actively resist being befriended. They’ll use social pressure against you to make you look like the asshole by being as passive-agressive as possible. Because orbiters frequently position themselves as the girl’s platonic friends, you can’t simply call them out, threaten them or insult them; all this will do is kill any social value you’ve built up and make you into the bad-guy for being a dick to her friends. As a platonic friend, they’re perfectly positioned to interfere with your attempts to get her alone or to hold a private conversation; they will have any number of ready-made reasons to intrude, and their previous relationship will make it difficult for you to extract them from the scene.

The best thing you can do here is to give the Orbiter someone else to focus on. It’s dead simple, really; you tell the Orbiter “Hey, I have someone you need to meet,” and introduce them to a new girl. It doesn’t matter if you actually know her or not; they will feel compelled to talk to them. In fact, I have actually pulled a Barney Stinson on Orbiters in bars before: walk the Orbiter up to a random girl, and say “Haaaaaave you met $NAME?” before walking off to keep talking with his previous obsession.

Orbiters are loathe to violate the social contract and will spend far more time talking with the new girl than they intended, just by virtue of the fact that they won’t be willing to cut off the conversation before reaching some natural end-point. If you’re especially lucky, they’ll transfer their crush to the new girl, leaving yours free and clear.

Defuse The Alphas

There is an immutable law that anyone talking to attractive girls will eventually have to deal with assholes. Call them AMOGs1, Bro’s, douchebags… they are the bullies of the dating world who march around as though they were the asshole in the Charles Atlas ads, kicking metaphorical sand in your face. These are the guys who will come up and try to steal your target away from you; they will try to clown you, intimidate you or otherwise just try to crowd you out.

AMOGs: They've Come For Your Women — "'sup, Dork? Thanks for keeping my girl warm for me."

Nerds will recognize this behavior instinctively; it’s as though the jocks who made your life hell in high-school have followed you out into your every day life just to continue the torture. Fortunately, there are ways of handling these tools, effectively disarming them.

Your best bet is to use social pressure against them; when they come up, interrupt them in the middle of their spiel and just say “Hey, don’t be rude. Introduce yourself.” Then smile, clap them on the shoulder and say “Cool man. Nice meeting you,” and turn your back to them and resume talking to your girl; trying to proceed at this point will make them look rude, which works in your favor. By cutting into their routine and forcing them to start addressing you, you’ve changed the frame of the interaction; he’s no longer talking to the girl, he’s talking to you. By breaking the rapport and cutting him out of the interaction, he’s forced to re-insert himself – a social violation.

Being unreactive is key here; the more that they get a reaction out of you, the worse you look. This works both ways, by the way. By flipping the script on them, you can make them react to you. If he tries to make fun of you, your best option is to agree and magnify; if he calls you gay, you’re not just gay, you’re super gay. “Oh, you got me, I’m totally into cock. Hey, you wanna make out in the corner?” If he makes fun of your clothes, you can play up how “cool” he is. “Oh dude, you’re right, you’ve got awesome style. You’ve gotta be my personal style guru, we’re gonna go shopping, you can find all the specials for me…”. You can even just call him out on what he’s doing. “Hey, it’s cool that you’ve worked up the courage to come over here and chat her up. Not a lot of guys will have the guts to do that. Congrats.” Then, again, dismiss him “Cool, man. Nice meeting you,” then turn your back on him.

If you can, ignore them. Not giving them attention establishes that once again, they’re causing the social violation, which works against them with the girl they’re trying to impress. Indifference is incredibly powerful; cool people don’t give a shit. If George Clooney were to wander into the group to pick up the girl you’re talking to, he wouldn’t give you a second’s notice.

Just keep in mind: some guys – especially if you’re at bars or clubs – will react with aggression. You can’t argue with a fist; your safety comes first, so be willing to walk away if need be.