A few of you sent me this article, which is a female dating/relationships expert giving advice to women on how to deal with the no contact rule. This is a rule I’ve talked about many times, including here and here when I talked about soft nexting, and here when I talked about how to get an ex back.

-By Caleb Jones

When I said the article “gives advice,” I meant that loosely, since 95% of the article is bashing the concept of no contact rather than giving actionable advice. The only actual advice is to dump any man who does this to you.And guess what? I completely agree with that. If a woman is not happy with the man she’s with, she should dump him immediately and go find another man that makes her happy. I’ve even said that about myself, to every woman in a serious relationship I’ve ever had. If I don’t make you happy, for the love of god, LEAVE. By all means, get the hell out of here. I only want to date women who like dating me. It makes no sense to date someone who doesn’t like me, or who likes me but whom I make unhappy.

The problem is everything else she says in this article. Let’s examine.
You decided to end a relationship that was not meeting your needs, was emotionally suffocating, deeply troubled (too many arguments and fights) or simply moving too fast in terms of the level of closeness or commitment you are comfortable with, and the next thing you know – your ex has completely cut you off.

They unfriended you, blocked you, won’t respond to your texts and will not pick up the phone. It’s like he/she disappeared off the face of the earth. No warning. No explanation. Nothing.
Did you catch how the above statements don’t make any sense? She decided to end the relationship, so he decides to cut off contact. Okay… then what’s the problem? If she ended the relationship, so what if he cuts off contact? She ended the relationship, didn’t she? Why is it such a problem that he cut off all contact?

There are only two valid answers to this question.
The first answer is that she lied to him. She didn’t really end the relationship and wants it to continue. She threw a little temper tantrum and said the relationship was over, when in fact it wasn’t. As usual, what women say and what they do are often two different things. The problem is most men don’t know this. Therefore, if she says the relationship is over when it isn’t, and he cuts off all contact, she has only herself to blame. He’s just going along with what she said she wanted.

The second answer is that she wants to friend zone the poor bastard. As I’ve clearly demonstrated here and here, friend zone is the worst place for a man to be. Friend zone is even worse than having a bitchy girlfriend, since at least the guy with the bitchy girlfriend is getting laid.
By cutting off contact with you, the guy you dumped is avoiding friend zone, which is a very good thing for men to do. I wish more men did it.

For the rest of the article, the woman seems to switch gears, and imply that the no contact rule is happening within the a relationship that hasn’t ended yet. In other words, she’s talking about a soft next. It’s a pity that she wasn’t more specific with these two different scenarios, since the end of a relationship and a soft next within a relationship are two completely different things (though the no contact rule applies and is effective in either case).

Should you fall for the “no contact” ploy and pursue someone who is acting like a sulking child who doesn’t know how to take “no” or “not now” for an answer?

I have said many times online and in my books that a soft next is not you “sulking.” When you soft next a woman, you should immediately go do something fun or productive. Have sex with another woman on your roster. Immerse yourself in a very important career or business project. Go snowboarding. If you soft next a woman and then spend that time sitting around sulking about how angry you are or how much you miss her, you’re doing the soft next incorrectly (and you’re a beta, or at least acting like one). A properly executed soft next is the opposite of acting like a sulking child. It is a busy Alpha Male with a Mission and very full life who doesn’t have time for a woman’s irrational bullshit.

When she says “no” or “not now” for an answer, I’m not sure what she means, but my assumption based on something she says a little later is that she means having sex. I have already written an entire article about how soft nexting applies to a woman you’re already in a sexual relationship with, who is refusing to have sex with you for non-medical reasons. It’s right here and I suggest you read it if you haven’t yet.
It depends on whether you believe emotional abuse has a place in a healthy relationship. Look, it doesn’t matter how you slice this cake, someone suddenly cutting off all contact in an attempt to get you anxious, fearful, feel rejected, doubt your own desirability, confused and depressed is not acting with love – and you need to recognize it for what it is. Emotional abuse.

It can’t be emotional abuse if it’s a response to a woman ending your relationship. She ended it, so the relationship is over. You can’t emotionally abuse a woman you’re not dating anymore and not spending time with anymore.
What if it’s a soft next within a relationship? Is soft nexting really “emotional abuse?” This gets into a serious problem I’ve always had with the (largely left-wing) psychology community with their use of massively over-broad definitions of terms. As just one easy example, Wikipedia defines emotional abuse as: a form of abuse, characterized by a person subjecting, or exposing, another person to behavior that may result in psychological trauma, including anxiety, chronic depression, or post-traumatic stress disorder.

In other words, anything you do that a woman you’re dating doesn’t like could be defined as “emotional abuse.” Just like the term “rape culture,” the term “emotional abuse” means pretty much “anything a woman might not like.” According to that definition, anything you do that could cause a woman anxiety (for example) is “emotional abuse.” She has a really bad day, texts you, and you can’t text her back for 90 minutes because you’re in a meeting, so she gets anxiety. Is that emotional abuse? According to that definition and many women, the answer is yes!
Does that make any sense?

Look, if a guy is constantly screaming at his girlfriend or wife, and calling her fat, or calling her a cunt, etc, I get that’s emotional abuse. But doing anything that causes her to get upset or anxious? Uh… no.

As you can clearly see in my glossary, the definitions for the terms I use are very clear and very specific. There’s never any confusion or debate on the specific definitions of the terms I use. Specific and clear definitions like this are conducive, hell, required for quality discourse. But these broad, sweeping, unclear definitions for things like “emotional abuse” aren’t helpful at all, because you can attach that term to literally, and I mean this now, literally anything a woman (or man) doesn’t like. Stupid… I reject the term “emotional abuse” until someone can give me a widely agreed-upon definition that is very clear, very specific, and doesn’t leave room for wild interpretation. I’ve done this with my terms, so it’s not that difficult.

When someone uses “silent treatment”, the “cold shoulder treatment” or “no contact”
It’s important to differentiate the difference between “no contact” and the “silent treatment,” because these are two very different things. One of them is effective, the other is childish, ineffective, pathetic, and beta.
No contact, via either soft nexting or the four month no contact rule when a woman dumps you, is extremely effective in bringing women back into your life in a happy state. I recommend these techniques often to men and will continue to do so.

I have also said on numerous occasions, particularly in item number 16 right here, that the “silent treatment” does not work at all, and will simply result in more drama, not less. It also demonstrates to her a very beta, needy, childish frame, which is the opposite of the Alpha, outcome independent frame you need to exude for maximum attraction and minimum drama. For more information on that, refer to that link.

…to get you to comply and do what they want, or give them what they want, it’s a behaviour learned from childhood with a parent or key caregiver. A parent or caregiver denies a child attention, affection or love as a way of punishing, hurting, manipulating or controlling him or her; young, innocent and vulnerable, a child gives in or does as told to regain the parent or caregiver’s attention, affection or love.

A child repeatedly exposed to this kind of emotional abuse grows up thinking it’s the only way to get others to do what you want and give you what you want. But the effect of this form of emotional abuse cuts deeper and creates scars that are far more lasting than most people realize. Most people exposed to this kind of emotional abuse live with separation anxiety, are needy and clingy, have low self-esteem, don’t trust themselves, have problems telling whether someone is interested in them or not, never ask for what they want, are passive aggressive etc.

….

Some grown-up men and women even believe that with-holding attention, affection or love is how you prove that someone really loves you. The more threatened, anxious, rejected, jealous, clingy or desperate he/she feels, the more proof of their love. That’s how sick this is!
I don’t disagree with any of this. Men who do this because they’re whiny babies have issues. That often describes men who do the silent treatment on women. It is childish and very beta.

Instead, I recommend men utilize no contact as a relationship management technique, because it is the single best technique we have as men to reduce drama from the women we date. As I’ve said many times, the soft next is not done from a place of anger or malice. It’s a tool used to ensure a long-term, happy relationship with minimal drama and arguments.
A person using “no contact” to make you feel anxious, jealous, clingy or desperate is not doing it out of love. He/she is doing it because he/she needs to emotionally break you to feel in control – just like in the parent-child dynamic they’re so familiar with.

Or, he’s doing it because he doesn’t like it when you scream and bitch at him. He loves being with you when you’re happy. He doesn’t like being with you when you’re bitchy. Therefore, he chooses to not spend time with you when you’re being a bitch. Sounds reasonable to me. There is nothing wrong with this, and I would still agree with it if it was a woman soft nexting a bitchy man, so this has nothing to do with gender.

The sad part is, many people using this unhealthy and dysfunctional relating pattern are not necessarily bitter or vengeful people out to hurt the person they love. They honestly believe that because it was done to them and it worked, it will work with you too.

Guess what? It does work. Not only does soft nexting work, but it works literally better than any other relationship or conflict management technique you can possibly come up with or test. If you don’t believe me, go try all the other techniques people give on how to calm down a bitchy, hysterical woman, and watch how ineffective they all are. Then try a soft next, make very sure you do it correctly (because doing it wrong often makes things worse), and then marvel in wonder at how well it turns an angry woman into a sweet, caring and loving woman with minimal effort.

Moreover, the four month no contact rule for a woman who dumps you works too. If you vanish out of her life after she dumps you, your odds of having sex with her again at some point down the road skyrocket as compared to continuing to ask for her to come back like some kind of needy pussy, or continuing to message her like some kind of polite, friend zone orbiter all the time.

No contact works. You may hate that, but those are the facts, Jack. If there was a better way of reducing drama in a relationship (or getting an ex back), then I would recommend that instead, but I haven’t seen one yet. When you come up with one, let me know. I won’t be holding my breath.

You know what they say: “You teach people how they treat you.”

Exactly! If she bitches at you and you bitch back at her, you satisfy her need for attention and reduce her attraction by complying with her needs. If you keep reacting this way whenever she bitches at you, you’re teaching her to keep bitching at you. If instead you soft next her ass after 20 seconds or so, she’s going to learn pretty quickly that pulling that bitchy shit on you isn’t going to work. You’re teaching her to treat you more nicely and with more respect. Over time, she will give you less drama, or she’ll dump you so she can give the next sucker the drama and bullshit you won’t allow. Either way, you win.

If you take back someone who thinks it’s okay to punish you for ending a relationship that was not meeting your needs
WHAT?!? Again she blames the man when the woman is the one who ended the fucking relationship! What the FUCK, lady? If she ended the relationship, that was her decision. How the hell can you attack the man’s behavior after she dumped him? She made that bed, not him.
This is classic feminine solipsism and the refusal to take responsibility for her own actions.
…was deeply troubled (too many arguments and fights)
YES! Too many arguments and fights is perfectly valid grounds for a soft next and a temporary period of no contact! What do you expect him to do instead? Sit there like a high-drama pussy and keep arguing with her forever? Do you expect him to just take her, ahem, “emotional abuse?” Why is “emotional abuse” acceptable when a woman does it to a man but horrible when a man does it to a woman?

…or that was simply moving too fast for the level of intimacy you were comfortable with
YES! A woman you’ve already had sex with many times and who is now refusing sex for non-medical reasons is perfectly deserving of a (nice) soft next. Using sex as a weapon is unacceptable, if not grounds for a full-on break up, so she can be with a man more compatible with her sexual comfort level, as I talked about in detail here. A sexually repressed or sexually nervous woman should not be in a relationship with a man with a very healthy sex drive. That’s dysfunctional regardless of the techniques used. Moreover, a woman who keeps restricting sex from her monogamous husband or boyfriend is just begging to be cheated on. Her anger doesn’t change masculine biology.
you are only re-confirming to him/her that withholding attention, affection or love works.

However, I’m not talking about withholding affection or love, just attention. If/when I soft next a woman, my love or affection (if she’s an MLTR or OLTR) doesn’t change, internally or when I spend time with her again, nor does my friendship (if she’s a FB). It’s simply a temporary removal of attention, nothing else.
If you still have feelings for your ex and want to give him/her a chance to break the pattern of dysfunctional relating, send your ex a text or email telling him/her that if he/she doesn’t want anything to do with you ever again, then you understand that he/she needs a clean break to move on.

Agree 100%.
But if he/she hopes to get back together with you someday, “No Contact” is not the way to do it. It’s immature, manipulative and undermines any efforts to have a healthy relationship.

If you tell a man he can’t do something, then it’s incumbent upon you to give him something new he can do, and is as effective or more effective than the old behavior. So if soft nexting is no longer allowed, great. Give that man a very specific, proven system for reducing your drama the next time you scream at him. (And things like “just talk it out” or “work it out” or “deal with it” or “be a man” are not examples of specific, proven systems.)

If you cannot provide him with such a system, then tough shit, Sweetheart. The soft nexting will continue whenever you’re acting like a bitch. If you hate that, you are more than welcome to dump him and go find another man who is happy to take your “emotional abuse.”
If he/she doesn’t see what’s wrong with this approach to resolving conflict, then it’s best that you both move on.
Correct, and do so immediately. Stop wasting each other’s time.
If your ex sees that you are not falling for his/her “cold shoulder” treatment and are really serious about moving on, he/she will be all over the Internet looking for advice on “what to do when my ex contacts me saying he/she is moving on!”

Sadly, since most men in serious relationships are either betas or Alpha Male 1.0s with oneitis, this is true. The Alpha Male 2.0 will simply say, “Hey, no problem, I completely understand! I want you to be happy and I wish you all the best.” Then he’ll go have sex with someone else on his roster and continue on with his Mission, with or without you.

Misery does love company, no doubt much of the advice will be, “don’t give in. stick to No Contact” .
That’s not because misery loves company. It’s because no contact works.
You can’t change someone else. The only person you can change is you.
Correct, so don’t try to make a man not next you when you’re being a bitch.
Saying “NO!” to emotional manipulation and/or abuse is taking care of your own emotional health, and cleaning up your emotional energy so that you will be ready for a relationship in which you will be treated with the respect, affection and love you deserve.

Again, if a woman isn’t happy with the man she’s seeing, she should dump his ass ASAP and move on. Much better than sticking with the guy and continuing to experience regular drama. Life is way too short for that shit.
Keep in mind that not everyone who suddenly cuts off all contact is doing so to break you. Some people use “No Contact” because they believe it’s the best way for them to heal from the pain and move on.
Or they know it’s the most effective technique to use.

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