On a super secret email discussion list I belong to consisting of influence experts in Asia who specialize in influence and psychological forces used within communication skills specifically for relationships and particularly seduction . . .a post came up recently on how many Chinese girls in relationships employ a strategy of feigning girlishness and treating their significant other or boyfriend within a father frame.
In a related but not quite the same gambit . . .
One strategy with girls stuck in games is to look ’em square in the eye and tell ’em the game they are playing and that you’re not interested in it . . . that you need something else entirely. Then detach and either go find someone more appropriate to your needs as she mulls it over and either you are gone off to someone new and rid of a gameplaying manipulator or you she switches strategies to be more of what you want or need in order to satisfy her desire to be with you ("be the guy she will do those things for" so to speak).
Years ago . . . maybe thirteen or fourteen years . . . I found a book in a shop in Hong Kong – in English – titled Games Hong Kong People Play: A Social Psychology of the Hong Kong People by George Adams (Hong Kong: TAAHK Publications, 1992, online edition available from the Not the South China Morning Post who also carry and online edition of The Great Hong Kong Sex Novel also by Adams) which takes a transactional analysis view of Hong Kong (or, more generally, Chinese) social games or roleplays a la the Games People Play and other Eric Berne transactional psychology approaches. While I did not learn it from the book but from direct observation (I’ve seen this move used hundreds of times), one of the "games" for earning "brownie points" that many Chinese girls play is the "Little Girl Lost" type gambit where they act childish as a means to get their way. A natural response to when someone does this is for the partner to immediately assume an "Adult" role (rather than the more combative "Child" or the more mature "Adult" sets). Often the guy will give in and let the girl who is acting childish have her way but in doing so he has won his own brownie points for "being the adult" yet both of them have avoided a healthy and worthwhile relationship of Adult to Adult communication.
When I teach interpersonal communication and influence sets at the university, I will often mention a particular gambit which is very common for Chinese girls but rare for American girls (who have their own gambits). However, in one of Jacky Chan’s films (one of the "Condor" films), a Western girl is shown using the move with her father and it looks completely artificial and contrived as it is culturally out of place. If you walk down the street in Taipei, you are bound to see the move every once in awhile. The move is for the girl to adopt a "little girl lost" look, ever so slightly lift one foot extended backward, gently tug the man’s sleeve or shirt or coat and with big doe eyes while shaking back and forth say "pleeeeeeasse" like a little girl (often with the head cocked slightly to the side). . . nine out of ten times the guy will "give up" and let her have his way but he will feel all good and adult about it knowing she is the immature one despite just being manipulated into doing something he didn’t want to do in the first place. When I discuss this move, I will usually ask one of the girls to come to the front of the class (99.9999% of my students are young women). I then have the girl pretend to be "the guy" and I play "the girl" which always draws laughter (I’m a big ol’ hairy guy – seriously, long hair and beard and a good three times bigger than any of the girls in my classes) . . . but then I gently lift back one foot, do the doe eyed thing and the shaking gentle jerk back and forth with the "pleeeeease" and they immediately recognize themselves . . . which can be a bit unsettling as most never even realize they play that particular game (which is one of the reasons I present it in that way, as an outsider looking in).
Way back way back when dinosaurs walked the Earth and I first came to Taiwan and started dating my wife who wasn’t my wife at the time but just some incredibly hot babe . . . and we were out somewhere "discussing" where we would go for supper or somesuch and I was being pigheaded (I can be good at that) and out of the blue she did this move. I had had other girls try to use it on me and I usually ended up dropping them but with her I stepped back and looked her in the eye and said that the whole little girl thing just creeps me out and that I wasn’t interested in dating a child as my interests are in being with a woman, an adult I can enjoy spending time with rather than a child who needed tending to or scolding or coddling. She never used that gambit with me again. Of course, she did come up with alternative means to control and influence my behavior . . . and trust me, she knows exactly what to buttons to push . . . that thing she does where she cocks her head ever so gently to the side and lets that special gleam come to her eyes still just automatically turns me on, big time, yep, after seventeen years, I still find her so completely attractive in every sense, physical, emotional, physical, spiritual, physical, intellectual, and did I mention physical? . . . but evidently I am very happy with those little tricks of influence she has developed, blissfully ignorant of what some of them are but oh so aware of others. Then again, I have my little tricks and "magick spots" as well . . . anchors, triggers, response conditioning, and just plain ol’ crazy love.
Games are gambits and gain short term results but for longterm satisfaction, one eventually needs to move on to the Adult-Adult set of communicating with the person not the idea and being oneself instead of a role. Once you are comfortable enough to fart in front of the girl and she’s comfortable enough to fart in front of you, then you’re past a lot of the bullshit. IMO. Of course, that does not mean you can accellerate intimacy by farting at the get-go. 🙂
I don’t have my original hardcopy of the book Games Hong Kong People Play anymore. I loaned it to a theatre friend long ago and he went and lost it and as we’re in Taipei could never find it when we went back to Hong Kong for visits (my wife’s from Hong Kong). Wish I had it still as it was a nice read and dead on with a number of the social gambits. If any of my readers do indeed come across a copy, let me know. It isn’t an academic discussion by far but it is light hearted, entertaining, and fairly on the money for a number of the gambits used.
All the best,
Brian
STAGE, PERFORMANCE, ENTERTAINMENT HYPNOSIS – June 5-9, 2006
See "training" at http://www.briandavidphillips.com for details!
Brian David Phillips, PhD, CH [phillips@nccu.edu.tw]Certified Hypnotherapist
President, Society of Experiential Trance
Associate Professor, NCCU, Taipei, Taiwan
http://www.briandavidphillips.com
