Quote: (07-10-2011 03:14 PM)Hoopster Wrote:
How do you distinguish between a girl's shit test and her legitimately not being interested?
First, for you it should not matter if she is interested or not. She may be not interested right now, it is your job to make sure she is. If you tell her a few good stories and make her laugh, she may become interested right away. And even if she is interested but you approach her with "you come here often? whats your name? what do you do?" she'll become not interested very fast. As a general rule, however, if she is participating in the conversation, she is interested. If she is listening without looking away, yawning or playing with her phone, she may be not interested yet but you still have a chance. Usually it is very clear when she is not interested.
Second, a shit test is generally an indicator of interest. It basically means that your behavior, body language or something else is not congruent with the image you're presenting to her, but she is curious enough in you to dig deeper to find out whether the problem is in your body language (i.e. your image is correct but your body language is wrong), or your body language is right and you're faking your image. For example, in your case you presented yourself as a guy who is confident enough to boldly approach and talk to an attractive (as she thinks) woman. Those are valuable qualities which show you have social skills. However something - maybe your body language was nervous - made her suspicious whether you're really confident, or just playing it. So she threw away the test on you.
Shit test could be addressed differently, depending on your style. However the main rule is to be non-reactive to the test, which means:
- You must not get angry, offended or apologizing;
- You must keep the image you're presenting and not changing it;
- You must keep the control over the conversation (in this case changing the subject and starting the discussion whether she was interested or not would pass the control to her)
The easiest way would be just to smile, pat her on her back and continue with your speech. "Shhh,
I am talking now" is optional, but also may be used here. At that stage the tests do not really require the answers, they're testing your frame.
Another way to address it would be cocky-funny, but unless you have a lot of experience it would be hard for you to come up with the good line right away, and if you hesitate, you'd become reactive, i.e. lose the test.
Later in the conversation when she is already attracted to you, she might ask the same questions, but their purpose would be different. For example, the "how old are you" in the first thirty seconds of the conversation is a shit test which deserves the generic "I am young enough to do it often, but old enough to do it right" line or something like that. However if you already talked for two hours and started discussing things like common tastes in music, movies, and so on, this question may be a "want to know you better" type, and might justify a straight, "honest" answer.
NB. Some people seem to believe shit tests is something girls learn during teenage years. This is not true. Even kids who cannot speak yet often shit-test the parents, typically in form of "how much I can get away with?" and "who is the boss?". Screaming brats you sometime see in stores is a perfect example of such a test.
