Everyone will have a view on this and everyone can benefit from the responses:

The balancing act: quite simply, when to be easygoing and carefree and when to put your foot down, draw lines and create issue?

I realise that these are questions of calibration and inner game to an extent but I find it a hard balancing act to maintain outside of a full on relationship ie in the push pull of long term gaming of a HB.

Girls definitely love a guy who is fun and hassle free. But at what point does easygoing become AFC?

Alpha males draw lines and aren't afraid to enforce their standards. But at what point does this become verging on needy and DLV? At what point are your standards taking the fun out of the relationship?

Specific successes and problems I have found:

- at the start of the game it is easy to be light and carefree. My rule is to expect nothing and girls respond well to this.

- I like to make it clear that I have set standards, particularly on flaking and wasting my time. I make my frame "youre wasting time I could have spent having fun with someone else". This implies abundance and the ability to walk away and works well.

- HOWEVER: the flaw in my game is that once you set out clear standards, you have to enforce them! Once she has fucked up once it becomes a slippery slope and hard to return to being easygoing. If she does a second time it almost makes nexting inevitable as too much intensity is created by the need to enforce boundaries.

Ultimately girls do make genuine mistakes and im working hard to figure out how I maintain my frame of being the prize worth winning without nexting girls every 5 mins, or worse, being hard work.

Im really interested to know how others manage this. Nobody wants to be an AFC or orbiter, but how to avoid being too rigid? It sometimes seems too easy to paint yourself into a corner and be so busy taking no shit that its impossible to be fun! How to decide when she is taking the piss or just making mistakes?

Anyone have methods for re-engaging after punishing and drawing a line under drama?

Summary: when to let shit go and when to enforce boundaries?

I have had issues with this but- yeah it's a balancing act. However, you should maintain consistency inside and out.

Case and point: I hate it when a chick just sort of blows me off for whatever reason, I am not into games and don't chase.

So- had a friend pull it on me the other night, I didn't really care THAT much, but just ignored the shit out of her, and lo and behold the next day she was damn near obsessed with me. It's a line in the sand she knew was there, she crossed it, I didn't freak out or go all emo on her, just went about my life without her and she didn't like that feeling. To maintain that sort of irreverent independence and keep your integrity intact, you have just learn how to exist without focusing on outcome. You know who you are and it won't change depending on circumstance.

Being an Alpha is sort of a case study in dichotomy. You want to be consistent in both your desire to keep things light and breezy and, consistent with your boundaries in a relationship. Integrity, autonomy and, nonchalance. If you can internalize those three, without question, you have just won the game. Outcome should never dictate your responses.

M2 this is an excellent response and you summarize the challenge well. How do you deal with that genuine frustration when you can see a girl is fucking up? I had a similar situation to the one you describe above recently. The difference was it was her 2nd mess up and came off the back of me freezing her out the previous week and getting a ton of apologies. I'm big enough to admit she's one of the ones i'm more fond of and found myself reacting because she was forcing me to draw the same line again. Stupidly I explicitly set the boundary this time instead of the implied threat of walking away. I actually felt sorry for her in a way as we had now both put each other in check mate. I ended up giving her a hard time then letting it slide but it feels unsatisfactory.

I now find myself avoiding seeing her as I dont feel she deserves to be let off the hook, but I also know that in her shoes I am going to erode attraction and comfort if I carry it on by appearing hard work, especially given the previous freeze out. So actually I have check mated myself. Not the first time ive done it and I would really like to unlock where I should have either let it go or dug my heels in, otherwise this is going to limit my game!

There is the issue. You reacted. You should be above the petty and fickle nature of the opposite sex. If you focus on it, you'll drive yourself crazy. We've all done this, but you should be so busy doing interesting shit it wouldn't even occur to you to react. They'll get the picture.