A few weeks ago, I experienced a bit of role reversal.  I was out with some regular friends who don’t study dating science.  My friends have seen my increased results, but I’d rather they not view how the sausage is made, so I scrap my regular “blow me or blow me out” attitude and just make harmless chit chat with girls.

After midnight I’m just talking with my buddies again when I feel a hand grab my back.  A tall girl comes up to me.  I haven’t seen her until now.  I just assume she’s trying to shoehorn her way through the crowded bar.  I’m wrong, because she then delivers the most awkward opener I’ve ever heard.

“I’m no good at this, but this is the point in the evening I talk to guys I wouldn’t normally talk to.”  Is she negging me?  Is she just that socially clueless?  I don’t know.  She then explains that that’s her pickup line and that she’s no good at this.

First off, I have to commend the courage of everybody who puts themselves on the line like that.  I can’t even imagine how much ego a woman puts at stake doing a cold approach like she did.  Part of me wanted to help her, but her approach and subsequent interaction left me reacting like an aloof woman would.

“You certainly know how to make a guy feel special,” I facetiously respond.  From this point I humor her, flatly replying to her basic, boring, chode questions, but the interaction quickly dies.  Moreover, I do nothing to revive it.  As the interaction feels kind of boring I end up unconsciously becoming a bit snotty towards her.  I never say anything mean, but I put very little effort into the conversation and only answer what she asks me.  My feet are still facing my friends the whole time.  After about five minutes she gives up.  “Well it was nice meeting you,” she murmurs as she walks off.  “You too,” I half heartedly respond out of politeness.

Often in life, you don’t understand something fully until you experience it yourself.  As contrived as it is to use my own behavior as an example, this girl made the exact same mistakes that so many beginner guys do that it’s worth exploring from the other side.

First off, being seduced is an emotional journey.  We think this is only true for girls, but it cuts both ways.  Even in a one night stand, we’re putting on a show for each other.  If you don’t believe me, explain why girls bother faking orgasms.  We both pretend that the other is uniquely irresistible.  If we’re in a casual relationship, we adopt as Savoy has stated, a “don’t shove it in her face” policy.  This girl, by saying she was settling for me at the end of the night was shoving that inconvenient truth in my face.

One of my guy friends who hasn’t been laid in a year barked back at me with indignation when I brushed the girl off.  “Dude man, it’s easy pussy.”  Funny thing is when you have abundance, you can be picky.  Girls live by the mindset that guys are like busses.  You miss this one, another one will come by in ten minutes.  The more options, the less forgiving they are.  I might have overlooked such an awkward opener two years ago, but not today.

That’s the first takeaway, and it’s pails in comparison to what I’m about to mention.  The other is that it’s so crucial to set the correct frames and pacing for the interaction.  We’re told that it’s a man’s job to lead the interaction.  There’s a little bit of truth to that, but in reality, whoever starts the conversation sets the pacing and tone for the whole thing.

This year for Halloween, I dressed up as Lance Armstrong.  One girl opened me by saying “Hey, those spandex are too tight for regulations.  I’m going to have to turn you in to the authorities.”  She role played me as well as any good PUA would have.  It was a teasing flirtatious line, and it was easy for me to respond in kind.  Game on, at least until her boyfriend showed up.

When the awkward girl kept bombarding me with boring questions it made it really difficult for me to transition the conversation onto a flirty topic.  She started the conversation so she set the pacing.  The pacing was slow and boring.  I mirrored that unconsciously.  Think about that from a woman’s perspective.  She may actually think you’re cute, but if you don’t set the tone of the interaction the right way, you will make it impossible for her to begin to flirt with you, and she’ll lost attraction because you killed the mood.

If you go up to a girl and playfully say “Where the hell have YOU been?!  I’ve been looking for you all night.”  There’s a good chance she’ll play along.

Hopefully that sheds some insight on how things look from the other side.  To close off this post, you should develop the habit of seeing things from the other person’s perspective.  Not just in game, but with life in general?  Whether in game, sales, friendships, or the workplace, you need to be able to guess what’ going on in the other person’s head, what their motives are, and what their agenda is.  If you’re not able to make some logical deductions such as the ones I’ve outlined in this article, it’s an exercise worth starting.

Sometimes this journey of self improvement feels like I’m the star of my own fictional TV show.  The truth really is stranger than fiction.  This week was a new first as a girl called me out as a PUA.

I met the girl from day game.  Call her Michelle.  Michelle is cute, witty, and new to town.  I get her number and we grab drinks the following week.  On the walk to the second venue Michelle asks me out of the blue if I have ever read the book “The Game.”  Crazy, right?

If you’re just getting started in the pickup movement, this may very well be your worst fear.  What happens if you get caught?  A couple months ago I wrote a post on The Attraction Forums saying the chances of getting caught were slim to none.  It’s not the first time I’ve been wrong, but hey the world didn’t come crumbling down, and I’m still meeting up with this girl again.

This interaction was a classic case of how to handle tests.  Being called out as a PUA is really the ultimate test, so it’s worth rehashing.  It turns out Michelle suspected from the beginning that I was a PUA.  I just didn’t know it at the time, but I did pick up on the fact that she was testing me on the unconventional nature of my approach.

When I got Michelle’s number, her phone was broken so she gave me her email on top of it.  It was a work email and she has works in congress, so I jokingly asked if I could send politically incorrect jokes to that address.  Here’s the email exchange.

• Zman (to her work email): Is it too soon to send politically incorrect emails to this address?
• Michelle: (18 hours later): Well typically there’s a 3 day rule for contacting a female, but I guess the same rules don’t apply if you met walking down the street.
• Zman: (to her personal email 24 hrs later): Ahh, but the 3 day rule only applies to phone calls.  That gives me another day to badger you over email before you get your replacement phone.  Speaking of lost phones, have the withdrawal migraines and hand tremors subsided?
• Michelle: (1 day later): The first little bit was pretty rough (phantom phone vibrations constantly!), but now I almost like it.  It’s actually kind of freeing to be off the grid!  Incidentally, my new phone came in today, so my new found freedom has been cut short.  You might have reached the 3 day rule now, too, although I’m not sure if that is traditionally the third day or three elapsed days.  Open to interpretation?
  Me: Pfft, 3 days, whatever.  Life’s more fun if you break the so called rules and set your own course.  Have fun this weekend.  Expect a text or two from the likes of me.

So what just happened there?  As Tucker Max says, time to translate from game-speak to English.  Michelle’s telling me in game speak that what I’ve done is fairly unconventional, and she wants to see how I handle it.  She wants to see that I’m okay with it.  If you’re okay with it, chances are she will be too.  This is a small test.  Humor is usually sufficient.

This line of testing continues when we’re at the bar.  We’ve already kissed by the time we’re about to bounce to the next spot.  When she runs to the bathroom, I do the same.  This was perfect timing, and I got out just before she did, so we briefly made out in the stairwell.

“This is a little forward for a Tuesday night, don’t you think?” she asks with a smile.
“Ahh, I’m sure it’s Friday in some time zone.” I retort dismissingly.
“I’m not sure that’s how it works.” she jabs.
“Probably not, but I really don’t care.” I snicker back.

Here, I’m not logically engaging her.  This shows her I’m not bothered at all, which is fine for small tests.  When I girl asks you “What are we?” that’s a big test.  Humor is not your best option.

Rest assured, once the girl asks me flat out whether I’ve studied pickup, the tests get a lot more serious, and so do the responses.  More on that in the next post.

A girl wouldn’t test you if she weren’t interested.  If you’re new, you should celebrate the occasion when you’re thrown a test.  It means you’ve piqued her interest.  Getting called out as a PUA is probably one of the biggest tests you’ll ever receive.  Without further ado, let’s continue where we left off with my first time being called out.

When this girl Michelle asks me the direct question, I don’t even try to lie.  I answer what is asked and nothing more.

“How long have you been doing this?” she inquires.
“About 18 months.” I reply.
“Has it helped?” she asks.
“Like you wouldn’t believe.”

When you get good at game, it doesn’t feel like you’re doing anything unnatural.  What impresses her is how candid I am.  Michelle tells me that she just gained a lot of respect for me.  I tell her I appreciate that and then I warn her, “Just because we’ve had this discussion doesn’t mean I’m going to stop hitting on you,” I joke.  She smiles back.

My first instructor taught me a valuable lesson.  Women want to be hit on, but they want to be hit on competently.  A woman who’s dating the typical bad boy knows what to expect.  She’s aware that the long term prospects are slim, but it will be a hell of a ride in the meantime.  In this case, Michelle knows that an intermediate to advanced PUA like me will obliterate those awkward silences and show her a fun time.

The second location is a little more chill.  It was just an ice cream shop.  (I’m still getting a feel for good date locations, so take my choice of venues with a grain of salt).

When we walk up to the counter, I pick the flavor.  It’s a subtle way of leading the interaction.  I tell her I’ll let her pick the toppings.  She asked if I learned that, and I tell her not that particular move, but yes I adopted that general mindset.  When we go to sit down, she tries to sit across from me.  I pull a chair around so I can sit next to her.  “What do you think you’re doing?” she asks.  “You know full well,” I joke back.  (For those of you who don’t know full well, you never let the girl sit across from you.  It makes it impossible to touch, and she’ll lose that spark for you.)

When a girl is not into you, she’ll blame you for any awkwardness.  When she digs you, she’ll blame herself and possibly even apologize to you.  Michelle kept apologizing to me.  “I’m sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable with my questions.”

“You didn’t make me feel uncomfortable at all,” I reassured her, “This is just the first time somebody’s asked me that.  So be proud of yourself.  You’re very perceptive, and you’re making this the most intriguing date I’ve been on in a while.”  Another rule of handling tests is not to dwell on the topic.  If it’s not a subject area that helps you, don’t linger.  So as soon as the topic was over, I moved on.

Despite changing the subject, the topic is still fresh in Michelle’s mind.  I can tell because her arms are crossed.  Her body isn’t turned away, but not exactly turned toward me either.  When I throw some teases, I’ll gently shove the girl.  She had a lot of tension so I had some work to do.

Just back to normal conversation.  Found out a lot more about her, none of which is relevant for this article.  Just ran the clock down.  A newbie mistake is to see her body language and think she’s no longer attracted.  That wasn’t the case.  She needs a little more comfort.

I live in an inaccessible part of town, so I generally play the 2-date-lay strategy for day game.  I make sure we kiss and touch in ways so she knows I’m not just a friend.  After that make sure she’s comfortable enough to meet up with you the next time.

Once I feel she’s gotten comfortable with me again, I call it a night, and walk her to the metro stop.  On the way to the stop, she gives me one final test.  “So now that you’ve been exposed, are you having any second thoughts?”

“Nope” I reply back, not missing a beat.  We get to the metro stop.  I pull her hips toward mine to give her one last kiss.  No tension or resistance from her.  Then I push her away.  “Enough of that!  Go home now.”  I joke.  Once she gets home, she reengages me over text, telling me how much she enjoyed the evening.  We’ll be meeting up again next week.

There’s no such thing as a perfect pickup.  The last thing I’ll leave you with is what I should have said.  I should have said I can’t go back.  I can’t unlearn to read body language.  I can’t unlearn my new found storytelling and humor.  I can’t unlearn the confidence I’ve gained.  None of us can ever go back.  Once you eat from this tree of knowledge there’s no turning back time.

There’s a lot of talk in the community about fear of failure.  I know I had it when I started.  This past week at the Superconference, an instructor brought up another fear: fear of success.  Seems crazy, right?  Think about it this way.  If you get good at game, it means that the girl you commit to is probably coveted by 98% of straight guys, many of whom are smooth.  She’ll regularly have tempting offers to stray.  She might even give in.  Can you handle that?  Can you handle success?

Let’s go one level down.  Are you able to handle openly non-exclusive relationships?  A lot of guys are interested in this in theory only.  We all want to sew our wild oats, but we simultaneously want a docile partner who waits patiently at home, twiddling her thumbs.

Recently a guy I’ve helped on the forums asked me for advice.  The short version of the story is that he wanted to keep things casual with a girl.  He pursued other women the whole time, but as a beginner didn’t have a “full close” as we call it with anybody else.  Once he committed, he found out the girl had slept with another guy a week beforehand and had omitted that detail.  He flipped out, broke it off, and defriended her.  She apologized for both the sex and the lie and is practically pleading to get back together with him.  He wants to get back together but is not sure he can trust her.  He’s also not sure what he wants more: to be with her or to get good with women in general.

I don’t know this guy’s first name, so I’m going to refer to him as John.  To be blunt, John’s reaction went way overboard.  That being said, John’s underlying emotions are pretty common.  It’s possible that a year ago John would have committed to this girl off the bat.  Now he wants to explore.  He wanted a casual relationship and he got it.  This is what success looks like.

It’s easy to handle situations hypothetically when our emotions aren’t involved.  We talk in the community a lot about how women make emotional decisions and then backward rationalize it.  Guess what, guys are no different.

John may think he’s mad at the girl for betraying his trust, but that’s not what’s really happening.  He’s feeling jealous.  She slept with another person.  He didn’t.  As a result John has found a convenient excuse through which to channel his jealousy.  People tell lies about their past all the time in relationships, and we round those lies down to misdemeanors.  Girls lie to prospective boyfriends about the number of men they’ve slept with.  Nobody considers that a betrayal.

When we’re learning game, we’re dealing with powerful emotions, and we need to be able to identify them in order to handle them properly and make good decisions.

To hear John telll it, he was faithful to this girl the whole time.  That’s the second emotional rationalization.  Of course John never slept with anybody else, but when he was running game all those months his intent was clear.  Girls have plausible deniability for every step that leads to sex.  Guys do the same thing.  You ever have a friend who claimed that he wasn’t actually hitting on that girl all night?

John’s new at this, so he didn’t handle the situation particularly well.  He found out about the other guy by going through her phone, made a huge scene, and walked out.  She is desperately trying to get him back and she’s giving him time to think it over.  Now he’s trying to decide what to do.

In short, the girl really hasn’t done anything wrong, but John shouldn’t get back together with her.  When you’re only sleeping with one girl, you don’t know if you’re becoming attached to her because she’s the one or because she’s the only.  I’ve certainly felt attached to girls, only to see those feelings dissipate as soon as I slept with another.  I’ve also been in casual relationships where I watch the girl make out with another guy at the bar and hop into a cab with him.  I’m not going to claim that didn’t feel a pit in my stomach watching that scene unfold.

No matter how good we get with game, we’re always settling.  If we pick an exclusive relationship, we’re giving up our right to sleep with other women.  In an open relationship, we have to deal with the reality that the woman we care about regularly has mind blowing orgasms with other men.  Which relationship model gives you the most pleasure overall?  There’s only one way to find out: try them all.  If you’re not skilled enough to try them all, keep practicing.

Would John feel attached to this girl if he had been sleeping with four other women?  Let’s say he did.  Would he have felt the twinge of jealousy finding out that this girl slept with somebody else?  I don’t know.  Some people are just not wired to share, but you never know until you try.

Finally, if you do pick a girl to be exclusive with, make sure she’s picking you back for the right reasons.  In the case of John, I have serious questions about the girl.  She seems nice enough but has no self respect.  She’s apologizing for sleeping with the other guy.  That raises alarm bells.  Putting the white lie aside, she hasn’t done anything wrong.  So why is she bending over backward for John?  Does she want to be with John because he’s the one or because he’s the only?

Women can get sex anytime they want, but landing an exclusive relationship with a desirable guy is a different story.  In fact the girl probably slept with the other guy in a mix of frustration and insecurity.  There’s a decent chance the girl would have bailed on John if the other guy had even hinted at the possibility of commitment.  If you do commit to a single girl, make sure she’s picking you because you’re the one.

When we first read about game or take a bootcamp, the idea of the chase is thrilling in its vague abstractions, but life is more complicated.  When we’re dealing with our own emotions and the emotions of others, things get tricky.  This is what success looks like.  Are you still on board?

                In an earlier post, I mentioned that you should always be looking for underlying patterns in game.  You can consume an ocean of information and never achieve mastery until you start to recognize those patterns.  It would be unfair for me to post that article without providing examples, so here goes.

                In order to intrigue a woman, you need to come off as multi dimensional.  Be interesting and unpredictable.  Aim for contrast as much as possible.

                This really hit home during my last call with Helicase.  I was discussing with him how to calibrate my game toward 9’s and 10’s.  In short you are gaming less, and you just need killer calibration and subcommunication.

                Braddock taught all of us the brilliant move to talk about the girl in the third person over text.  For example, “Hey, this cute girl from Ohio won’t stop flirting with me.  What should I do?”  That’s kryptonite for 6’s and 7’s, however a 9 or 10 might find it too flashy.  Helicase’s tweak is genius.  He holds an ordinary conversation with the girl at the same time that he does this third person flirting over text.

                He’ll hold a normal conversation with a straight face while being incredibly flirty over text.  “So you’re an economics major.  How did you get into that?”  He might be asking basic qualification questions while at the same time texting “Can’t stop thinking about this girl with a sexy smile across from me, too bad she’s such a dork.”

                It makes you unpredictable.  For those of you who haven’t read 50 Shades of Grey put it on your reading list.  The writing is horrible, but the male character Christian Grey goes back and forth between his stern CEO presence to playfully flirting with the girl, Anastasia.  This unpredictability drives her wild.

                In the same light, if you’re sitting at a table where your legs are out of sight, you can keep touching the girl while everybody in the room just sees you two having regular chit-chat.

                Last week I pulled a girl for a same night lay.  If anybody else watched the two of us, it seemed like a normal conversation, maybe a little light teasing but nothing too extreme.  My wing said I should have been edgier.  He missed my body language.  I kept looking at the girl with strong eye contact and a bit of a smirk.  The expression communicated what I was thinking, mainly “You and I both know we’re going to rip our clothes off the first chance we get.”

                Rather than trying to remember 1000 different game techniques, ask yourself what you are doing to show contract, to become a multi faceted person.  You’ll see these patterns in real life.  Here are a few more examples.

                My natural buddy Dave, mentioned in an earlier post, is a math/finance type.  If he wore a stiff collared shirt, he would just be another nerd in finance with an ego.  Instead, Dave works out, so he can rock the wife beater Jersey shore look when he goes out.  That clashes with his easy going personality, and women don’t feel guilty about being attracted to him.

                Helicase goes out at night dressed like a jock, backwards baseball cap and all.  After years of weightlifting, he looks like one.  Then when he shows his intellectual side to the girl, she melts because she had assumed he was a dumb jock with a backward baseball cap.  Some smaller instructors come incredibly close to girls and invades their personal space when he approaches.  My friend who’s built like a bouncer would make a girl feel physically threatened with that approach, so he sticks his tongue out at cute girls.

                When I come in super-direct, people never imagine me as the quiet math type either, so it builds intrigue.  Then when I meet them for a date, I might take the motorcycle, which I never mentioned before, and it shows another side to me.

                Hopefully these examples give you a blueprint.  Now the job is on you to begin to recognize these patterns in your own game and life.

If you want options in your romantic life you have to set the right frames and boundaries, plain and simple.  A lot of people who are new to dating science are interested in casual and other non-exclusive relationships but they don’t know how to ask.  You can have more than you think as long as you lead the interaction early on.  If you don’t, the girl will steer it in the way she feels most comfortable.  Typically that’s a boyfriend frame at best and a “let’s just be friends” frame at worst.  It’s your job to break those frames early on.  It sounds harsh, but it’s a lot more honest and fair for the girl.  Otherwise she’ll make the wrong assumptions and get hurt later on.

Case in point, a few months back I meet a girl from the bar.  I get the number and we text for a little, but then it just fizzles out.  A few months later she reengages me out of the blue.  This is fairly common.  Maybe when you met the girl she was just about to get back with her boyfriend.  Who knows?  But sometimes girls have guys that are “safe” fallbacks.  These are the guys that take her out on fancy dinner dates and give her the validation she doesn’t feel from the bad boy she’s sleeping with.  It’s important not to fall into that frame.

I’m not sure what intent she has in mind when she starts texting, but she immediately asks if I’m free next week.  If you’re just starting out, chances are your whole week is free.  Don’t tell her that.  I had two days free but just picked one.  I text her the next day that I’m free Tuesday.  She tells me she’s busy Tuesday.

I don’t know if she’s testing me or if she’s really busy that day.  In any case, I don’t want to be the guy who’s going to move around his weekly schedule for some random girl.  What does that say about me?  Every time you set a boundary, you risk losing the girl.

• Z-man: “Well contact me next week if you’re not married by then.”
• Michelle: “My thing Tuesday ends around 8:00.  I could do something after that.  I do like the idea of a fall wedding.”
• Z-man: “Awesome.  I’d be happy to play the role of the gardener once the hubby falls asleep.”
• Michelle: “Well played sir.”

I always try to throw in some role play where I’m either cheating on her, or she’s cheating on her partner with me, even if this is a girl I want to date seriously.  Regardless, she doesn’t take the bait.  Her next text goes as follows:

• Michelle: Ok, executive decision.  Let’s meet at Morton’s Steakhouse at 8:15.

Now it’s obvious what she has in mind.  At this point, I need a bigger takeaway.  In phone and text game in general, you should vary the emotional pacing.  I was very flirty with her before.  Now I simply text back one word.

• Z-man: “No.”

This completely changes the emotional pacing.  This is almost like a freeze out over text.  I remove the emotional comfort we had built through flirting and I wait for her to reengage.

• Michelle: “Um, ok.”
• Z-man: “Dinner is a pretty big commitment, and I’m not looking for anything serious at the moment.”
• Michelle: “That’s not a problem.”

It probably wasn’t the smoothest way to handle it, but there’s no such thing as a perfect pickup.  I know that I’ve chipped away at a frame in her mind because I can see her begin to type something into iChat, and then delete it.  About 30 minutes pass before she texts back, “That’s not a problem.”

Keep in mind, just because a woman says she’s okay with something doesn’t mean she actually is.  I still have some work to do.  On the date I run Cajun’s question game. She buys into all of them.  Good sign.  She doesn’t kiss me, but she explains that she’s not into public displays of affection.  Ok, I’ll buy that.

We go back to her place.  She’s got more energy than most girls, but as soon as I try to take any article of clothing off she stops me.

Girls have heard the line from guys all the time that they’re not looking for anything serious.  Most guys don’t stick to that frame, however.  For girls it’s a weak frame that they can obliterate.  That’s what she’s doing now that I’m at her place.  If I spend the night at her place without sleeping with her, I’m on the path to traditional boyfriend and girlfriend.

I do the freeze out multiple times. That’s one part of the Mystery Method that is still current.  Ideally the girl is so comfortable with you sexually that this is not necessary, but every girl is different, and I don’t run perfect game.  I forget how many I do, but it’s a lot. Each time she reinitiates contact, but I still can’t even get the bra off.

At this point, this is what instructors refer to as “man-game.”  You have to be willing to lose the whole interaction.  Finally I get up.  ”Where are up going?” she asks.  I tell her that if she’s not comfortable going further tonight that’s her call and I should be getting going.

“Ok.”  She seems disappointed. It takes about 5 minutes to get dressed, and she shows no sign of relenting.  What’s happening is that she’s waiting to call my bluff.  The important part was that I didn’t flinch. No pouting, I just made it clear that if we weren’t having sex I wasn’t sticking around.

Finally get dressed and as I’m about to walk out the door she practically tackles me and shoves me back down on the bed.  At this point game on, three minutes later we’re having full on sex.  This has to be the loudest girl ever. I guess she didn’t care about her roommates.

Afterward, I get the line “I didn’t intend for this to happen.”  It’s important to make her feel comfortable with her decision.  “Hey, we had fun tonight.  Nothing to feel guilty over.”

Let’s imagine I had played the situation differently.  Let’s say I hadn’t done the freeze outs.  I would have likely gone a couple more dates with her before we finally slept together.  Then at that point if she finds out I’m dating other girls, she’s going to be a lot more hurt.  It doesn’t matter if I told her I wasn’t looking for anything serious.  Actions speak louder than words.  At every juncture in this interaction my actions conveyed that I wasn’t looking for anything serious and that if she wasn’t cool with that I would simply move on to somebody else.  You can do the same, you just don’t know it yet.

As I was talking with one of my wings this week, he made an analogy to sports.  When he focuses on one area of game, other areas suffer if he hasn’t mastered them yet.  When my wing focuses on his long game in golf, his short game takes a back seat.

It was a timely analogy because I’ve been thinking about the same thing, but for running.  Back in high school cross country we used to do these insane wind-sprints and then measure our heart rate afterward.

You could tell how in shape somebody was based on how quickly his heart rate returned to normal.  At the start of the season a tough workout would leave a guy winded for what seemed like eons afterward.  It didn’t take much of a workout to reach the maximum heart rate.  As they got better, it took more and more work to reach that maximum rate, and once the workout was over their pulse went back to normal in a flash.

You should look at your inner game the same way.  What is your recovery time?  How long does it take to bounce back from a harsh blowout?  Sometimes people misinterpret the message of having good inner game as being non reactive.  They believe they should be able to suffer a harsh rejection from a woman who’s a catch and not feel a goddamn thing.  It would be like asking the runner to sprint a mile without breathing hard.

If you’re approaching quality girls, yeah, a harsh rejection is occasionally going to hurt.  When you start game, you’re out of shape.  A six who blows you off might ruin your night.  I’ve seen it happen time and again where that initial hump stops most people from getting good.  At this time three years ago, I was still morose about having been rejected months earlier by a girl for whom I fell head over heels.

I’ve also seen people beat themselves up for not being un-reactive enough.  You’re human.  You bleed like the rest of us.  Some people read inner game material and expect that they have to achieve the peace of mind matched only by those who’ve found nirvana.  We need to think of inner-game less like nirvana and more like endurance.

This evening when I took a girl out on a date that just fizzled out.  It sucked because this girl was sexy, georgeous, and awesome, and she was totally into me at the beginning of the date.  I was moping for a good 20 minutes after it all ended, but then I perked up felt better, and figured out what to do differently the next time.

Who knows, maybe in a year’s time this might be a girl I won’t even settle for.  I do know this.  In the next year I’m going to suffer some crushing rejections and have some nights where I walk home feeling shitty.  Then I’ll bounce back.  With any luck, the same will happen to you.

In relationships we’re told never to stop being the man she became attracted to.  As Savoy says, relationship management starts way before you sleep with her.  I learned that the hard way Monday night.  When I met the girl who came over I came off as the alpha guy worthy of sex but didn’t sustain that image Monday.  I accidentally introduced boyfriend-girlfriend frames into the mix, which made her less likely to sleep with me off the bat than if I had come off as a relationship guy all along.

Yeah, if you come off as the potential boyfriend and she’ll be less likely to sleep with you off the bat, all else equal.  It’s retarded, but accept it and move on.

I met this girl near bar time.  My friend calls “veto” on me so I have to approach.  I see her at the bar counter, go direct, and donn’t get much of a response from her.  I keep plowing because she is closing out her tab and is a captive audience until she gets her credit card back.  She gets her card and says, “You got 60 seconds to impress me.”  I joke that my awesomeness can’t be condensed into that short a time span, so she’s going to need to give me her number.

I put the phone down and leave it there.  There’s a pause for a second.  I just stared at her for a second and calmly told her, “I’m not getting any younger.”  She puts her number in my phone and says “Bye now!” with a bit of a smile.  Here’s the beginning of the text string.

Me: “Hey California girl.  Is it too soon for casual text? – [Zman]”
Her: “Have a good night, [Zman].  Miss you already J
Her: Too much?
Me: “I think that’s just the right amount.  I’m ready to introduce you to my mom.”
Her: “Bring it on.  I expect a big fat ring after I win her over with my charm.”
Me: “As big as you want, but as part of the prenup I get to cheat on you.”
Her: “I’m ok with that as long as they’re hotter than me.

The point of this text string is to show how quickly the conversation became sexual with a girl I had talked to for less than ten minutes at the bar.  I keep texting her a occasionally over the course of a week and keep the role play going.  She agrees to meet me for a drink the following Monday.  She ends up starting off at my place and we both grab two drinks at my apartment.

Once we meet in person it’s game on.  We continue the sexual threads and the girl plays right along, promising to pimp me out to all the rich ladies.  Here’s my critical mistake.  I ask if she wants to hop on the Subway to grab a drink somewhere else.  She readily accepts my offer to go elsewhere, but this is the point where the night changes.  At that point I go from sex guy to “auditioning to be her husband” guy.

What was going through my mind was that I need to take the girl to multiple locations in order to build up comfort.  The problem with that is that the multiple locations are supposed to take you back to your place.  I was moving backward in the interaction which is worse than not moving at all.

Furthermore, if you’re going to a casual relationship with a girl, do NOT build much comfort at all, or even deep qualification.  It’s just enough to get her back to your place and to sleep with you.  If you do any more than that, she’ll switch to the date and wait frame, which is much harder to break.

From that point on, she accepts all my physical advances EXCEPT the ones where I go for the kiss.  Each time I got the variant of the “Easy, tiger!” response.  I was taught a good response to handle that, however I’m not at liberty to share.

Because her legs are crossed toward me and she is compliant with all my touching, I know she is still into me, but the frame is now different.  When we get back to my place, she gives me that line about how she’s “not that kind of girl.”

The window to sleep with a hot girl is very narrow.  My friend took a smoking hot girl from day game out on a date.  In retrospect she gave him all sorts of invitations such as “I don’t have to work early tomorrow,” but he missed the window, and from that point everything changed.  Learn from both our mistakes this weekend and jump through because it only opens momentarily.

A few months ago I wrote the first in a two part series on what pickup artists could learn from improv comedians.  The first part covered the inner game mindsets the performers hold and what they could teach us.  I promised a second post on humor techniques the following week.  Sorry guys.  I have a day job, and I kind of lost track of time.  So here it is, part 2, one short biblical week later.

If you’re not convinced that improv is a quick way to step up your game, I have two words for you: role plays.  A role play is a classic variation on an improv scene.  You’re setting up fantastic, fictional scenarios, and your goal is to engage the audience emotionally.  Even if you’re not explicitly doing role plays, the rules of improv will make your general storytelling and humor much better.

Yes – And

This is the fundamental idea of improv.  No matter what the other person says, you need to accept what they’ve offered and add to it.  In improv, we warm up with three line scenes.  Take this example:

• Person 1:             “I just got into med school.”
• Person 2:             “Great, but you still owe me $100,000 in student loans.”
• Person 1:             “Why do you nag all the time?  You’re the worst girlfriend ever.”

This is just a random 3 line scene that I made up.  It’s not even that creative.  But let’s digest what happened here.  First line introduces the scene.  The second person agrees with the information that’s been offered and adds something new.  Then the first person adds yet more information.

Here’s a bad way to run a 3 line scene.

• Person 1:             “I just got into med school.”
• Person 2:             “Cool.  Where did you get in?”
• Person 1:             “Harvard.”

Do you see the difference in the energy between the two interactions?  Because Person 2 added no information with their question, the scene essentially becomes a monologue with a sounding board.

This doesn’t even have to be the case in role plays.  You can use “Yes – And” to get out of shit tests.  My natural buddy picked up an 18 year old when he was 30.  She asked him at the bar.

• 18 year old:         “Aren’t you a little old for this bar?”
• My Buddy:          “Yeah, but I’m rich! (laughing)”

With few exceptions, the worst thing you can do is deny the scene partner.  Especially in a bar, the girl will create as entertaining a scene as your improv scene partners.  Just roll with it.  Here’s a bad way to go about it.

• PUA:      “You’re just mad at me because you’re bad in bed.”
• Girl:        “Hey, your brother never complained.”
• PUA:      “Psst, you never slept with my brother.”
• Girl:        “Yeah I did.”
• PUA:      “No you didn’t”
• Et cetera

You see the problem here.  Whatever she offers, even if it doesn’t paint you in a good light, take it and run with it.  This is a skill that gets easier with time.  The retired Love Systems Instructor 5.0 had a text exchange with a woman that follows the same pattern.  (I’m not quoting directly)

• 5.0:         “You’re just mad at me because you’re bad in bed.”
• Girl:        “Hey, your brother never complained.”
• 5.0:         “He has lower standards.”

 Establish the Relationship Between The Characters

In a bar, much of the work is already done for you.  You’ll be setting up a sexual relationship of some sort.  You want to establish the character dynamic as soon as possible.  It makes callback humor way easier.

Let’s look back at the medical school 3 line scene I pulled out of my ass.  Establishing the boyfriend-girlfriend relationship puts a lot more dynamics into play.

At the bar, the relationship you impose is usually going to be a sexual one.  Either you’re the guy who’s awesome in bed or terrible, nowhere in between.

Let’s look at one of Cajun’s classic role plays where he talks about taking a woman to Greece, listening to Aerosmith records all day, and then going to McDonalds and eating McNuggets.

If you want to keep that role play going, you have two choices.  The bad way is to continue to pile on props.  “Then we can take a scooter and climb the Swiss Alps”, but this gets boring fast.  The better way is to establish a relationship dynamic.  If you say “I’m worried you’re going to beat me up like the last vacation where we snuck off together.”  Now you’ve established a new relationship dynamic, and the role play can last a lot longer without getting stale.

 Be Incredibly Specific

This is a variation of the old platitude from English class “Show, don’t tell.”

You can’t say “I’m good in bed.”  That’s boring.  Be more specific.  “I don’t know how to say this, but I’m cited twice as often in the Kama Sutra as all the other men in the world combined.

In the same fashion, don’t tell the woman “Stop beating me all the time.”  You can say “I’m running out of foundation makeup to cover the bruises, can you at least hit me with a soft object tonight?”

 To Hell With Logic

These next few points all fall under this general category.  The first thing is it doesn’t matter what you say, just own it.  One of the funniest scenes was when a guy didn’t know what to add to the scene, so he started pulling imaginary cheetos out of his nose to help out.  But damn it, he did it with confidence!  The audience love it.

Likewise in a bar, when you say illogical shit, the important part is that you’re communicating to the woman that you’re not taking yourself or the interaction seriously.

I didn’t understand this at first when my first instructor Fader told the strippers that he can’t trust them in the marriage anymore because they come home drunk and beat him every day.

Likewise, I regularly use Braddock’s line “You’re just saying that because I’m black.”  Both he and I are white.  If you’re black, use the line, “You’re just saying that because I’m Asian.”  You get the picture.

In Conclusion

These are the most important points I’ve learned from improv.  I could fill 100 pages.  There are plenty of other resources to get better at this.  Try the book “Truth in Comedy” which is pretty much the bible on improvising.  Nothing beats signing up for an improv class in your local town.  Mine cost me $150 for an eight week class.  Given how much money I dropped on bootcamps, $150 was well worth it to practice thinking more quickly on my feet.

An old mentor at work used to tell me, “If it’s easy you’re doing something wrong.”  I’ve been in the game long enough to realize just how true that statement is.  During the last eighteen months and 1500 approaches I’ve introduced a lot of newcomers to this unconventional field of study.

What usually happens is the newbie will ask me to demonstrate.  I’ll walk up to a girl, open direct, and get a warm reaction.  The newbie will see me joking, see her laughing, and hear what seems to him like regular conversation.  With any luck the girl will be single and offer up her phone number.  “Man that’s so easy, it’s incredible!” the newbie usually responds.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Make no mistake, this skill is doable.  It’s  achievable, but that’s different.

It’s normal in life to try to recognize patterns.  We humans are great at it, sometimes too great.  Sometimes we see a link where there is none.  People thousands of years ago used to perform elaborate dances that they believed would make it rain.  Baseball players wear their lucky socks longer than is sanitary.  When we watch a PUA perform a direct approach, the approach itself is the major pattern deviation, so it’s only logical to assume that the magic is embedded in the words of the approach.

If you’re a newbie and you’re looking at game this way, you’re missing out.  Let’s imagine you see a natural chat up a girl in the elevator.  Take away the ballsy approach and he still does well.  The natural is doing the same things we are but it’s under the guise of normal conversation.  A newbie probably doesn’t pick up on the subtleties.

Whether the natural knows it or not, he’s taking the girl through a range of emotions.  Maybe he does some push-pull, lightly shoving the girl when she says something worth teasing.  Watch as he moves quickly from joking to offering an intriguing fact about himself.  Better yet, watch as he ALMOST tells the girl the intriguing fact, dangling a carrot in front of her, begging her to ask a follow up question.

When Helicase told me about the time recently he picked up a waitress, he went back and forth between building rapport and breaking it.  “Just came from Chicago (building rapport), you’d love it there in the winter!  (facetiously breaking rapport with California girl)”  When Nick Hoss did his mini seminar, we asked him to demonstrate how he takes girls through a range of emotions.  He went back and forth between teasing, role playing, nicknames, offering genuine stories about himself, and getting the “girl” (an approach coach pretending to be a girl), to offer up information.

There was so much that was imbedded in both Nick Hoss’s and Helicase’s interactions.  Peeling back the onion layers doesn’t begin to describe it.  The newbies don’t see those layers off the bat.  Naturals can get away not noticing these patterns; you can’t.  I don’t want to scare you, but if you don’t begin to notice those layers, you’ll burn out.  Your approach anxiety will go away so you’ll get some results, but you’ll reach a glass ceiling.  You’ll get frustrated and then quit.

So, how do you make sure that doesn’t happen to you?  Live training is a great place to start.  Apart from that, remember the 2:1 rule.  Newbies are taught to spend two hours in the field for every hour reading.  Some people need to be reminded about the reading portion.  My printed copy of Magic Bullets looks destroyed.  I STILL go back and review the material.

You should do the same.  If you can’t see the onion layers yet, don’t worry.  You’ll eventually reach a point where you can watch somebody who’s good with women and figure out exactly what it is they’re doing right.  I don’t care if you’re watching your friend in action or if you’re analyzing the moves of fictional characters such as Hank Moody and Christian Grey.

Once you get there, you’ll be able to practice with self correction.  Then you’ll come full circle.  You’ll think to yourself.  “Man. this is so easy.”