When To Move In For The Kiss On A First Date

Shaft writes:

I’d like your thoughts on a recent date I had.

We were introduced through family. [Ed: Never a good idea if you play the short game.] We went on one date and it went well. Started 10 PM and didn’t end until 530AM.

Conversation was free and easy and I escalated slowly throughout the evening, although I didn’t push hard enough. When I needed to demonstrate value I did.  When I told her to follow she obeyed. I dropped some good negs.  I had problems with my ATM card but she had no problem paying until I straightened them out (we visited 4-5 venues) without a fuss. We said our goodbyes.

The second date is the one I’d like you to comment on.  It was the next day and I called her and invited her out for drinks.  She told me she’d call me after dinner and kept her word.  She sounded surprised to hear from me so soon but didn’t hem or haw and we met within a half hour.  This time we found a pool hall and I displayed my superiority while gently negging her.

HER: Am I really the worst pool player you’ve ever seen?

ME: It’s kind of tough to call.  I knew this blind guy who liked to play…

She liked that one.

We moved to a lounge which had couches and single chairs. I guided her to a loveseat and she didn’t protest.

I spread out alpha style and put my arm up on the back, almost around her.  We chatted for a while, light touching, teasing.  She went to the bathroom and this is when the shit test started. I hadn’t had a real one so far that night or on the first date.

I noticed that after she returned from the bathroom another button on her shirt was undone and her hair was a little more tousled than before.  She began by complementing my overall physique, but she then started to ask why I wore my clothes a little more loosely than usual. I told her it was for comfort. She told me she couldn’t tell whether or not I was in shape.  As I was wearing a polo and an undershirt she said she could better judge if I removed the polo.

Let me say that a year ago I might have complied to a request like this without hesitating, but after some game research and restoring my manly dignity, I do not perform for women, nor do I give something for nothing. Nor would I be embarassed about what she would see. I don’t have a six pack but I’m tall, lean, with wide shoulders and v-shaped back.

I decided to see if she would put her money where her mouth was and told her if she wanted it she would have to kiss me. She said no. Right then I knew it was about control. If she had wanted an excuse to escalate she had it. I reframed by teasing her she didn’t impress me with her sales skills (she’s in sales). That bought me time to pay
and walk her out of the bar and home. It was about a forty minute walk. We had a good convo pretending to bargain over the price to see me without the outershirt.

Halfway to her place I asked her if she could do me a favor. I took off my jacket and tossed it to her. “Can you hold this for me? I’m warm.” The smile on her face was priceless. She thought she was about to get what she wanted. A few minutes later when handing me back the jacket, she made an attempt to lift up my shirt. I gently stopped her hands and feigned disappointment that she would resort to trickery.  The rest of the walk home I kept about half a step ahead.

As we reached her door I slowed but didn’t stop and said my goodbyes as I turned to continue home.  She looked stunned that I didn’t hug her or peck her on the cheek. It was cordial but minimal with no contact.

As I walked away I was proud of myself for not selling out to desperation. My gut told me following an order for her would have spelled doom, but I know I missed an opportunity somewhere. Would she say yes to another date?

Appreciated,
Shaft

Even though this question from the reader is about his second date, the title of the post is about moving in for the kiss on the first date, since it is the first date when you should get physical with a girl. The majority of kiss-less first dates lead nowhere. It is also a bad idea to schedule a second date the very next day following the first date. This reader was one of the fortunate few to dodge some self-inflicted seduction-killing obstacles. The rest of his game — such as the handling of her shit tests — was good, and probably accounted for her continued interest.

Her are some basic rules about kissing on the first date:

1. Do not kiss her when you meet her at the start of the first date. You are not as debonair or as European as you think you are, and neither is she. A kiss upon meeting is going to feel awkward for her and for you. This goes even in those first date cases where you previously had a sloppy make-out with her in the bar on the night when you scored her digits. Actually, it goes doubly for those instances. (Previous sloppy bar make-outs reveal your hand, so your job should be to temporarily disqualify yourself so she doesn’t think you are too easy.)
2. Do not kiss her at the end of the first date unless there was significant physical contact during the date. Multiply the awkwardness of the initial meeting kiss by ten and you will know the feeling of planting a night-ending wet one on a girl at the end of a date that was woefully free of any physical connection.
3. Do not attempt to force a nonexistent rapport by kissing the girl. This rule applies for any date, but its disregard is most evident on the first date. Many men will try to light a fuse in their dates by moving in for the kiss sans any physical groundwork, incorrectly thinking that their shared sterling, intellectual conversation was proof enough that she was ready for kissing. They are then flummoxed when she delivers the cheek turn, the “whoa, not so fast” rejoinder, or, worse, the “what do you think you’re doing?” lawyerspeak shut-down. Instead of the smooth move these men imagined in their heads it would be, they end up lurching clumsily from chit chat at a four foot distance to a lips-probing kiss flying in at the speed of light. Kissing is an emergent property of successfully executed game; it is not a standalone game maneuver that you can run in any context. If you haven’t escalated physical touching with a girl during a date, don’t think that a kiss after three hours of arms-crossed shop talk will advance the seduction.
4. Do not go for the first date kiss in a crowded room. Venue bounce, drink, venue bounce again, settle into a sofa at a lounge, make out. Most girls lie to themselves that they are “not that kind of girl”; why give a girl an excuse to test her self-delusions by moving in for the kiss where a huge crowd can analyze the depravity of her sluttiness?
5. The ideal first date kiss should happen sometime in the middle of the date. Kino escalation, growing intimacy, then kissing, followed by a cooling off push-away, more light banter, reinitiated kino, etc… if you can physically peak in the middle to last third of the date, you will leave her wanting more while simultaneously avoiding the dreaded last minute kiss of desperation that poisons so many dates. Mid-date physical peaking also prevents ASD (anti-slut defense).

So to sum up, don’t kiss at the very beginning or the desperate end of a first date, don’t force a kiss if she isn’t giving indicators of interest, escalate physical contact until you ideally begin kissing her in the middle to last third of a date, and wait to kiss her when you’re settled into an intimate location (this includes a back alley if the weather is warm).

Caveat: If you are going for a bust-or-bail first date same night lay, kiss her whenever the fuck you feel like it. An end-of-official-date kiss is simply a prelude to a beginning-of-unofficial-date night of fornication.

The ideal kiss window should open effortlessly if your game is tight. Girls who are being seduced properly *want* to be kissed. Always check for dilating pupils, hair twisting, leg opening, lip licking, heel dangling, head cocking, bar stool swiveling, drink swilling, incidental thigh touching, and hand on chin head propping.

To the reader: it’s hard to know if she’ll agree to a third date based on how you described the second date ending. It looks like you fell into the trap of overgaming to compensate for some fuck-ups you may have done on the first date, and to reestablish hand after she denied you the kiss when you playfully challenged her to one. In your zeal to demonstrate non-neediness, you forgot that you have to make a physical move on a girl to get the ball rolling toward sex. There is a fine line between slyly camouflaging your intentions and showing no intention at all. Two dates have now gone by without any kissing or intimate touching, from what you have written. This is a recipe for a seduction about to fizzle.

What you did by nonchalantly walking off was probably better than ending the date on an awkward goodnight cheek kiss where she held all the cards, but you shouldn’t have put yourself in that situation to begin with. Had you prepped the courtship by kissing her earlier in the evening (let’s say during drinks at the lounge), the date-ending goodbye would not have been a test of wills pitting your aloofness against her coyness. Sure, by unexpectedly denying her the long-awaited goodbye kiss of prostration you may have won the battle, but you lost the war well before your tepid final flanking maneuver.

In the future, push for kissing by the middle of the first date, but don’t overdo it. Making out with a girl for too long and too hard on the first date — again, unless you are gunning for a SNL — will gradually lower your value and, hence, raise her buyer’s remorse, leading to flaking on subsequent dates. The perfect seduction moves two steps forward, one step back. No kissing = celibate LJBF. Too much kissing = flaking. Ideal kissing = mid-date, in measured doses. You want to break the lip barrier without making a spectacle of your horniness.

Always remember that the alpha male demonstrates by his actions complete mastery over his sexual desire, and knows when and how to parcel it. A man with simmering, feral arousal that he can control is intoxicating to women. This is why make-outs followed abruptly by takeaways or teasing push-offs is so attractive to women — they love that they can’t figure out how much you really want to fuck them.

When you kiss on the first date, stop before she does, lean back to talk some more, and chastise her lightly for moving too fast. Repeat a couple times during the night, then hold her hand as you walk her home. Kiss her *before* you get to her door, then drop her off about twenty feet from her place (to reduce the impression of formality that surrounds a door-step departure), giving her a hug if you wish. Then tell her you had a great time AND LEAVE. Do not tell her you’ll call her, or try to set up a second date. Just leave, and she’ll thank you later, in the best way women know, for blessing her happily restless sleep that night with the inscrutability of your actions.

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Values Compatibility And Sexual Attraction

A reader wrote a while back about her thoughts on the importance of shared values to pickup and dating. Here she comments that men of a conservative political persuasion would not find love with liberal women, and would have to focus their dating efforts on meeting similarly conservative women (which she caricatured as belonging to three distinct groups):

So that leaves him with other conservatives. Call it values, attraction, whatever, but I only know of three types: God/family hunters; rich-diamond-buying-guy hunters; and caveman hunters.

I’ve dated a number of conservative women and they were just as cool as their liberal sisters. They weren’t golddiggers (and I speak as a man who brings game to the table that ensures the golddigger programming isn’t triggered), they weren’t abstaining “God hunters” (whatever religious impulses they had did not affect their voracious sexual appetites), and they weren’t the type to routinely date dunderheaded cavemen. They enjoyed the same things that most young women enjoy — indie music, art shows, movies, astrology, gossip, fashion, travel, water balloon fights. These universal female interests cross ideological boundaries.

Granted, none of the conservative women I dated were self-professed evangelicals, so I can’t say for sure that the coolness factor (or my sex life) wouldn’t take a nose dive if I limited my dating choices to that segment of the American population.

Re: hiding your politics and values from girls: People can avoid topics and keep views under wraps for a few weeks, maybe months. Major lifestyle differences, like “I don’t want kids,” or “I go to church every Sunday,” or even “I eat at McDonald’s (or refuse to)” are another story.

You’re doing it wrong if you think dating ideologically dissimilar people is about keeping topics “under wraps”. It’s nothing of the sort. Real sexual attraction and love circumvent that type of defensively dull mechanistic dating jive. It’s irrelevant to men with tight game, because “major lifestyle differences” would hardly ever be summoned, purposely or inadvertently, to move a seduction forward. That is because what builds attraction is not a discussion over national health insurance or the blessings of having kids. Sustained sexual attraction is an ancient instinct that reacts to certain mate value cues, and political conformity is not one of them. If anything, a girl can be *more* attracted to a man who is ideologically different from her, as long as he is passionate about his beliefs without being charmless in explaining them. Girls are often shocked into arousal by the presence of a man willing to speak his mind and refrain from obsequiously parroting her opinions.

Nevertheless, my experience with women shows that politics rarely comes up as a discussion topic during the pickup and the ensuing weeks of heady sexual thrill. If it does come up early on, I know that my game has failed and I have veered away from the bread and butter of what makes a seduction successful. This is true whether I bring it up (I rarely do) or she brings it up (less rare, but still not very common, even when dating urban yentas). If you are gaming a girl properly, the last thing on her mind will be your political affinity. She may briefly broach the subject (in which case I usually offhandedly dismiss it with a casual disclosure of my “independent, libertarian leanings”, a practically inarguable and unopposable political stance which freezes most girls into a nonreactive state. Libertarianism: autistic ideology, fantastic courtship lube), but if she’s smiling and getting horny, she won’t likely linger on any political topic of discussion. Remember, if she likes you and respects your alphaness, she’ll be unmotivated to challenge your political beliefs. A good rule of thumb: if a girl you are dating is giving you grief for your politics, walk away. She will prove to be a high maintenance witch on the warpath to de-ball you at every opportunity.

Now at some point down the road those arid and tingle-killing ideological, religious or political issues will rise to the fore. It is inevitable when you spend so much time with a girl that it becomes impossible to sequester zones of discussion in an unshared limbo. But ultimately it won’t matter if the girl loves the man. She’ll instead be more drawn to his standing firmly for his principles. Which leads us to…

Maxim #61: Among love’s many benefits is its capacity for diminishing to insignificance those differences that would have prevented its flourishing in the first place.

Corollary to Maxim #61: Avoid emphasizing any values differences until love, or a mind-blowing orgasm, has taken root.

Only a major crisis like a disagreement over having kids will present an eventual stumbling block that could be too high to hurdle. Usually those kinds of issues don’t make a nuisance of themselves until months — even years — into the relationship. The types of women who shrilly harp on the importance of “values compatibility” to dating are the same types of women who bring 463 bullet point mental checklists in all dealings they have with potential suitors. This attitude and lack of dating spontaneity makes them very unattractive and unfeminine and most men find it a turnoff. Women older than 28, overeducated women, women who have to fill their schedules with “events” and “classes”, and urban Jewish women tend to exhibit the worst of this behavior.

Having said the above, I will tell you a story about a girl I dumped over a political disagreement. She and I had been together for a good amount of time, but there was an undercurrent of mutual dissatisfaction neither one of us could quite put our fingers on. The sex was good and we did all the “right” things that couples are assumed by polite society to do together. But it felt forced, like we were self-consciously cognizant of our dance moves, and the rhythm and flow that should be the hallmark of a naturally progressing relationship had subordinated itself to carefully mimicking a placemat of numbered foot steps on the ground. On paper, we were good together, but paper is a flimsy palimpsest upon which to etch a living poem.

So it was that, wholly unexpected and random, we rapidly death-spiraled like mating eagles into a heated political discussion once and I chose not the path of diplomacy and conciliation, but the jagged cliffside rocks of immoveable obstinacy. I hurled facts and figures at her, the holy water to the emotionally vampiric female soul. She reacted as a startled vampiress would; shrieks and bared fangs, her pallor drained from her face in shock at my bombshell impudence. “Why is he not kowtowing to me?”, I could practically hear her hamster morse coding to the nether reaches of her brain.

She vainly attempted to parry me, but, as with most women, she was no match. In a fit of pique and sullenness, she snarled “I’m appalled that you think this way”. I said, “Get over yourself” and walked away. One week later, she called to leave me a message. I listened to the message, and never saw or spoke to her again.

The moral of this story should be obvious. The one time a political discussion was ostensibly the objective reason for a breakup was in fact proof that a political disagreement had nothing at all to do with the breakup. Among other things said, the message she left confirmed something both of us had been suspecting for a while:

“I just didn’t feel the magic was there.”

Our political incompatibility was merely a front for our underlying love incompatibility. An excuse to open the lid on a boiling pot of spiteful ennui.

Any escape hatch in a storm…

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Girlfriend Got A Dog

Reader R. writes:

My casual girlfriend is getting a dog, a German Sheppard. That is fine because I love dogs but I am concerned with the future early morning walk responsibility that she will try to shirk off.

I know what is going to happen: we will be in bed and the dog will bark. “Can you be a sweetheart and go walk him?”

I don’t want to go walk the dog so she can sleep. Whats the best way to deal with this? Just tell her straight up: “No, he’s your dog, walk him or let him shit on the floor.” Or should I be nicer about it? Or just ignore her and pretend to be asleep?

Goddammit. Balancing a girl and alphaness is harder than it looks. Thanks for the help.

PS, I hooked up with an exgf this past weekend after following your rules. I really enjoyed it but it awoke feeling that I still really liked this girl. I ended the relationship back in February because I could sense my slide into betatude and wanted to end it on my terms before I became pussy-whipped. (this was before I found your blog) I still don’t have her number but we have mutual friends and can get it. Should I? I would like to turn her into a fuckbuddy. Should I wait until we see each other again (mutual friends and parties etc) or wait for her to initiate contact? When we hooked up, I could tell the attraction for me was greater than ever (thanks to your advice). My willpower right now is being tested because while I would like to contact her, I would hate to destroy the frame I have created.

Thanks for all the help. I am confident that because of your words of wisdom, I am well on my way to becoming a super-alpha on campus. Bring on the fall semester and the packs of sorority girls.

This is a bigger deal than you might think. How many of you had parents who disliked animals? You would beg and plead for a dog until finally one day they caved and got you one, with the admonition that “now that you have this dog, it will be your responsibility to walk it and pick up its poop every day”. Of course, after three weeks, Dad would be schlepping it out at 6 a.m. every morning walking the dog and muttering under his breath about his damned ingrate kids.

Well, women are like those children who quickly abdicate their responsibilities when there’s someone else willing, or able to be persuaded, to do them. The mode of persuasion is usually implicit sex withdrawal, puppy dog eyes (fittingly), or empty feel-good flattery.

If you find yourself in this reader’s predicament with a girlfriend, a dog you could do without, and a looming literal shit test, you should firmly remind her you are her lover, not a dog walker for her royal highness. If this doesn’t work, buy a pet boa constrictor and kindly ask her to be a sweetheart and feed it the live mice you have stored in the pantry when you are too busy doing something else. That should help get the point across.

As for the reader’s second question, beta regression is an inherent danger in following the rules for getting back on ex-girlfriend; you might fall for her all over again, repeating the same mistakes you made the first go round. You should get her number through the mutual friend, but don’t call her for a couple weeks. (This is because your quasi-gf will be expecting a phone call from you once she hears from the mutual friend that you requested it; therefore, you must defy her expectation if you want her to vagina to simmer with piqued interest.) The trick to lassoing an ex-girlfriend into a sexual Act II is is to hammer home the impression that you absolutely do not need her in your life; rather, you *want* her around because she amuses you in a special way.

Since you did the official dumping back in February, you have hand, however tenuous you may believe that hand is. Girls are acutely sensitive to dump dynamics to the exclusion of almost all other relationship-ending factors. No matter how beta you think you acted during the waning months of the relationship, if you dumped her without warning she will carry that stingma (stigma + sting) with her for months afterward, and possibly into future relationships with betas who can’t understand why she still pines for an asshole like you.

Remember, too, that girls who aren’t fat, old or saddled with bastard spawn are rarely dumped by men; scientific calculations have shown that women do about 70-80% of all the dumping. Therefore, as a man having done the dumping, you have automatically raised your value far above the mass of men who could ostensibly compete for her attention. You now occupy an outsized place in her mind as a man higher status than all the other men currently chasing after her, regardless of the objectively measurable status differentials between you and them. Conclusion: dumping is a huge DHV. You do not need to game your ex hardcore; she is already thinking about you on a daily basis since that heartbreaking moment way back in February.

However, enough time has passed that she may just now be getting over stray thoughts of reuniting with you. It takes about six months for a cute girl to “move on” from a man who dumped her. (It takes anywhere from five years to a lifetime for a fat chick to move on from same.) Attempting to reengage via a date could backfire and destroy your frame as you mentioned. She might very well take it as an opportunity to retrieve some of the hand she lost from the initial dumping. I could easily envision her telling you a date is a bad idea, and smiling wickedly to herself once you got off the phone. Instead, I would try to arrange meetings with her at parties of friends and let nature take its course. Just keep to the Aloof and Indifferent frame and her hamster will do all the spinning for you.

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Telling Girls You Were Once Engaged

If you are a man such as myself with a long and storied relationship history, it will start to worry new girls that you meet why you have decided to remain “single”, i.e. unmarried. You see, a former marriage, no matter how spectacular its failing, is a mark of success on a man; it says to a prospective mate he was able at one time to attract a woman the traditional way and bind her in the facsimile of a long term commitment. This is another one of those intractable and intrinsic gender double standards that whiners will just have to learn to accept with dignity — divorced men suffer less of a blow to their dating market value than do divorced women. The same is true of divorced men with kids, or single dads; they do not suffer nearly the same market value penalty that single moms do.

It all comes down to the biologically induced disparity in how men and women respond to the phenomenon of preselection. Men, being nearly 100% visually oriented in their attractions to women, couldn’t care less what kind of man is on her arm, or what kind of men used to be on her arm. They see, they like. Simple equation. All they care about is that she is unencumbered (or unskewered) by dicks present, and to a lesser extent, by dicks past. Women, on the other hand, rely heavily on preselection (when it is available as a tool to judge mate quality) in their attractions to men. They see he is liked, they like.

And so it goes with divorcées. Divorced men can see a boost in their attractiveness to women (as long as they avoid bringing up the ex-wife in reverent tones during pickups), while divorced women see no boost, or even a negative hit, in their attractiveness to men. Consequently, my advice to divorced men is to mention your divorcée status early in a conversation. My advice for divorced women would be just the opposite — refrain from bringing it up, and if he asks, lie. This double standard is so entrenched that even *married* men will see an increase in their pickup success.

This is why I have discovered that a man telling girls he was once engaged works to stimulate their curiosity. And female curiosity is the catalyst that speeds the chemical reaction leading to tingles. Why engaged? Because former finacée sounds sexier than ex-wife. It is pregnant with romantic and tragic possibility. She sees this man, once engaged but no longer, and her mind reels with fantasy of what went wrong. Was it irreconcilable differences? Did he cheat on her? Did she move away? Did he make demands she couldn’t meet? Did she die in a horrible car accident? Was there a vast cultural gulf? Did her family sabotage their love? What did she look like?

Don’t worry if you were never engaged. Lie. It is the sort of lie that is nearly impossible to detect, or accidentally expose. And it is the sort of lie women crave from men, and would not disrupt with arid investigative pursuit. Your job, as a man with a keen grasp of female psychology, is to lie and let her overworked hamster fill in the missing narrative. The best way to do this is to say you were once engaged to a French girl, for American women bristle from the imagined competitive threat of French girls. (When American women ask me who my favorite actresses are, I always mention Marion Cotillard and Audrey Tautou. Then I watch with satisfaction their faces flash a hint of sexually lubricative insecurity.)

HER: Were you always single?

THE DEVIL WHO REMAKES U IN HIS IMAGE: No, I was once engaged.

HER: Really!

THE DEVIL WHO REMAKES U IN HIS IMAGE: Yes. [Turn away, look pensively at the horizon] She was a French girl. We were in love.

HER: What happened?

THE DEVIL WHO REMAKES U IN HIS IMAGE: It’s complicated.

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A Test Of Your Game

The context: You’ve met a girl (not through social connections) and exchanged numbers. You and her went on a first date to a local dive a few days later, and it was good — comfortable rapport punctuated with sensual makeouts. A few more days pass and you call to arrange a second date. This time she invites you to join her at a public event where she will be in attendance along with many of her friends and friends of friends. It is an event that was long ago preplanned, and she is obligated to go. She says you’re welcome to invite some of your friends as well.

The quandary: Do you, or do you not, agree to meet her and, presumably, all her friends, at this event for a second date?

The crux: You are not a newb at the game. You understand that a “group” date will put the brakes on moving the seduction forward to a juicy climax of lustmaking. A girl is not likely to risk slut labeling by physically escalating with you, a new man, in the company of her friends. In the past, you would have balked at such a date suggestion, and offered her the opportunity to meet you another time when she is free of obligations, but you are not so easily dissuaded anymore by these kinds of traditional dating momentum killers. Your spirit flows with the essence of the rakes of seductions past and the life lessons of years of experience, and you sense opportunity where lesser men see obstacles.

What do you do?

The analysis that should be going through your head:

If you are confident in your social savviness, a chance to meet a date’s friends is a chance to work the room. In other words, it’s a chance to demonstrate higher value on the cheap. If you get bored of the usual first-second date routine, (and, truth be told, if you are even semi-decent at game you should be going on enough first and second dates that they get boring after a while, no matter what the girl is like), then a date where her friends will be present is a way to spice things up. You can stretch your abilities and challenge yourself by striking up conversations with strangers and making her girlfriends, and whatever guy friends she has, laugh and enjoy the pleasure of your company.

If you are less confident in your social skills, a group oriented date could ruin your chances. It’s bad enough when a one-on-one date goes cold; it’s irrevocably worse when a one-on-twenty “date” winds up with you the odd man out because you’re too shy or awkward to command a room and handle multi-threaded conversations without turning spergy. Nothing will lower your value faster than meeting a group of people and slowly disappearing into the wall, nursing your drink despondently, as everyone around you has fun.

But, high risk high reward. The flip side of crossing the event horizon of a massive DLV implosion is the chance to explode in a glorious DHV supernova. No guts no glory.

What about the motivations of the girl? You don’t know her well enough yet to get a sense of that, but you do know that her motivations aren’t necessarily bad. Sure, a girl may invite you on a group second date because subconsciously she is taking a step back from you, unsure if you are the knight of her 463 bullet point mental checklist. The “meet the friends” pre-sex date is often better termed the “meet the buffer zone” second date. If that is the case, you would be right to decline the date.

But a girl could just as easily like you so much that she blithely sees nothing wrong with the date+friends formula. She is happy to see you whenever an opportunity arises, whether on a conventional date or in the company of her friends. Remember that cute girls, being the discriminating sex accustomed to passively accepting approaches by men, have never had to learn in any great depth the reality of the sexual market and what constitutes a dating faux pas. They simply lack the awareness of how precarious the mating dance is for men, who must jump through many more hoops to get sexytime than women do (that is, until those women get older or fatter and their bond rating downgraded). If women were subjected to the same dating rules as men and understood how seemingly trivial social missteps can mean the difference between getting rejected or loved, I doubt many of them would be able to function at all in the dating scene, their egos relentlessly hammered into pulpy globules of self-doubt and anxiety.

There is another explanation for her motivations; she may like you and want to a) show you off to her friends, b) observe how her friends react to you (a form of preselection), and c) observe how well you handle her friends. All these motivations could issue from a desire to want to find justifications for her feelings of attraction to you. Many times girls are psychologically stampeded by their own growing attraction. A girl risks a lot more than men do in the relinquishment to arousal — pregnancy, for one. In the state of nature, pre-safe abortion and pre-widespread contraceptives, a surrender to womanly desire could spell disaster. A man has no equivalent worry. And so, in an effort to justify her desire and “make it OK” for her to continue surrendering to you, she will sometimes throw dating curveballs to test your mettle, ease her conscience, and pave the way for her arousal to find fulfillment. These curveballs can be banal, like the oddly suggested group date, or invidious, like the bitchy shit test.

In the final analysis, if your game is shaky, you may want to avoid any pre-sex group oriented dates as a rule. The risk is probably not worth the potential upside, and it won’t cost you much to simply decline in favor of a future one-on-one date in dim lighting. If, on the other hand, your social savvy is impressive and you’re confident that the girl is really into you, meeting her friends could be a fast track to intimacy.

******

UPDATE

What I did:

I told her I’d stop by. I went and chatted up her friends while she darted about catching up with them and performing event duties. She went out of her way to introduce me to many of her friends, which I thought was cool. And, as a nice bonus, one of her cute female friends flirted with me for quite a while, which wasn’t much of a surprise as girls tend to become more intrigued when they see you in the company of one of their girl friends. I left by myself a couple hours later, after I told her to enjoy the rest of the night with her friends. Our next date was very good.

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It May Be Better To Game In Small Groups

Randall Parker forwarded me a link to a study about abundance of mate choice affecting the quality of the choice.

Quantity may determine quality when choosing romantic partners

The context in which humans meet potential mates has a hidden influence on who they decide to pursue. In particular, when people have a large number of potential dating partners to select among, they respond by paying attention to different types of characteristics – discarding attributes such as education, smoking status, and occupation in favor of physical characteristics such as height and weight.

A number of studies in recent years have looked at what happens to humans when faced with extensive choice – too many kinds of chocolate, or too many detergents to choose from at the grocery store. Under such circumstances, consumer psychologists believe that the brain may become “overwhelmed,” potentially leading to poorer quality choice or choice deferral. Psychological scientist Alison Lenton, of the University of Edinburgh, and economist Marco Francesconi, of the University of Essex, wanted to know if the same was true of mate choice, given that humans have been practicing this particular choice for millennia. “Is having too many mate options really like having too many jams?” they ask. The study is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

To find out how people respond to relatively limited versus extensive mate choice, Lenton and Francesconi analyzed data from 84 speed dating events, which is where people meet with a series of potential dates for three minutes each. Afterward, the men and women report their choices (a “yes” or “no” for each person). It should surprise no one that choosers generally preferred people who were taller, younger, and well-educated. Women also preferred partners who weren’t too skinny, and men preferred women who weren’t overweight. Beyond that, though, the attributes that speed daters paid attention to depended on how many opposite-sex speed daters attended the event.

At bigger speed dating events, with 24 or more dates, both male and female choosers were more likely to decide based on attributes that could be judged quickly, such as their dates’ height, and whether they were underweight, normal weight, or overweight. At smaller events, choosers were more likely to make decisions based on attributes that take longer to identify and evaluate, such as their dates’ level of education, their type of job, and whether or not the person smokes.

“Obviously, I think we look for different attributes in partners than what we look for in a chocolate, a jam or a 401(k) plan,” says Lenton. “But one of the points we’re trying to make in this article is it’s the same brain we’re carrying around. There are constraints on what our brains can do – they’re quite powerful, but they can’t pay attention to everything at once.” And if the brain is faced with abundant choice, even about who to go out with, it may make decisions based on what it can evaluate most quickly. As a result, this previously invisible aspect of the choice environment has the potential to determine one’s romantic fate.

The consumerists’ quandary. I’m surprised this phenomenon hasn’t been discussed more by game instructors. It would seem logical that the number of girls as well as the number of men in a pickup environment would have an effect on how we choose mates and how we ourselves are perceived as mates. How many times have you stood in front of a huge aisle displaying 62 varieties of vitamins and just said “fuck it” and grabbed the cheapest, or the nearest, brand? If “choice deferral” or choice constriction happens with vitamin brands, then it could conceivably happen with girl brands.

So what are the take-home points from this study? What should we men, always on the lookout for a quicker route to getting laid and loved, learn from the study’s conclusions?

1. In groups that have a lot of men, (for example, clubs and bars on busy nights), women will evaluate your mate potential on “superficial” (i.e. readily discernible) qualities like height and looks.
2. A corollary to number 1 is that in venues where there is a lot of male competition for the women to choose among, and you are average or below in superficial traits, you will not get many chances to run game on the girls.
3. In groups of few people, (for example, book clubs or painting classes), women will evaluate your potential as a partner on more “meaningful” qualities that can only be discovered during the course of lengthier conversations.
4. A corollary to number 3 is that women will be more likely to grant an average looking man an audition at an event that has few other men from which the women can choose. She will also want to know more about each man she joins in conversation.

If you imagine each woman has a tingle-o-meter that oscillates with varying strength to the proportion of male attractiveness traits present in a man she is talking with, and that also oscillates according to the number of other men in her visual field, then you can visualize how a typical woman will react to you in different environments. If you are great looking and tall, you will get a lot of insta-play from women where large numbers of other men are present. She will be choosing you almost entirely based on your easily perceived high value traits, and will likely be more forgiving of any shortfalls you may have in the less visually oriented suite of male attractiveness traits. So if you’re a broke, uneducated, Johnny Depp lookalike, you’ll want to make nightclubs your venue of choice, and you’ll want to close the deal sooner rather than later, before she has an inclination to dig deeper into your value as a man.

If you are not great looking or tall, then you’ll want to steer clear of venues where there will be a lot of men. You will do best in smaller groups with few men, let’s say bars on a weeknight, where the women will be open to learning more about you, and also likelier to overlook any physical shortcomings you may have. She will be choosing you based on a mixed package of easily perceived physical traits and less obvious high value male traits such as dominance, physical assuredness, humor, and charm/game. So if you have tight game but lack the looks to easily acquire auditions to demonstrate your game, you’ll want to focus on environments with few other men around, like day game or really any venue on a night besides Friday or Saturday night.

Since by definition most men are not in the top 10% of looks and height, it stands to reason that pickup instructors should not be teaching game to newbies in high energy environments like nightclubs. The best place to practice game is any place where a bunch of superficially high value men will not show up to distract the girl.

Some other conclusions we can draw from the study:

• This “choice abundance mentality” by women can be artificially triggered. If you have a lot of guy friends who are worse looking than you, then bring your posse to the local club. Faced with all those men to choose from, the women will naturally gravitate to you as the most superficially appealing man of the group.
• Addendum to the above: your friends can’t be *too* dorky, because then the women will tar you with the same dork brush.
• Also, if one of your less good looking friends has better game than you, and the environment you are in is sufficiently low key that he can run his game undistracted, then he may steal the girls’ attention from you. Good looks on a man are great, but good game is even better.
• If you are very good looking but a so-so conversationalist, you will want to stay away from things like book clubs, where the homelier men with sharp wits will absolutely crush you. I’ve seen it happen. Score one for the smooth talking Voltaires.
• If you are very good looking but have no game, suit up and hit da clubs on a busy night where women can instantly compare your looks to a ton of other men. Physical presence game is all you’ll need. Try to get used to one night stands.
• Homelier men should focus on gaming one or two girls in a night. They need more time to allow their heart light to shine. Theirs is a big stage with lots of props and a multitude of scenes to tell the story. Homelier men must be better at building connections with women, because a strong emotional connection will handily compensate for a weak physical magnetism.
• Good looking men should maximize the number of girls they hit on in a night. They don’t need a lot of time to attract attention. Theirs is a small stage featuring a one-act play and a very large audience all vying to get his autograph after the show. By maximizing the number of targets and compressing time spent with each target into a few minutes, they maximize their chance for a same night lay.
• If you have a sucky job and few ostentatious credentials to wave around, but your game is tight, you’ll want to hit on girls in large venues. The girls will be less likely to grill you on your educational and career background, and more likely to enjoy the spontaneous feelings you evoke in them. In other words, choice abundance means that girls are going to be too distracted to bother figuring out your life story. A confused girl is an easily gamed girl.
• If you have a great job, money, and conventional cred, but your game is weak, you’ll want to hit on girls on slow nights in smaller venues, or day game and insta-date them. Maximize your strengths and minimize your weaknesses. A calm, focused girl is a future time oriented girl who will judge on substance more than flash. (Note: sluts excluded.)
• Where there are a lot of men, you can create the illusion of male scarcity (and thus increase your odds of successfully gaming a girl) by walking away from girls early in a conversation. Always end conversations first, seem needlessly distracted, and make it seem like you are a man who has options, even if technically in a bar with more men than women, you don’t.
• If you are looking for a wife or girlfriend, you may want to shift your base of operations to smaller venues or events where you will be less tempted by choice abundance to invest time gaming the flashiest chicks whose key attribute is how good to go they are.

Apropos the study, only go to speed dating events where the women rotate. You will seem in higher demand than you really are.

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Unemployment Busting The Mating Market?

Zeets sounded like a teenager who just discovered his parents’ 1980s era VHS porn stash.

“Dude, the women are coming out of the woodwork. I’m getting more than nibbles now. The fish are hooking themselves as soon as I drop the line in the water!”

Zeets has been blowing up the internet dating niche for the past couple of months. Multiple dates per week, and women were reaching out to him, texting him constantly about times to meet and what he’s doing for the weekend. And all this in DC. It’s as if the heavens parted and pussy shone down on his head like a beam of light.

“Why do you think that is? What’s changed this winter?”

Zeets stroked his goatee like a young Zeus. “Well, I can tell you what I think is going on. Most of these women I’m seeing are unemployed. That’s a big change from just a year ago when they all had exciting and wonderful nonprofit jobs. Now all those precious nonprofits have dried up. Suddenly these women are out of work living in an expensive city. A lot of them don’t have two pennies to rub together because of grad school loans.”

“And that’s where a guy with a steady paycheck can step in and clean up.”

Zeets jabbed a finger of exclamation. “Exactly. You take a guy like me, who knows his way around women, and who has a job and steady income, and it’s like putting a bulls-eye on my cock. Women are gunning for it. They’re not so ridiculously picky anymore.”

This conversation got me thinking about economic trends and how they impact the dating market. In most of the country, men are filling the unemployed ranks, not women. But DC seems to be an outlier. Women here are feeling the sting of the recession just as much, if not more so, than men. Accordingly, out of work DC women are adjusting their self-worth downward, and in the process becoming less spastically picky about what they require in a man.

It’s no secret that DC women are full of themselves. 4s think they’re 7s, 7s think they’re 9s, and cunty lawyers waving their big vocabularies and multiple degrees think they’re supermodels. I’ve discussed many reasons why women would be prone to overestimating their looks. Now you can add unemployment to the list of factors that influence how a woman perceives her mating value.

Women, and a lot of men, are stricken by a psychological disease known as projection. What women find attractive in a man is what they think men find attractive in them. All else equal, women generally prefer men with a steady income to unemployed men. And so they mistakenly assume men prefer to date women with a job and income. But men and women don’t neatly mirror each other that way. If the woman is good-looking enough, most men won’t give a shit if she’s out of work. They’ll be thinking of the lay, only the lay, and nothing but the lay. In fact, many men will go out of their way to date unemployed women, because they justifiably think they can date up a point or two when their designation as a job holder grants them a relative boost in status.

Maxim #31: Any change in the relative status between men and women introduces new instabilities into the mating market.

Women, however, almost always assign too much importance to their own employment status and too little importance to their looks or weight when subconsciously calculating how desirable they are to men. This phenomenon explains why DC, filled as it is with hard-charging alpha globocorporate cunts, is plagued by haughty 4s who think they can play a 7’s game. It also explains why women, now that the jobs are disappearing, are beginning to lower their expectations in the mating market based on a distorted self-evaluation of their sexual worth. Soon DC will resemble the less economically illustrious parts of the country, where a 4 is properly reminded she is a 4 every morning she wakes up and looks sadly in the mirror.

As long as women continue to believe their job status matters to men, regions where the recession has impacted heavily female occupations are going to be boomtowns for men looking for a chance to play out of their league. That 8 you thought was too hot for you? Well, now that she’s out of work, she just might give your beta provider ass the time of day.

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