Canceling Dates

Here’s a good rule of thumb: Whenever a woman cancels a date and doesn’t offer an alternative time, she is rejecting you.

It doesn’t matter if the excuse she gives sounds plausible, or you have proof that she really can’t make the date due to other obligations. If she doesn’t offer a make-up date, she’s not interested enough to see you again. You *could* press the matter, but you’d be better off forgetting her and sticking with girls who demonstrate more enthusiasm to spend time with you.

In my experience, almost every girl who has cancelled a date for a presumably legitimate reason, has offered another time to meet if she already had it in her heart that she wanted to fuck me. Knowing this, it’s tactically savvy to refrain from counter-offering a make-up date until she has had a chance to make her counter offer. So when a girl cancels on you, give her space to offer another date and time; don’t rush to suggest an alternative meeting time. Like trial texting, this is a great way to gauge a woman’s emotional investment in you, and to consequently avoid dropping too much money and time on girls who are on the fence about their feelings for you.

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Tard Game

A buddy was telling me about a semi-famous tard intern who works in his office. He has a job responsibility that is about as complex as Walmart greeter. He also has very tight game.

“The way he handles the hot girls in my office is nothing short of amazing.”

“How so?”

“Girls will go up to him and say ‘Good morning, Joe*!’, and Joe will bark back ‘You’re crazy don’t even talk to me!'” [*fake name]

“Wow. Nuclear neg.”

“If a girl says ‘Hi’ to him, he’ll say ‘Don’t kiss me, I have a girlfriend.’ If she gets too far into his personal space, he’ll scold her: ‘Don’t touch me! You’re not my girlfriend.'”

“And the girls find this charming?”

“You wouldn’t believe it. The girls are scrambling to figure out how to get this tard to like them. ‘Why doesn’t he like me?’ He’s friendly to all the guys in the office, but he gives the girls a hard time. Sometimes, when he sees one of the girls talking to another dude, he’ll go up to them and tell the girl not to touch him, he has a girlfriend.”

“Fascinating. He totally assumes the sale. And he’s an expert AMOG. Killer combo.”

“I told him once, ‘Hey man, your frame is incredible.'”

“Tard game. The next evolution in pickup. Does he actually have a girlfriend?”

“Yeah. He’s dating another tard chick.”

“I wonder what their lovemaking sounds like.”

“Probably like angry seals.”

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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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Staying One Step Ahead Of Suspicious Women

Match.com has an article called ‘Are You Dating A Player?‘ which warns women away from players by identifying some telltale signs of the inveterate philanderer (i.e., the man most attractive to women).

He’s bold. For the player, the pickup is a game. He doesn’t approach women with the same nerves or awkwardness of a normal guy. He’ll walk up confidently, with a big smile and great eye contact. His manner will be smooth and put-together. This doesn’t mean you should look for the opposite — a stuttering wreck — but be wary of a guy who acts completely bulletproof. A little anxiety is natural.

This is a good point. Overqualification is a bigger problem than most men realize, and can kill a pickup in its infancy. Advanced players understand that demonstrating a hint of vulnerability is integral to the seduction process, particularly when the target is insecure about her looks. It’s OK to be cool as a cucumber when approaching 9s and 10s (or even 8s if you look like the type of guy who shouldn’t be dating 8s), but for any other woman, showing a flash of nervousness while still maintaining state control can go a long way toward endearing you to her. I wouldn’t show nervousness in your body language, though. Confident body language is too important to pressing women’s attraction buttons to risk mucking up. Instead, look down after you introduce yourself and say something like “I can’t believe I’m doing this”. All it takes is a subtle gesture to communicate a touch of anxiety. The uglier the girl is, the more you’ll have to pretend to be a marble-mouthed nervous wreck. But then, why are you hitting on ugly girls?

He declares his feelings right away. Players employ a “fast come-on,” according to Dr. Kalish, making sweeping statements of affection (e.g., “You’re the most perfect woman I’ve ever met”) from the word go. These declarations can feel very welcome, especially if you’ve been in a string of relationships that lacked such intimacy. Just remember that true closeness takes time, and it’s normal for a guy to be more guarded about his emotions.

This is wrong. *Phony* players who imagine they are Don Juan of the downtown declare their feelings of love right away. Actual players who know the score do no such thing. They know that women crave the challenge of winning a man’s affection. Direct game like this can work, but generally only in limited contexts, such as with women who aren’t especially hot. And players who advocate direct game usually revert to indirect game soon after the opener.

He always plans romantic dates. Dating for the player is kind of a performance art. And he’s going to be good at it. “He won’t just bring a box of chocolates,” Dr. Kalish warns. “He’ll take you to a state fair and offer to share cotton candy.” Nice guys can be romantic, too, but life with them won’t always feel like a Robert Pattinson movie. Nonstop rooftop picnics and weekends at the cottage could be too much.

I wouldn’t worry about this. Women universally love men who take them on creative, inspired dates. (NOTE: Creative != expensive.) But there is such a thing as overkill. I wouldn’t put much date effort into a chick I haven’t banged yet. If you want to be on the safe side, save your creative, romantic dates until after you’ve banged her.

He has lots of acquaintances, no close friends. The player tends to be a lone wolf. That doesn’t mean he lacks for golfing buddies. The same way he charms women, he can charm lots of people in his life. The key is that, in friendship as in romance, his affections run broad but not deep. If solid pals are hard to come by with this guy, consider yourself warned.

She’s not going to find out about the structure of your friendships until well after you’ve fucked her, so this supposed red flag should be of zero concern to you. I don’t even think this is true. I know ladies’ men who have very deep friendships, with both men and women.

He’s a thrill-seeker. A guy who spends his spare time looking for a rush — fast driving, bungee jumping, kite-boarding, heli-skiing — should give you pause. This type, says Dr. Kalish, craves the excitement that comes from conquering a difficult challenge, and that goes for his relationship goals as well. Once he’s “conquered” you, your allure may quickly fade.

Yeah, I suppose this is a tipoff. If you’re really worried about pinging a girl’s play-dar, then just cut back on the skydiving, champ.

***

The second half of the article describes five signs that the man she is dating is a niceguy. Thus, you should pay attention to this advice if you want to do nothing but masturbate for the rest of your life.

He’s goofy. The sincere suitor is not suave. He doesn’t always say the right thing.

Vulnerability game. Just don’t overdo the goofiness. The niceguy is effortlessly goofy because his lack of confidence gets the better of him. This is not what women want. What they do want is an effortlessly suave man who is occasionally goofy. This will make him seem attainable without sacrificing his raw sex appeal.

He remembers personal details and events. It’s the most basic way to show someone you care — by learning about his or her life and interests.

Awful advice for any man. Women don’t want you to remember personal details about them; at least, not until it matters, like when she’s hinting at marriage and she wants to see signs of commitment from you. Caring carebears do not get laid. Careless assholes do.

He treats his mama right. Generally speaking, a loving family begets a loving person, and the opposite is also true.

Don’t Lotharios have a reputation for being mammas’ boys? Regardless, this is a stupid sign to look for. Men with even half a brain are not going to introduce girls they haven’t had sex with yet to their mothers. If you’re not a complete feeb, she’ll never know what your relationship with your mother is like until well after many sessions of intimacy have transpired.

He can mingle. “The sincere guy doesn’t mind being in a room with people who are more accomplished than he is,” Dr. Kalish says.

Wrong. Players are almost universally better minglers than are niceguys. Niceguys may be good listeners, sure, but that’s because they’re too boring to contribute to the conversation.

He says, “I love you.” As fawning as a player’s affections are, there’s still something sacred about the L-bomb. Kalish found that insincere men would say, “I want to grow old with you,” or “I want to have children with you,” but “I love you” remained somehow off limits. A guy who says those three magic words may very well mean them.

I see the problem here. The author is conflating “insincere men” with “players”. The two are not the same. A player can easily fall head over heels in love with a woman, and declare it from the rooftops. He just happens to do this with a lot of women, instead of just one.

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Breaking The Seal

I had two conversations going on. One with my date (first date) sitting next to me and one in my head.

“They call this game the beautiful sport. Personally, I think bowling should have that title. What do you think?”

“I wouldn’t call bowling a sport.” She smirks.

“Sure it is. Hand eye coordination. Groupies. It qualifies.”

I lay my hand on her forearm. She doesn’t pull away, but she doesn’t return my touch with one of her own. Not a positive sign. Also, I’m turned to her and she’s still facing forward. I’ll try mirroring.

“That’s a very disturbing stick figure drawing. Does your mother know you have all this pent up aggression?”

“Hey, it’s your game. If you can’t handle it you shouldn’t ask to play.” She puts the pencil down with authority.

She brushes her cheek with the back of her hand. I put my hand to my face in a nearly identical gesture. Then I tug at the hair in back of my head. Almost instantly, she plays with a lock of hair on her head. Progress!

“Sounds like your parents have one of those relationships that most people envy.” I’m genuinely impressed.

“It hasn’t always been perfect, but yeah, I’m lucky to have them. They’re a good role model.”

I have my hand on her shoulder when she says this. I’m escalating kino by the book, but she’s not touching me in response at all. Her body language, while not cold, is not warming up either, although her punchy voice tone, her sincere smile, and her glittering eyes betray a deep emotional engagement.

It has been an hour and two drinks since we met this night. People are around us, but not much paying attention to us, except for one Slavic looking girl sitting with three men on the other side of the bar who keeps checking me out. Naturally, I notice this. When women’s eyes are on me, I feel a pleasant disturbance in my calm. A nuke could go off downtown and I’ll still take mental note of some random chick looking at me curiously.

Normally, this is the time of the date when I go for the kiss, but she has sent no signals that an advance toward her lips would yield victory. I’ve had girls faceturn on me before during a lip approach, and it’s an invisible blow to the solar plexus, but I always remind myself that the rejection of a spurned kiss is nothing to the regret of a kiss not taken. Yet… she is inscrutable. Not leaning into me, not leaning away from me. Smiling, but not licking her lips. Accepting of my touches, but not returning in kind. I absorb the tension of the moment, silent and serene, careful to avoid lurching clumsily into try-hard, but the seconds are ticking and the silence is expanding. I could put off the decision and move this conversation in a new direction, but then I risk losing momentum. If seduction were a balloon, overtalking is like pinching the knot to let the air escape slowly.

When I was new to the pickup arts, I defaulted to Mystery’s kiss routine to break the seal and kiss a girl on a first date (or first night). The routine was simple.

“Would you like to kiss me?”

If she says “Yes”, I go for the kiss.

If she says “No”, I say “I didn’t say you *could*… you just had that look on your face.”

If she says “Maybe”, I say “Let’s find out.”

It was a good routine, and never let me down, but as I (re)discovered through the accumulation of experience and memories of past seductions, it was totally unnecessary. The perfect first kiss is ushered wordlessly, imposed on the woman by sheer force of masculine will, intoxicating in its bold, unspoken grandeur, sophisticated in its exquisite timing. Cleverness and calculated filibuster, more often than not, detracts from its simple glory.

But still, I needed a sign. There is always a sign if you look for it.

As I finished speaking, I stared at her. In the silence, my pupils vibrated along a beam of mental wire connected to her pupils. An unmoved girl would quickly glance away. She would have, but not before a telling second passed when her gaze met mine and lingered, and I had all the excuse I needed. Plunging headlong into her aura of feminine repose, I struck the softness of her lips with purpose, and she answered with abandon.

The only kiss routine you need is this: does she hold your gaze for a second longer than is comfortable? If so, you must move. Failure to do so will constitute the loss of a magical moment that will never quite be recaptured in the same way again.

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Women Don’t Want You To Remember Everything About Them

A man and woman have a conversation upon meeting for the first time. During it, the man learns that the woman works for a telecom company and graduated from Wake Forest. After twenty minutes, the man decides the pickup is going well and asks for the girl’s number, offering Thursday as a good night for them to meet and continue their prelude to a rogering chat. She gives it to him but apologetically explains she’ll be busy Thursday attending a friend’s charity event. He acknowledges this obstacle and they settle on meeting Friday instead.

Friday rolls around and the man, wanting to impress the woman, regurgitates some key information she mentioned during their initial meeting. The conversation then proceeds like this:

HE: Hey, good to see you again!

SHE: You too.

HE: Must be busy working at that telecom company.

SHE: Yeah, I suppose it is.

[Five minutes later, after some more talking…]

HE: So do you know any other Wake Forest alumni in town?

SHE: There are a few.

[More blah blah-ing…]

HE: By the way, how was your friend’s charity event yesterday?

SHE: Oh, it was pretty good.

***

If the impression you got from this exchange is borderline creepy stalker vibe, you’re not alone. The guy in my above example sounds TRY-HARD. Most girls would be put off by a man laundry listing a bunch of prior conversational touchstones to force rapport. Women complain a lot about how men JUST DON’T LISTEN, but in reality they are turned off by men who listen too well. Or, more precisely, they are turned off by men who listen for the obvious, but ignore the subtext. The fact is that a high status man would not remember much of what a girl told him anyhow, so men who have poor listening skills are often quite attractive to women, at least in the early stages of a seduction. Later on, in the midst of an LTR, when a girl is yearning for signs of dependability, love and commitment, a man would be wise to occasionally remember the little details.

I’ve written before how poor listening is many men’s downfall in the comfort building stage of seduction, but as game is an art as well as science, there are qualifications to some rules. Reciting a girl’s important historical and cultural moments back to her as if she were a history book you studied for a test is going to make you sound like you are trying to impress her, which is a tingle killer if ever there was one. The key to correctly impressing women is to seem like you’re not impressing them at all. Even better is to seem like she is there to impress you, while still saying and doing those things that will subconsciously impress her. The girl above will wonder (all wondering performed in the primitive hidden recesses of the hindbrain of course) if the man has any life at all if he can so clearly remember the name of the company and the date and time of a charity event that some random girl he met just once before had mentioned to him.

More importantly, this kind of rote regurgitation is *boring*. If you are going to recall anything about a girl, make it her values or her personality quirks or her opinions on whimsical subjects. Say she told you she likes the color purple, has a bad habit of cracking her knuckles when she gets nervous, and is a thrill seeker. Now, on the followup date, a demonstration of your listening skills might go like this:

YOU: If you crack your knuckles, I’ll know that means its time for another drink to calm you down.

***

YOU: Didn’t you say your favorite color was mauve, or was it purple? I’m hoping it’s mauve, because purple is the color of kings and queens. It means you are going to be high maintenance for any man. Are you high maintenance?

***

YOU: Let’s do something crazy and go down to the river to watch the moon rise. I figure you’ve got an adventurous streak like I do.

***

Hopefully, you see the difference in how to capitalize on your efforts to listen intently to what a girl says about herself. You DO want to let a girl know you’ve remembered things she said, but it matters *which* things, and it matters how you demonstrate your powers of recall. A truly advanced seduction artist listens for themes instead of dry facts, values instead of descriptions, and he relays his knowledge of her not by repeating her self-revelations like an overjoyed kid reciting the alphabet, but by slyly hinting at what he knows about her.

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Game Is 50% Not Putting Foot In Mouth

I was chatting up a cute chick when I overheard another pickup in progress right next to me. The guy was projecting his voice loudly so I couldn’t help but hear just about every word he said to the smiling girl who was listening intently to him. I glanced over when I had a moment to myself to observe his success or failure. (While watching other men crash and burn is a visceral pleasure, I also enjoy watching men succeed because, one, I can always learn something new, and, two, I am still amazed how often men in successful pickups utilize game principles even when they don’t know they’re doing that.)

The guy was good-looking and high energy. His body language and voice tone were confident. At one point, when he stepped away to get a beer, the girl’s friend leaned in and I heard her say “Wow, he’s cute.” From my vantage, at least until then, this pickup was his to lose.

Which he did. Back with beer in hand, they continued talking, or rather, he continued talking and punctuating his words with finger jabs into the air, while she listened. And listened. And listened. Agonizing minutes ticked by. The energy was suddenly one-sided with his wild, and panicky, abandon, for he must have noticed her demeanor changing from delight to impassive politeness to confused annoyance. The previous pickup momentum, torqued in large measure simply on the strength of his looks and initial pose of confidence, dissipated with surprising rapidity as his “game” crumbled around him in a heap of monkey dancing, gum flapping, desperate body posturing, and cloying oversmiling. He began leaning into her in a vain effort to compel her to commit to the waning conversation, but she was already one foot out the door as her eyes darted around searching for a friend, a lifeline, to pull her away from this once attractive man. His inner beta had betrayed him.

Finally, denouement. A friend touched her elbow and whispered something in her ear. The guy figured out from her body language she was leaving soon, so he suggested they exchange numbers. Or he might’ve suggested he give her his number, I couldn’t pick up what he said at that point very clearly. She took her phone out and he typed his number into it and gave it back to her. As she was leaving, she didn’t look back at him. (A good test whether a girl will flake on you for a future date is if she looks back at you briefly after you have gotten her number and she is leaving the premises with her friends. No lookback = flake.) But he wasn’t done yet. Still smiling like a tard getting tickled, he shouted at her departing footsteps: “Hey, you better memorize my number!”

Woofa.

It all went down in ten minutes. Let this be a lesson. Very good looks on a man without any game will buy him 30 seconds to ten minutes of an attractive girl’s attention, after which he will be unceremoniously (and disappointedly) discarded just like any regular run of the mill schlub who doesn’t understand the art of seduction. Men need to stop projecting their fascination with looks onto women; personality and alphaness are what electrify a woman’s pleasure center. Good looks can send initial sparks, (and sparks is all it is) but the allure wears quickly without compensatory game to buttress it.

I number closed my girl. I did not tell her I would memorize her number.

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