SOCIAL SAVVY #18: HOW TO HAVE A MAN-TO-WOMAN CONVERSATION
Welcome to the next episode!
Last time we talked about rejection and a sort of pre-approach building block in order to help you think about rejection in a new light. Here we are going to dive into the approach itself and the initial conversation and highlight some things that most guys don’t think about.
So towards the end of the last episode I mentioned that the one key thing you need to be thinking about on your approach is yourintention. Your intentions, and what you are feeling, are going to be what everything else stems from. This is your core, and everything you do or say is going to be a manifestation of the honest intent and feeling you want to have at your core.
Remember, we aren’t using tricks of manipulation to get women to sleep with us to validate ourselves. If you are, then this isn’t for you. What we are doing is taking control of the things we want and going for them without apology.
So without further a do let’s get into a typical approach. You see a girl, and let’s assume that your intention is to know who she is and get close to her. Interpret that how you will.
EYE CONTACT
I’m a fan of eye contact before an approach, but it’s not compulsory in any sense as sometimes you can’t get this happening easily so if you can’t make eye contact with a woman don’t let it stop you from approaching.
By eye contact I’m talking about what is often the first stage of an approach. It’s when you see a girl and you look at her, and she looks back.
You should try to get into this situation a lot because it allows you to know if you should approach or not because you already have the girls attention before approaching and they will let you know purely through eye contact whether you should go over.
So it’s really quite simple. Try and get into the habit of looking at the girls you want to talk to, having them look back at you, and then not breaking eye contact first.
That’s the first step in a nutshell. Look at the girl you like, and don’t break eye contact when she looks at you. Also smile. But smile from the eyes, and smile from that intention and that feeling you have for her.
So, after this let’s assume that she looks away. You are not going to look away, or at least not completely. You are going to keep her in your peripheral view and see if she gives you a look back again. She most likely will because even if you are a creeper, she is going to want to know if you are still starring at her.
Now, if she doesn’t look back, it’s tough to say whether you go anyway or don’t. Doesn’t matter at the end of the day. But if you are new and only want low-risk approaches, then a NO LOOK BACK is a sign that she might not respond positively if you approach.
What you want, is repeated looks at you where you catch her, or a single or more return looks at you while smiling.
This is what you call an INVITATION TO GET OVER THERE. 100%.
I remember I started practicing this, I guess you could say, mating ritual, and in a funny way, I used to feel that this was a high-pressure moment, and in a way it is.
Why?
Because you’ve put yourself out there, you’ve knocked on the door, and the door has been opened, so to now to not go through the door is weird.
That’s right. If you’ve gotten the look back and the smile, you NEED to go. You have shown yourself to be confident and above other guys, who are neutral, she has accepted that you are confident, and now if you let it hang, you, in a sense, bungee yourself to not only being a neutral guy who isn’t approaching or looking at her, but to a wimp. Below neutral.
If you’ve gotten the look back and the smile, you NEED to go. You have shown yourself to be confident and above other guys, who are neutral, she has accepted that you are confident enough to look at her, and now if you let it hang, you, in a sense, bungee yourself to not only being a neutral guy who isn’t approaching or looking at her, but to a wimp. Below neutral.
That’s the pressure you are feeling if you were anywhere like me.
So in short, when someone opens the door for you, you walk through it, or you are a weirdo / wimp etc.
And that means you approach at that moment! Not when you are a bit more tipsy and have a bit more courage. It doesn’t work like that. A lot of girls will totally smell your BS.
APPROACHING AND OPENING
We are not completely moving on from eye contact, but we are in the sense of whether you did or did not get it before approaching. Some people say, just approach and I tend to agree. Eye contact, if you are new and want low risk, but if you’re fine with a little higher risk then you don’t need it.
We are not moving on from eye contact, as a tool though, which is bar none your strongest tool of communication and flirting. It’s about 85%. It’s your all-purpose power tool, your swiss army knife, your bathroom buddy. (Gremlins reference)
So here it is, eye contact or no, you are approaching and getting to the number one sticking point that a lot men have. Opening.
So how do you open?
With as little pressure on yourself as possible and with as few thoughts about “tricks” and “game” going through your mind as possible.
So, simple is best. Pick one.
Hey! I’m <your name>
Hello! I’m <your name>
Hey, I saw you from over there and wanted to meet you. I’m <your name>
Hey, I thought you were cute and wanted to say hi. I’m <your name>
Hey, I like your XYZ (choose something unique) I’m <your name>
You get the point. What do all these lines have in common? They are honest and your intentions are clear, and not even from the words you are saying, no. Don’t focus on the words, that’s why they’re so easy.
Your approach itself is saying more than enough about you. The way you stand, your voice, your eye contact. They are doing ALL the work. What you say is the cherry on the top, if that.
Anyway, whats next?
KISS
You got it. The thing to do after your initial opener is KISS. As in,
Keep It Simple, Stupid
Remember that you are there to meet people and connect with people. You know the science, you know this is a key to happiness, and you know that you only want the best people in your life.
You are good. You want to know what she’s about. So keep it simple. Only weirdos and people who are socially inept can’t respond to simple things. So after the initial open keep other questions simple.
I like…
What are you up to tonight?
Where are you from?
What’s going on tonight?
All simple, and legitimate questions that can and should open a conversation. Now, remember your eye contact is still going here. Your intention and feeling is behind everything you say.
Your thoughts, words, actions and demeanor are always in sync, and sitting on that calm breath.
DEALING WITH SILENCE
Silence is something you are going to need to become really really OK with, and with this style of approach you need to be extra comfortable with it.
When you ask your questions you need to learn to be quiet when they reply, and then when they have replied you need to really be putting the ball back in their court quickly and be ok with silence.
How do you do that?
Here is a typical conversation of what it might look like.
Him: Hey, I thought you looked interesting. I’m Joe.
Her: Hey, Well, thank you
Him: So what’s going on tonight?
Her: Not much, just hanging out.
Him: Oh whats the occasion?
Her: Just after work drinks really.
Him: Interesting.
Notice the incredible amount of low investment and unoriginality in what you are asking. This is all good. Remember everything else about you is doing the attraction work.
The silence will likely come in after you say “Interesting” and this is going to communicate different things. 1) Your comfort level will show confidence and non-neediness 2) You are polarizing her or forcing her to show interest by reinitiating the conversation.
When showing this to people I often get comments like, “It’s like a battle of handling awkwardness,” and in a way it is. But you should be fine with it because you know what you are doing and what is happening.
Eventually, she will crack and continue the conversation. In a sense you are teaching her how to have a conversation and be as cool as you are. That should be the tone, but obviously not in a dick way. You are more or less saying, “I’m interested, you need to tell me what your deal is because that’s what this interaction is about”
WHAT IF SHE DOESN’T BREAK THE SILENCE?
So you say, “Interesting” and then you get a 10-second pause and she isn’t filling the gap. You will be gauging her eye contact and body language here, so if she’s giggling and blushing and touching her hair, you can often escalate to “Wow you’re adorable”, “Aw I love shy girls” *hug*
But let’s say it’s a neutral sort of frozen moment.
You need to be LOOKING at her with a face like “Whats the deal? Have you had a conversation before?”
Not saying it. Looking it. Subtly at first but more obvious the more silences she allows to let linger.
Then. Ask another equally simple comment. If she’s given you something to grab on to, like she’s with friends, you could ask if they are best friends or how they know each other, but if not, try the following simple questions.
Where are you from? > Leading to her up bringing
Have you been here before? > Leading to good places to go
What are you drinking? > Leading to favorite drinks
I say leading to other things incase you need to get through another silence moment in the next few seconds, but never be thinking of things to say after you ask a question. That is bad communication skills. You are asking about her and you should listen to her answers.
The logic behind this whole approach is that you are a man and she is a woman. She is the one in the makeup, the expensive haircut, nice dress and smelling wonderful. The woman is the flower. They radiate more than men, have more to talk about and are more emotionally expressive. It’s feminine energy, something you don’t have.
As a man, you are not a flower, so don’ try to be, you won’t be able to compete. By allowing a flower to be a flower, you are merely making things easy on both you .
HOOKING
Hooking is often used in pick up, and I think it’s a legitimate idea that after so many approaches you will definitely feel it when it happens. It’s the moment were you realize you are having an interaction with the person. They are not leaving, and you are engaged.
When in a hook stage with women you want to step it up a bit with what you are saying.
A lot of people recommend open-ended questions (none Yes or No answers), and I would say this is fine if you are building friendships, but with women, I recommend more Statements or Assumptive Questions.
Why?
Well, it ties in with cold reading. If you ask a girl, “Which school do you go to?”, it’s and open-ended question, and she will tell you.
But if you ask a girl, “Do you go to UCLA?” and she does you look perceptive and it can build rapport very quickly. If you she says no, then she will correct you and she may start talking more.
The same works for statements “You look like you go to UCLA”. There is so much more to respond to with this. She will wonder, why she looks like that? Is she giving off a certain vibe? or she will jump to correct you and maybe take a dig at you for being wrong.
Either way, there is more emotion involved, which is what you want.
WHAT TO TALK ABOUT
For me, I stick to three things, when trying to build rapport with someone. Remember, that you’re here to get close to someone, and to build trust and to see if this person is someone you might like.
That doesn’t mean having things in common like hobbies, although that can be great, but how you are in common intellectually, emotionally and with how you view the world is more important.
So how do you find this out?
Focus the conversation on these three things;
- Motivations & Inspirations
- Emotions & Feelings
- Personality Attributes
If you break that down more practically, it is;
1. What makes them do the things they do.
2. What do they feel when they do it.
3. What kind of person would do such things.
By finding out this information about a person it enables you to talk on a deeper more thoughtful level, it enables you to cold read better, which we know helps rapport building speed, and it enables you to get right to the root of what makes a person tick, so you can screen them against your own standards.
Here is a conversation I remember having, where I managed to ask questions that aimed to find out the fore-mentioned information.
Me: You look like a UCLA girl. (Statement / Cold read)
Her: Well actually, I run my own business online.
Me: Wow, aren’t you different! What made you take the road less traveled and do that? (Motivations / Inspirations)
Her: I didn’t know want to study in school, and I don’t understand why people fork out all that money. So I started studying online and opened up my store on ebay and it started slow, but now it’s pretty consistent.
Me: So every day you just sort of wake up and work when you want. That must feel good. (Emotions felt)
Her: It does. I’m usually diligent too but however this week I’ve only worked a few hours. It feels good to be able to do that and not have a boss to answer to.
Me: You must be the brave daredevil amongst your friends. I mean most people take the college route, find a job, husband, marriage, dog, matching towels blah blah, and you just did the opposite of everyone else. (Personality Traits)
Her: Yeh I’ve always been like an anti-conformist. I was pretty emo in high school.
See the dynamic of the conversation? It wasn’t the typical boring mundane question asking most guys do. In fact, there aren’t any questions in there at all. She spoke the most, but I was still leading the conversation.
You might be thinking, where are you going with this conversation though? Isn’t it still going to deep into nonsexual territory?
Yes and No.
The conversation is building rapport and comfort, however, sexuality is coming from body language. In the conversation above it was a random conversation outside a bar were she was getting some fresh air, and the touching was zero, but the eye contact, body language and my intent on the open were all there.
In short. She knew i was hitting on her already. I would never approach a girl and get into this level of comfort building straight off the bat. Remember, you get to this after some attraction is built and she has reciprocated by showing she’s attracted to you too.
If you get your open right it isn’t hard to turn it up a gear sexually, both verbally and physically, so long as the intentions are clear.
Problems with physical escalation come when they come suddenly and a girl is like “Hold on, I thought this was a friendly guy wanting a chat, and now he’s suddenly all in my space”
HOW TO MAKE CONVERSATIONS SEXUAL
Assuming you remember that your intentions are the foundation of any interaction, you should be able to polarize a girl pretty quickly and know whether to keep pushing or to lay off.
The main reason I was able to make the above conversation sexual is that everything leading up to the comfort building was me showing interest. My opener was me saying she was hot, I had touched her before getting into a hooked, rapport building type conversation, and my body language was open and comfortable.
However, if you do think you are in a situation where the conversation has taken over the body language and eye contact, then you are basically going to need to stop the conversation and go back to polarizing her or forcing her to respond to your advances.
Everything else is a waste of time unless you just want to be her friend.
What I’m saying is, if you have failed to make your intentions clear, you need to stop and make your intentions clear. The way you do this is by building sexual tension.
I came up with the following formula.
SEXUAL TENSION = EXPRESSIVE BODY LANGUAGE + FORCED SILENCE
Let’s break up each part.
Sexual tension is the feeling of tension in the air. Like someone blowing up a balloon slowly. Something feels like it’s going to give way, and at any moment it can be released but you don’t. You just let it hang.
Expressive body language comes from you core intentions. Assuming you are talking to this girl because you like her, you need to be thinking about her honestly. Look at her soft lips and her eyes, feel confident in how you are feeling, feel confident in the fact that you are not shy to let it be known you want to kiss her right then and there.
Like a quarterback in American football you need to learn to sit right in the pocket while all things external are going on, whether chaotic or not. The pocket of sexual tension.
Forced silence. Nothing physical can happen while a conversation is still happening. Therefore in order to end talking and get into kissing and touching both of you need to be quiet for a moment.
How do you do this?
Let’s continue the conversation from earlier….
Her: Yeh I’ve always been like an anti-conformist. I was pretty emo in high school.
Me: Oh I find emo’s sexy.
Her: Well if you like piercings and pink highlights
Me: Love all that
Her: I’ve thought about doing it again
(She was reaching at this point because I’m starring at her and obviously making no effort to engage her verbally anymore. I’m saying 2,3,4 words max while standing pretty close and tracing my eyes to her eyes and her lips and back again)
Me: You should.
Her: You’d like that would you?
Me: Pink hair? Piercings? I’d be all over you
Her: Laugh
Me: *Brushing her behind ear* Ear piercings?
Her: Yeh.. like 15 total..
Me: Gorgeous *Face to face* You smell great
She shivered a bit. I guess I’d gotten lucky at finding one of her sweet spots on the right side of her neck. We didn’t make out there and then. I decided to hold off and push a little. Went back in the bar and sat down, legs touching, hands touching.
Every time I leaned in to talk, I always went to that side of the neck. It was on before it was on. When we got back to my place there was no resistance. We were both feeling it, that it would’ve been an outrageous idea to not dive on each other once we found somewhere private
This is a fairly straight-forward example where no resistance was shown and she wasn’t necessarily forward either. Sometimes, a little push pull helps if you are able to get physical early, meaning if you lean into kiss her and she kisses you, a strong move to make to show extra value would be to say, “Ok that’s enough” and make sure you are the one both escalating, but also controlling the escalation.
OTHER CONVERSATION ELEMENTS
Before we wrap up this lesson, let’s take a look at some other conversation elements that can be used, to create sexual tension, attraction or general positive emotions in a woman.
Complimenting should always come from your intentions. If they aren’t they will come across as flattery, which is bad. Flattery expresses neediness, Complimenting comes from honest appreciation
Teasing / Disqualifying is a skill that needs to be learned. Some people are perfect at it, and some come off as try-hard and needy. Remember when you tease someone, it should be for self-amusement, not to make someone feel bad. It should also be funny. You will know a tease has hit the mark when a girl laughs but also hits you. A perfectly timed teasing comment can build attraction quickly.
Push Pull is the idea of giving or taking away interest, then balancing it out with the opposite action to create mixed emotions. An example is, you are talking to a girl and you hold her hand, touch it, tell her she has lovely skin then cast it aside, but and say things are moving too fast. Or, you tell you a girl that she really suits the color she is wearing, but say your favorite color is something totally different.
It’s really combining teasing and complimenting. “You’re so short. You’re like my little hobbit sister (teasing). But, honestly, I think I’ve been waiting for you my whole life! (compliment)”
You disqualify her, then say something romantic to collaborate it. It causes emotions to dip and then suddenly go up, which is powerful. Hence, the term push/pull.
Leading is the act of physically moving a girl. This can be moving her on the spot, by spinning her or carrying her somewhere, or holding her hand and bouncing her to another location. Moving a girl to different locations is powerful because its creates rapport quickly. Think of it like this, the more backgrounds she sees behind your face, the more rapport she is going to feel. It’s like cramming 2–3 dates into one.
Cheeze. Something I like to do and have coined, but decide if it fits your style. There is an example of this in the conversation earlier. When the girl was saying she was emo, I replied “I love emo’s” and I said, “Oh I’d be all over you”. Being cheesy, or over the top hitting on someone can make a girl laugh and feel flustered all at the same time, and you can do it with anything.
Her: “I had coffee with my lunch”
Him: “Oh god, I LOVE coffee”
Delivery is everything. You need to say it with an over the top level of, of a sort of downplayed, enthusiasm. Almost a little camp. Good for when you are closing distance, or when a girl is clearly attracted to you and you are pushing the buying temp up even more.
Plotlines. I love using plot lines and cheesiness mixed together. I like fun girls who are spontaneous and share my silly sense of humor, so if girls aren’t reacting well to this I often use it as a very useful screening technique. Plot lines are creating “us” stories with you and the girl, and you can bring them out of nowhere.
“What are you doing tomorrow?”
“I need to go to school”
“Well you’re not anymore. Now that we’re in love we need to get married as soon as possible. I’ve already messaged my friend at the airline to get the jet prepped and ready for Vegas tomorrow. Which reminds me, he could only get Marilyn Monroe or Audrey Hepburn costumes for you? Which one do you want?”
As I said, a girl who doesn’t go along with this I’m most likely done with right there and then, but when they do, you can carry this whole plot line on as long as you want. Your imagination is your only limit. Talk about the imaginary hotel, the room, the hot tub, and move on from there.
Words-in-her-mouth. I wasn’t sure of what else to call this. My friend employs this a lot with women and it works amazingly. It’s definitely a part of his original style. It’s good to figure out what your strengths are, and with my friend, his strength is that he’s really dirty but better than that, is that he can make girls feel they are dirtier than he is and it’s hilarious and creates bundles of attraction toward him.
The idea behind this is that, as much as you can, whenever a girl says something you mix her words. A basic example of this would be a “That’s what she said” joke. But it can go much deeper.
A great example of this is the scene in the 40-year-old virgin where the main character approaches a woman and decides he’s only going to ask questions.
Him: *Starring at her*
Her: Can I help you?
Him: I don’t know. Can you help me?
Her: Are you looking for something?
Him: Is there something I SHOULD be looking for?
Her: We have a lot of books. Depends on what you like.
Him: What do YOU like?
Her: We have a great section of “Do-it-yourself”
Him: Do you like to DO IT yourself?
Her: haha.. ermmm.. sometimes.. if the mood strikes
Him: How is the mood striking you now?
A girl I dated recently, I used to do this a lot to. A common complaint would be “OMG how are you turning everything I say into something dirty! I didn’t even men that”…. “Yeh that’s what they ALLLL say!”
TO WRAP UP
So in this episode, which was a bit on the long side, I have focused on the conversation. In the next two lessons we will look at body language and flirting, so you can think of this as a mini-trilogy, which focuses on those three elements of a conversation, so as to not overwhelm you with information in a single article.
So going forward we will look at those units. This is all about conversation with women you are attracted to, so with this and the next two units, and the unit on making friends a few episodes back, you should have a strong foundation.
I recommend reading over them multiple times.
So see you on the next one.
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