Pickup

I've posted a few articles recently that deal with casual relations. "Do Women Only Want Sex?" cuts to the core of what, specifically, women want from men; "Sexiness is Critical to Casual Relations" discusses some research highlighting how important being sexy is to netting rapid intimacy with women.

A reader sent me an email the other day after reading some of the posts on rapid intimacy, asking if I can help identify what it is he might be doing wrong. An excerpt from his message:

“I just can't figure out how any guy can sleep around without misleading girls about his intentions. With a lot of girls, I feel like I'm in a weird zone where they think I only want casual sex, but that they aren't attracted to me enough, so they don't like me at all (and I don't know whether I'm not attractive enough for them or whether they just don't want casual sex.) In this zone, they don't really want me around cuz they see me just as a roving dick on the hunt. That's what honesty gets you... But maybe I need to be more honest about the side of me that wants to get to know them? How do I even do that? Currently I just try to have fun with people, which is how I got over the creepy vibe, but I still feel like I have this worthless-player vibe.”

Okay, so I have a pretty good feeling for where this gent is. He is, it seems to me, at the point where he's relying on being fun and entertaining to keep women's interest and get them to like him, but it isn't translating well to intimacy, and he feels that without being fun and entertaining, he doesn't have much else to offer and people dub him "creepy."

Kind of a Catch-22: being fun and entertaining means women don't see you as all that sexual, but dropping the fun and entertaining vibe means people don't want to hang around and that certainly isn't terribly conducive to bedding new girls either.

Now, there's a post on this site up about how to be a sexy man, and that's the first place I'll point anyone who wants to know how to start instilling the right kinds of emotions in a woman: interest, curiosity, intrigue, and arousal. And we talk a lot about the drawbacks of being the entertainer guy in "Reactions from Women, or Results with Women? So those are a couple of great places to start if you're looking to get out of the habit of being entertaining and into the habit of being sexy.

But if you drop the fun and entertaining slant, and you end up seeming creepy… what causes that? That's the main thing I'd like to address in this post; basically, how not to be the creepy guy.

Several nights ago, I was out with a friend in a nightclub, and I noticed a cute platinum blonde German girl standing next to him not doing anything while the two friends she was with, a girl and a guy, flirted back and forth. "You should talk to that girl," I suggested. So he did, and she happily engaged.

At one point though, he turned to me and said, "Chase, where did you say you were from again?" and then introduced the girl to me and told her where I was from. She quickly jumped off of him and rotated around to my side, away from him, and began chatting me up. I flirted with her, pinched her arm a bit, had her tell me why she was in China if she disliked it so much. My buddy eventually roped her back in again, and I withdrew. She peeled off and left a short time later.

After she left, I asked my friend a question: "Why did you introduce her to me? Did you run out of conversation with her?" He said that no, things had just been slowing down, so he thought perhaps adding another interesting person to the mix might spice the interaction up a bit.

"Dude," I said, "you broke circle. Never be the first to break circle when you're talking to a girl." He didn't know what I meant, so I explained.

In the seductions of every man, there comes a time when his woman begins to object. “What are you doing?” she’ll say. “I don’t think we should be doing this.” “We can’t do this, it’s too soon.” “We can’t do this, we’re friends.”

Most of the time, this stops men cold, freezing them in their tracks with no recourse and no idea what to say or do. “Crap,” the guy thinks. “She’s protesting. What do I do now??” So, rather than take uncertain action with uncertain effects, he does nothing, and nothing happens, and the girl leaves. The seduction is forfeit, and he has lost his girl.

But objections don’t have to mark the end of a seduction. In fact, you can actually use objections to make a girl want you more, and make her more certain that you’re the man for her. And it all ties back to some psychological basics to understand why.

A couple of weeks ago while I visiting Southern California, my ex-girlfriend there told me the story of some colleagues of hers. One was a tall, slender, elegantly beautiful, but slightly older-looking woman over whom everyone in the office took much interest, but who rather kept to herself and was none too talkative about her background. The other was a mid-20ish player kind of guy who was constantly chatting up all the cute girls in the office and regaling his coworkers with tales of his conquests.

The 20-something player frequently made small talk with the beautiful, elegant woman in the office, and tried to make some headway with her, though he never could. Then, one night out at the bar for a happy hour, in a group discussion, the elegant woman happened to mention her age, perhaps emboldened by alcohol: she was 50. According to my ex, she looked so good she could easily pass for early- to mid-30s, and that’s probably what everyone assumed she was until she said it.

Upon hearing her age, the player guy who’d previously been so interested in her recoiled with horror: “Oh my God,” he said, “you’re fifty? Don’t you think you should tell people that? Oh my God.”

You can imagine how this gal must’ve felt. None too good, I’d wager. This is just one of the reasons why older women – even those only a few years older – so often get weird around younger men.

Something I noticed when I made the shift from being cool and friendly to being cool and sexy and edgy was that all of a sudden, women wanted to go to bed with me fast, and they were a lot less pushy about relationships. At the time, I just thought, “Well, of course, women want to have sex with a sexy man.” Well, I just read some research that fleshes this out quite a bit more.

In the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 100(2), February 2011, Terri Conley of the University of Michigan’s Department of Psychology goes back and reopens research into casual sex propositions, and her findings with this new research are quite revelatory, at least when it comes to breaking down old paradigms in the “men want casual sex, women don’t” view of the world.

Hi mate,

I just wanted to shoot you a quick message to say thanks for answering all my questions - I have your blog on my Chrome start bar now and love reading all the articles (and my game has improved a lot).

I got your blog address from over at mASF where i post occasionally under Lachstar; if you have some spare time, I'd love to hear your thoughts on Neo-Rio's manwhore style of game, which seems both directly opposed to your style (in that it seems cold and impersonal, whereas yours is warm and giving) and also complimentary (getting the girls to chase him, etc). I've been reading a bit about his style of game and I have some mixed feelings about it. Like - where does he get his affection from? He'd get his sexual needs met, for sure, but affection would be hard to get simply being a whore for girls.

Anyway, thanks again, and if you want to respond to my email or post it somewhere on your blog, either is good. Can't wait for the book!

Regards,

Lachstar

Thanks for writing, Lachstar. Lach raises some interesting questions here. He’s referring to a poster (Neo-Rio) over on a seduction forum called mASF, who has a style of seduction that Lach describes as rather cold. This post is written as a reply to Lach’s email, outlining my thoughts on Neo-Rio’s approach and what differences and similarities exist between his and my take on seduction.

Discussing his night out at a club with a friend of mine, I noted that at one point a girl he liked was wanting to talk to him but he was playing it cool. His girl then went off talking to another guy, then disappeared for a while, and my friend was sitting there, fingers crossed, hoping it would work out. He eventually got to talking to this girl again and made out with her a bit later, and probably could’ve gotten together with her had a few things occurred differently, but one of the biggest things that stuck out to me was that period where my friend was left waiting and hoping.

It stuck out to me because I realized that was something I used to do a lot of, but now I never do at all. It wasn’t a conscious decision; it’s not one of those things you train for typically in the social arts. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone talk about not waiting and hoping, come to think of it. It’s always more about leading and being decisive, but those things are rarely explained with any degree of specificity.

I realize now though that it’s very bad form, and that it is as well indicative of holes in your game. I used to get very impatient when I was waiting for women to do something, and impatience, I always used to think, is not a good thing to be feeling. This post is going to focus on not leaving seduction to chance, on recognizing and closing those holes you discover while playing the waiting game, and how to take action in an effective, non-needy way.