"Working on a Girl": Does It ACTUALLY Get You Anywhere with Her?

So long as I can remember, I have had guys tell me about girls they were “working on.”

Seems like every other guy has some girl somewhere he is “getting somewhere with.” If you just put a little more time in, the theory goes… just show her a bit more of your personality… then before you know it, she’ll be yours!

We might call this the “Workman Method” for getting girls:

Pick a girl, and just keep working at it until she becomes yours.

This approach would be perfect if girls were rocks, and a guy could claim one for himself, drag it to his workshop, and chip away at it for as long as he needed until the rock became a beautiful sculpture, just for him.

Or maybe build her like a mannequin... remember that movie? Where the guy works on the female mannequin for way too long, and eventually she comes to life and falls in love with him?

The tragic reality however is that girls are not rocks, nor mannequins, and it rarely works out the way men following this “Workman Method” hope.

Why doesn’t working on a girl to get somewhere with her work out most of the time?

 

Girls Aren’t Rocks

Problem #1 for workman is that girls aren’t rocks.

Rocks can’t get up and hoof it to another sculptor. But girls can.

Back in high school and college I used to have guys tell me about girls they were working on. They’d tell me a few of their recent interactions with the girl, and I’d agree yeah, it does sound like she kind of likes you, maybe.

Then a few weeks or months would go by, and I’d noticed the girl was all cozy with some other guy, cuddling up on him, kissing him, and so forth.

I’d ask the guy who’d been working on her what happened, and he’d just say, “Oh, yeah. We stopped talking.”

Very occasionally, I would see the guy who’d been working on a girl get together with that girl… usually after a night of drinks and debauchery. It seemed that house parties were the magic formula for REALLY getting somewhere with a girl you were working on.

There’s an excellent reason why for this, and if you understand it, you can close girls without having to down a bunch of alcohol to do so.

But more on that in a bit.

First thing’s first: girls aren’t rocks, and most of the time guys try working on them, they just roll away.

 

Where Do Girls Roll Away To?

Very often it’s to other guys!

Just as one man may be working on a girl, if she’s attractive, typically she has other suitors working on her too. Some of them may be just as far along with her as you are. Some of them farther!

Women are remarkably good at compartmentalizing. Far more so than most men. Most men don’t really seem to understand how good girls are at it – because they have so much more practice at it.

Imagine if you had numerous good-looking girls trying to get with you all the time. You hadn’t picked one to commit to just yet. Would you fend them all off and only pick one? You probably think so if you’re not very experienced with women yet. But ask any man who’s actually been in this scenario and they will all say the same thing: NO!

The universal human response to lots of attractive options is not “put on blinders, restrict myself to just one, and don’t look at any of the others.”

Rather it is “carefully inspect all my options, being careful not to lose any, until I’ve completely made up my mind.”

This is what anyone does with multiple desirable suitors, and generally speaking the women getting worked on tend to be in that position. While you are working on her, so are other guys, and she is just as happy to see them as she is to see you!

That doesn’t mean she’s a slut. It doesn’t mean she’s easy. She might well be a virgin.

However, she has attractive male options pursuing her, so she wants to take her time:

• She can’t read your or his mind

• She doesn’t have a magic window into your past and future

• She doesn’t know what you know about yourself – or what he does about himself

She is in the “chooser” position – having multiple people pursuing you puts you in it – and she must carefully weigh her options.

“Working on a girl” is voluntarily putting yourself into contention with other men. You have gotten in line as a potential suitor. That’s what “working on” her means! It means “showing her more and more of yourself over time, hoping to get somewhere with her.”

Why are you showing her parts of yourself? In hopes she picks you, rather than one of her other options.

But it is not just the other men working on her you must fear as the workman.

 

Guys Who Aren’t “Playing Fair”

I didn’t get started with girls until a little later than most guys.

Part of the reason was my refusal to “play fair.”

I certainly had girls who liked me and tried to work me into their suitor rotations. Turn me into one of those guys “working on” them. But I saw how often those guys dragged along, waiting, hoping, dreaming, investing time and energy, only to have the girl run off to someone else, and the very idea of it felt rather low to me. I preferred to opt out until I could find a more optimal strategy.

When I began to cold approach women and started moving faster and faster with girls, I’d found my strategy.

But more than that – I realized I wasn’t playing “fair.”

The first girlfriend I met off cold approach had a very nice male friend with her when I met her. When I tried to pull her away so the two of us could talk more, and she excitedly agreed, he appeared out of nowhere and dragged her away – not just to another part of the bar, but completely out of it altogether.

It turned out the two were inseparable: he was always taking her to bars, parties, trying to get her to loosen up and have a drink or two, and be at her side. When she and I talked about meeting up, she even tried to invite him along!

The way she spoke about him was as if he was the most harmless, platonic guy in the world. But those weren’t platonic looks I saw in his eyes when he was around her. They looked hopeful and needy.

After she and I got together, I saw this guy perhaps once. He looked pretty defeated when we all hung out. It seemed pretty clear he’d been working on her… the girlfriend would not admit this for ages, but eventually she confessed it “may have been possible” he was angling to get together with her.

I felt bad for the guy, honestly. There he was, for months and months, spending every waking moment he could with this girl, working on her to the best of his ability, probably convinced he was getting somewhere…

Then some random jerk (me) just showed up, hit it off with her, and before he knew it was dating that girl he’d put so much time and energy into.

This cycle has repeated with every girlfriend I’ve had. Every time, I show up, hit it off with a girl, get together with her quick, then find out about all these other suitors she had who’d been working on her for months.

I discussed a few such suitors with a different girlfriend when I wrote about “Shopping Guy.”

In seduction circles, these men who are “working on” girls, convincing themselves they are “getting somewhere with” them are known as orbiters, as in a small moon or satellite orbiting a larger planet. Most good-looking girls have at least a few orbiters when you meet them.

Orbiters are typically kept in the dark about other suitors the girl has, including other orbiters. Unless the girl is bad at being a girl, your typical orbiter will believe he is the only guy she’s talking to, and that he is getting “closer and closer” with her.

She doesn’t actually need to do anything tricky to make him think this.

All she needs to do is just talk to him, not mention other guys, and do or say something nice for/with him every now and again. Confirmation bias will take care of the rest.

The fact remains though, that much of the time girls do NOT get with ANY of their orbiters.

Much of the time, none of the men who devote so much time and energy to getting somewhere with them ever get them.

Instead, much of the time, girls end up with the guys who don’t “play fair.”

 

But Working on Her Can Still Work – Right?

Well, yeah – from time to time.

In cold approach, we’re very aware how much of our success with girls is down to luck. Of course, there’s the skill you’ve built and your upgraded attractive qualities – all these improve your odds (typically by a lot).

However, random variation still plays a big role.

READ MORE: Picking Up Girls and the Game of Asymmetric Returns

Men who rely on the workman approach don’t appreciate the element of luck nearly as much in their own courtships, I’ve found. In fact, they seem to largely be ignorant to it.

On average, I’ve observed about 1 out of 12 times a guy says he is “working on a girl” he will actually get together with her – as in sex or a sexual relationship. He doesn’t always get what he wants though:

• Sometimes a guy is “working on a girl” hoping just to score with her, because he doesn’t consider her girlfriend material but he still hopes to bang… then months later you will run into the two of them, with the girl happy as a clam to have him as a boyfriend but him obviously dating down. And you realize offering the relationship was the only way he could get the bang

• Other times a guy is working on a girl because he wants a long-term romantic relationship with her. They go to bed, but he realizes only too late she just wanted sex with him and he happened to be available. He wanted to keep things going but she wasn’t interested and now he’s bitter that after their sole night of passion she’s off dating someone else

But around 1 out of 12 times he will still get something.

Some lower number of times he will actually get what he wants.

That doesn’t sound too bad. As a halfway decent seducer you can be sleeping with 1 out of 10 or 1 out of 15 women you approach. 1 out of 12 sounds like it’s right in that ballpark, right?

Not when you realize that that seducer may be approaching 10 or 15 women in a day or night, and sleeping with one of them / having a relationship with her if he wishes… meanwhile the man who is “working on” girls is typically plowing about four months into each girl he works on.

To be fair to the workmen out there, sometimes a guy is working on 2 or even 3 women at a time. But even if we calculate based on these “playboy workmen”, 3 women at a time per 4 month stretch means it is still taking 16 months on average to get one girl… not a day.

Those girls must be higher quality though, right?

What the workman lacks in quantity, he makes up for in quality!

Oh but wait… I just shared about those girlfriends of mine who also had workmen after them.

The girls I tend to date are very good-looking girls in their middle twenties with masters degrees and jobs in fields like finance, economics, and architecture. Their suitors are typically either other men in finance, economics, and architecture, or men in other high prestige fields – doctors, lawyers, etc.

Well, maybe my girls are just exceptions, and most girls aren’t like that?

Get to know women enough, and you will discover the MAJORITY of men they date are men who did NOT “work on them” at all!

Most of the time guys work on girls, the girls end up with someone who didn’t.

There’s an excellent reason for this, and we’re just about to discuss it.

 

The Best Time to Get with a Girl

Back when I was a seduction neophyte, I was riding in an elevator with a seduction legend and a few other students. One student mentioned a girl liked him, but his friend had been “working on” this girl. He was conflicted about whether to proceed with her or not.

The skilled guy asked him, “How long has he known her?”

The student answered, “He’s been after her for about six weeks.”

The skilled guy laughed and said,  “If it’s over two weeks, he doesn’t know what he’s doing, and he’s not going to get her.”

In general, attraction has an expiration date.

Now, it may not be two weeks. Sometimes you can get a girl after four weeks. Sometimes even longer. But the longer it stretches on with you pursuing the same one girl, the lower the odds become.

The exception is with girls in “settle down” mode and girls in rebound mode. Girls in either of these modes are very prone to getting together with men they know well.

That’s the bright spot for workmen: if you’ve worked on her for a long time, and she’s breaking up with some bad boy you didn’t know she was dating, or some guy she hoped to marry just broke her heart, that’s when you can swoop in and sweep up the pieces.

The rest of the time though, if you want to get with her, the longer you wait, the lower your odds become.

 

Workmen’s Escalation Window Problems

Workmen tend to have a terrible habit of missing escalation windows the women they like throw them.

An escalation window is what you get any time a girl reaches a point where she decides she’s open to something happening with you:

• A chat
• A date
• A kiss
• Intimacy

Because workmen are in the habit of “working on girls” to “get somewhere with them”, they tend to be in a low activity mode where they are moving slowly and cautiously. They are NOT on alert, primed for opportunities, ready to pounce.

But women don’t operate that way. Their moods are fickle. She may be closed to you one day, open to you the next, then closed again the day after if you fail to make a move.

Thus, what you will see a LOT with men who work on women – a lot; you see it a lot a lot – is that the girls they want DO give them opportunities to get together, but the guys miss them, then don’t get the girl.

Often the guy realizes the missed escalation window only too late, and it only hooks him into chasing after the girl more:

“Oh no! She DOES like me! She wanted me to make a move there, but I missed it! All right, I just need to be more attuned… I need to wait for her to signal again! The next time she gives me a chance like that, I’ll be ready!”

But the next chance never comes, because the window has closed, and attraction’s expired.

Or, sometimes, the girl DOES signal again – but the guy repeats the mistake! Again, he does not pounce, and again, the window’s missed!

This is why many of the girls guys are working on that they actually DO get somewhere with (somewhere as in “sex or a sexual relationship”) they end up getting together with drunk at parties. What happens when two people get drunk? Their inhibitions lower. They can finally get together.

Because that is the workman’s primary problem: he is just inhibiting himself, all the time, trying to slow-roll his way into her heart… but usually it does not work.

 

The Rebound/Settle Option

Most guys who work on girls lie to themselves.

Or maybe they’re not lying… they might just be ignorant.

They think the girl is “probably not really” talking to any other guys, or if she is she “probably doesn’t like them as much” as she likes him. That’s why it’s such a shock when she announces she has a boyfriend… or that she’s moving in with or marrying some beau the workman didn’t even know she was with.

(I’ve had girls move in with me while other guys who’d been pursuing them before I ever met the girls were still pursuing them, oblivious to the fact that sometime between when they started pursuing the girl and the present that she’d acquired a lover and had reached the point of moving in with him)

But occasionally you will meet a workman who is neither naïve about girls nor lying to himself. This guy will outright tell you, “I’m fine with waiting to be a girl’s rebound or to catch her when she’s ready to settle down. The whole thing with chasing around after girls all the time just exhausts me and doesn’t interest me at all.”

Fair enough. This is the one honest, knowledgeable guy working on women you will find.

If you are fine catching girls on the rebound (from guys you probably did not know they were seeing) or if you’re dating girls who are older and are looking to be that “settle down guy” who’s there to catch them when their attempts to tie down a wild stallion or two fall through, then working on girls may actually be a fine strategy.

But if you’re going to do it, you should still be honest with yourself about it!

 

Conclusion

Well, “working on girls” – yes, it occasionally works.

About 1 out of 12 will work, in my experience. If you’re “working on them” one at a time, expect to get one girl every four years of being “single and working.” If you’re working on three girls at a time, you can shave that down to perhaps one every 16 months.

The “getting somewhere with a girl” progress most guys think they’re seeing with the girls they work on is most of the time confirmation bias – the natural human tendency to look for evidence we interpret as supporting our position.

However, girls WILL open escalation windows for men who are working on them sometimes… but in my experience such men usually miss these windows. They are too deep into a “slow mo” mentality to be able to recognize and capitalize on women’s fleeting signs.

What do I recommend?

1. Well, it’s important to understand girls aren’t rocks (or mannequins). And that there is always another man in her life. If she’s not in love with you, making love to you frequently, odds are there is another man she is more passionately in love with (or at least crushing on) than you. If she’s crazy about you, you’ll know it. (if she’s crazy about some other guy, you won’t) She is almost always rolling after someone.

2. You also need to understand women’s back pocket mentality, and why women ‘collect’ men who like them, to tuck away for safekeeping. They aren’t going to date such men, usually… but sometimes they might, if the mood strikes them just right. If she is letting you hang around but is not dating you, you are in her back pocket.

3. Finally, I would also understand that women will open ‘windows’ for dating. A girl might be single but caught up in work, school, or friends and not thinking about dating for months. Then she might suddenly get horny and start looking around for a guy… or she might get lonely and begin looking for someone to talk to… or she might begin longing for a cozy, cuddly relationship and start longing for that. If you’re in the right place at the right time, she may send you signals – but if you can’t capitalize on them some other man will.

Don’t underestimate the more “active” men out there, who actively seek and court women they don’t work on, but just happen to zero in on right when those women start making themselves available. The workman might have the advantage of being the known factor to a woman, and getting a few light signals from her, but he is out of practice and slow on the draw.

The threat that active daters present to workmen is quite steep; it’s why that male friend of that first girlfriend of mine dragged her out of the bar the moment she was getting too excited talking with me there. Perhaps at some point she’d signaled to him, too… but he’d been waiting too long and moving too slow he wasn’t able to ratchet things up into an active, attractive, sexy approach, and her feelings for him moved back to “just a friend” again.

My real recommendation – if you really want to close girls, and not just wait around – is to become an active dater.

That means you approach girls; flirt with them; ask them out; go on dates; invite them home; take them to bed.

Guess what happens as a side effect of this?

You become more and more alert and on-the-ball with girls you meet through more traditional arenas (school, work, friend groups, activities, etc.) too.

That means you are less likely to fall into the “slow game missed escalation window” trap the vast majority of men who try “working on girls” fall into.

It’ll probably seem scary at first.

It might seem out of your element – something you would never normally do.

Yet, get a little experience under your belt, and you’ll start wondering how you ever did it any other way… and how you ever used to kid yourself you were “working on” girls you never got together with, compared with all the girls you get with NOW and never have to “work on” at all.

Chase Amante