Pickup Tech

Conversation and the conversationalist: probably one of the most under-discussed topics in the social arts. What a pity. Conversation is part of the backbone upon which everything related to socializing is built upon, but in the 21st century that’s almost forgotten. You might go so far as to say that the art of the conversationalist is a vanishing art.

In this day and age of sound bites, quick blurbs of news, and friends and acquaintances using social media to spit out short, tepid, meaningless quips about their days and feelings and whatever else springs to mind and gets unloaded out on the uncaring and overburdened ears of the Internet, being a good conversationalist is a rare thing. Being someone who is able to deftly move from topic to topic, keeping a conversation flowing effortlessly and breezily forward, diving into the depths of another individual’s personal life and concerns, then coming back up for air with a bit of laughter and lightheartedness before things get too heavy, then diving back down again to find out more about this person you’ve met just an hour ago than his or her closest family members know… this is what the lost art of being skilled in conversation is all about.

A few posts back we discussed how girls show interest. That post, though, was primarily focused on how you can tell a woman’s interested in you once you’re already talking to her. Let’s rewind it backward in the interaction a bit.

I’ve been having a lot of one-shot successes lately, where I only talk to one girl and the girl and I then get together later. The primary reason for this is that my situational awareness has gotten high enough that I’ve gotten rather skilled at being able to pick up on what girl wants to get to know me, then capitalizing on it.

The chief tenet of the Law of Least Effort in seduction is that the less effort you put in while still achieving the desired result, the more powerful, attractive, and sexy you appear. One of the most powerful ways of doing this is by learning to communicate without the use of words.

If you’ve ever studied very charismatic people – I have, and I recommend it – something you’ll notice is that they frequently say things with fun, charming, wordless expressions. A smile and a wink, say, or a mischievous look. For instance, maybe someone asks a charismatic man if he can handle a certain situation – he gives them the skeptical look with just a hint of a knowing smile and then gets to it. Or maybe he gives a small smile, makes a thumbs up sign, and goes about his business.

I was sitting in a nightclub tonight, smoke and booze surrounding me, sipping on a Jack and Coke (or what passes for one in this country), and thinking about some past interactions and feeling vaguely annoyed. There was the girl on Saturday whose friend was pushing her to go home with me as hard as she could, but the girl was a little too shy and wanted to push that back. I didn’t push as hard as I could; I still have a decent chance with her – she’s set to come cook dinner for me later this week – but my chances would’ve been better had I pushed a bit harder and taken her home that night. She liked me enough, but rather than close it out when I had it I let it slip through my fingers. Then there was the girl I brought home Friday night but who stayed tense and I didn’t push anything with since I couldn’t get her comfortable. She wants to see me again too, but my chances in the future are far lower than they were that night she was sitting in my apartment.

This is one of those things that’s as effective in opening as it is in closing, and it’s useful throughout the course of an interaction. Pulling on a woman’s arm or shoulders or waist (or, if you’re in bed or on the sofa, her legs or feet) and dragging her into you is one of those very fun, very dominant, very sexual things a man can do to a woman (or a woman can do to a man!) that take things and spike the level of excitement and intrigue very quickly.

The reasons it works so well are basically that:

• Only really confident men do this
• Only really dominant, sexual men do this
• It shakes a woman out of autopilot and brings her back into there here-and-now

Autopilot I just realized I haven’t written about on here yet; so let’s slate that as something to target in the near future. But for now, suffice it to say you don’t want women floating through their interactions with you without putting any mental footwork in. You want them making effort – albeit easy, natural effort – to be with you.

For a long time, I subscribed to the notion that to get a girl, you had to meet her at her energy level, plus a little bit more. Too much more, and she’d think you were crazy; too much less, and you’d be a downer.

This meant, of course, that to get a girl in full-on party mode, going wild, talking excitedly, throwing her hands in the air, laughing like a woman possessed, dancing with reckless abandon on the dance floor, and just generally being young and carefree, you’d have to go in ever wilder and crazier than she was.

So I tried that for a while – being the wild, crazy party guy – and it got me a lot of positive reactions out of girls. But it didn’t get me girls. We’d dance, and party, and have excited conversation, but at the end of the night I’d still go home alone. All the while, I was going mad trying to figure out how to transition from opening women high energy to bringing them down to a lower energy vibe more conducive to seduction. I could do wild; I could do sexy; but I couldn’t seem to put the two of them together and get party girls.

One of the habits women have that can be frightfully frustrating for men is asking them to give reasons on the most difficult of subjects. You know, when a man says, “Hey, let’s go do this,” or, “Personally, I like XYZ better,” and the woman looks at him quizzically and says, “Why?”

Until you get your reasons down, this can be one of those damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t scenarios.

Consider the following scenario and a couple of different possible responses: a man meets a woman at a bar and invites her home with him. She asks him why. A few of the more common responses:

Man is caught off-guard:
“Well, um, because I think it would be fun for us to hang out and stuff.”
Woman’s reaction? She’s probably not going with him.

Man is straightforwardly honest:
“Because I want to get together with you.”
Woman’s reaction? She’s also probably not going with him.

Man is evasive:
“Come with me and you’ll see.”
Woman’s reaction? She’ll insist on him telling her why, then – probably, not going with him.