Pickup Tech

Something I like prescribing for newer guys as a very low-pressure but high-impact and really quite easy opener is something I’ve begun referring to as “Indirect Direct”, for lack of a better term.

Your run of the mill, general indirect opening – or, engaging a woman in conversation under pretenses other than that you’re interested in her – is a common choice among men. It feels less scary and less like the man is putting himself on the line.

It’s also far less effective than your run of the mill, general direct opening.

Women respond best to men who state – either explicitly or implicitly – their interest. Men using indirect do not do this. And, while they may not realize that women realize what they’re doing, unless a girl is completely clueless, chances are she probably does. And the man looks less for having masked his interest. He looks scared.

There’s a dreadful mistake that many men new to seduction make, and that is the mistake of trying to make women monkeywrench themselves into the man’s conversation, or apartment, or bed. For obvious reasons, the more difficult it is for a woman to get together with a man, the less likely it is to happen. And many men make things quite difficult.

This seems to be due mostly to inexperience and uncertainty on how to proceed. Certainly, if a man hasn’t been with many women, and hasn’t had many experiences of guiding a woman down the path toward the two of them becoming intimate together, there’s going to be much that’s foggy, hazy, and downright confusing for him.

And when things are foggy, hazy, and downright confusing, people tend to fumble around, show their inexperience, and be tentative and look for support.

Talking today with an acquaintance of mine, we got to commenting on a couple we both knew and how they’d recently gotten together. The girl is a prim, proper girl who is more concerned with clothes and makeup than anything else, and the guy is a little bit of a rough-and-tumble cat from a poorer part of the world – but he’s pretty cocky and self-assured. My acquaintance was surprised the two of them ended up a pair; I wasn’t. “The bad girl got the bad boy,” I said, and he laughed and said that was a good way of putting it.

Maybe my mind was already working that way because of an article I read earlier today on Slate Magazine, called “Freaks, Geeks, and Economists: A study confirms every suspicion you ever had about high-school dating.” The article discusses a study in which, among other things, the term assertive mating is mentioned. Slate defines assortative mating as the tendency of individuals to select for mates similar to themselves; I did a quick look-up on Wikipedia to confirm. The tendency of individuals to select similar mates is known as positive assortative mating; individuals who select for dissimilar traits are referred to as practicing negative assortative mating.

I’ve just begun some very preliminary outlining for what I intend to be an audio CD product I’ll be releasing hopefully early 2011, to follow on the heels of How to Make Girls Chase, which ought to be coming out sometime in December if everything continues according to plan. The audio project is tentatively titled “Spellbinding”, and it’ll focus on how to connect rapidly with women and get out of something I call treading water – getting stuck in that maddening no-man’s land where you just can’t find anything interesting that you have in common with a girl to talk about, and you can feel her slipping away by the minute. If there’s one thing that drove me crazy for years, it was probably that.

Spellbinding was originally set to be my second audio product; I was going to focus first on one on targeting and figuring out which girls are likely to be most receptive to you. But after talking working with the topic of connecting and getting out of “treading water” with a good guy recently, I started feeling like this is probably an area that a lot of guys could benefit from some help on, so I’m pushing the schedule on Spellbinding up.

The same cool cat I spoke with about this topic sent me a follow up email with the following question:

I’m a huge proponent of comparison and analysis. One of the things I always look at is success rates, how women talk about guys, and how those guys treat women. Something funny I noticed a while back about some differences in how some men communicate with women versus how some other men communicate with women struck a chord with me, and I modified my communication accordingly. Since then, it’s been stronger and easier, and women chase me more.

Sounds like a magic bullet, no? In a way, it kind of is. So here’s the secret formula: take all those times and instances where you’re being ultra clever, and… scrap clever. Toss it in the trash heap.

Yesterday, I got into an elevator where I found a really cute girl with an electric scooter. Most people just park their scooters downstairs, so I found it odd she’d brought hers with her. “You’re bringing it with you!” I commented. She giggled pretty hard.

“Why didn’t you leave your scooter downstairs,” I asked. “Afraid someone will take it?”

She laughed again, but seemed not to understand. One of the problems of living in a foreign country is that sometimes people just don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. I decided to try again. “Your scooter,” I said, pointing to it. “Why are you taking it upstairs?” Again, she just giggled and shook her head.

“Are you scared someone will take it? Steal it?” I pressed, trying to be as simple as possible. She still didn’t understand, and we reached her floor and she said “bye bye” and waved and got off.

I don’t know how useful this is as a technique we can discuss here, inasmuch as I don’t know that it’s something you can be taught so much as something you just pick up or develop. But I figured it was worth writing a little about regardless.

I do a little something I call quick reading. Pretty much every guy I know who’s done his fair share of meeting and dating and getting intimate with women does this, and it’s quite different from what you’ll see less experienced guys doing.

What a quick read is is when you very rapidly assess whether a girl is the kind of girl you’d go for.

It’s an extremely useful technique – or maybe habit – that helps a man in two ways:

• Helps him to save time by quickly moving on from women he doesn’t like
• Helps him to end up with women he does like