Opening

Owen, an average guy living an average life, faces continued frustrations getting girls. It seems like every girl he wants isn’t interested, or is too hard to get!

Owen, frustrated with his difficulty finding success with women, begins his day.

After his commute, he arrives at work. Owen has a typical gray cubicle on a typical office floor in a typical business tower. Each day is a drag of spreadsheets, reports, and pointless meetings.

The sole bright spot is Camila, the effusive late 30s bottle blonde bombshell office flirt who's caught the eye of every man in the building. Camila is the secretary for one of the big bosses, but it seems like half her time is spent roving the office floor in skimpy dresses, teasing the men. Camila's a flirt, Owen knows, but he will be the one to get her.

Today, like each day, he tries to suck Camila into a clever conversation, some fun repartee. However, Camila skillfully dodges, as always, flashing her bright, flirtatious smile, making some flirtatious quip, then rapidly sauntering off, escaping again, vanishing into the maze of fabric-covered cubicle walls.

Owen never notices Grace, the quiet dirty blonde 20-something in glasses who always steals glances at him from her cube. When there's a meeting, Grace is always too shy to look at Owen. Grace has better facial features and is objectively more attractive than Camila, but she dresses conservatively, isn't a flirt, and doesn't stand out. Her presence in the office gets constantly overshone by Camila's, and so she ends up being mostly invisible there, just doing her work then heading home.

After another workday of no success with Camila, Owen (like many of the men in that office) leaves in annoyance, complaining to himself about how picky women are, how impossible their standards are, and why dating has to be so imbalanced against men.

It’s easy to fall off your opening game when you’re rusty at meeting girls. Use this cheat sheet to tighten up your opening and start new conversations with ease.

Hey guys, and welcome back!

After finishing up my post on how to get out of bad momentum, I promised you a few cheat sheets to help in the early game, as that’s usually the part of your game that will take the biggest hit when you are at low momentum.

It’s because the opening game is the phase that feels the most uncomfortable since you have to go up to a stranger and face potential rejection. When you have low momentum, your confidence is lower, making the process more emotionally painful.

Also, your vibe is a bit off when you have low momentum, making the opening phase harder.

If you are interested in the symptoms of low momentum, check out my post from a few weeks ago for detailed explanations.

I also wrote a post on how to “treat” low momentum. If you are experiencing low momentum, I highly recommend you check out that post.

This post expands on that. If you’ve read my earlier post on treating low momentum, you may remember that you should break down your game and fix every small detail until things start working again. You should also limit your game plan to the strict minimum, only adding to it if the current plan is not working or if you sense something is missing.

A slight exception applies to opening and hooking. You should put more effort and brainpower into working on these aspects of pick-up and seduction when you experience low momentum because they take the biggest hit.

This is why I made a post on pre-opening game. That information will work in synergy with this. To be clear, it is not a necessity to use pre-opening game, but it increases your odds of successfully opening and makes opening mentally easier.

The advice I will give here will mostly consist of tips on bettering your opening game — nothing overly fancy.

Is your opening in a rut (or you aren’t opening many girls at all right now)? Try one of these exercises to get yourself opening again, and “freshen up” your approaching.

Every guy could be a little better at opening girls.

Further, anytime you've stumbled across a new opener, you've probably gone on a bit of tear, haven't you?

Do a few things right before you approach a new girl, and you raise the odds your approach succeeds. Spot invitations, create invitations, screen, build micro-momentum, and more.

Hey guys and welcome back!

Last week I gave you my step-by-step guide on how to get back in shape, game-wise, and you learned how to get out of bad momentum.

This post links to last week’s topic. We will provide a checklist of tips and tricks to improve your opening game, focusing on pre-opening. Next week, we will cover opening.

Why does this subject link to last week’s post? The part of your game that takes the “biggest hit” when facing low momentum is your opening and hook game. (I am considering making a checklist of tips and tricks for good hook game as well). Opening hook game is the most vibe-dependent. The energy you communicate is paramount during the opening and hook.

Once you’ve passed the hook phase, it’s more about what you say and how you respond to her hoops and overall strategic calls. You’ll feel more comfortable interacting with the girl when you move past the opening and hook phase. So, despite your lower momentum, you will feel a better overall flow in the interaction.

This is not to say that you won’t feel rusty in other parts of your game. Your weaker awareness may impair your strategic choices because you have less playing room. It’s due to lower compliance from girls because of your low momentum (which affects your presence and vibe).

Now, you may be on high momentum and rocking it and just want to recap or improve your pre-opening skills. Then this post is for you.

Good pre-opening is crucial. It has direct and impactful spill-over effects on your opening game. We can’t discuss tight opening game without discussing pre-opening — you can skip it, but moving forward will be harder, on a psychological and practical level.

Maybe you are a beginner or an intermediate guy who happens to have opening as one of your sticking points. This post is also for you.

Most advice here is primarily for night game settings and bars. However, you can apply some concepts to day game with a few tweaks.

Let’s jump right in!

Without a map you’ll almost never reach an unfamiliar destination. If you want to succeed with women, you need a little navigation to get there.

What's your aim with women? Have you thought about it?

When you go out to talk to girls, are you just going out randomly or is there a purpose?

Do you go out to try some techniques, and maybe they work or maybe they don't, then you go out another day and try again?

Men who are successful improving rapidly with women walk a fine line between having clear intentions while remaining outcome independent. Most guys err too far on one side of the other of this.

You get guys who have clear intentions... but they get really attached to outcomes. Every outing is an emotional roller coaster ride as they deal with things going or not going their way (often for reasons outside their control).

Then you get guys who are outcome independent... but who have fuzzy intentions. They go out, talk to girls, don't take it personal when it doesn't go their way, but sort of hang about listlessly experimenting with this or that in an undirected way.

Mapping out your desired end goals with women and thinking it through clearly can be a big help to actually getting where you want to get go with girls.

Of course, you must build your map in the most useful way.

Approaching strangers demands a variety of social skills many people never fully develop. You need a reason to approach, to make sure you’re seen, and to be friendly, to start.

This is Part 2 of my reboot of our old 'Social Skills 101' series.

You can see Part 1, with a video breakdown of various socially unsavvy approaches, here.

In Part 2, we're going to talk about approaching strangers.

If all you want is solid social skills, stranger approach isn't completely necessary (though it is helpful). There are plenty of highly socially skilled people who aren't able to approach strangers.

However, I think it's good to begin with, since a.) a big part of this site is devoted to cold approach, and b.) in the event you're starting off at zero socially, as I did, to even talk to people at all you'll need to start approaching strangers.

So let's dive into approaching and opening people you don't know -- a painfully awkward, uncalibrated social situation for most (even many otherwise veteran socializers who yet never learned to approach strangers).

It doesn’t matter how slick you look or how many great tips you’ve absorbed. Good basic social skills must come first if you wish for social success.

This is the first installment in a reboot of our old series on social skills.

Social skills are the single most crucial skill set for anyone to learn to work with other people.

We'll use dating as our vehicle to discuss these skills. Nevertheless, as you learn social skills in dating, you'll apply them to every area of your life too.

Social skills aren't deliberately taught. You don't learn them in school, except incidentally. Most people only intuitively understand social rules, and only once they've learned them.

People shun and shame those with insufficient social skills and grace.

However, you can develop these skills at any age; it just takes focus and practice.

In this series kick-off article, I'm going to show you just why social skills are so absolutely crucial.