Pickup

No doubt you've had the experience of having things all locked with a girl - she's agreed to a date, say, or she's decided that, yes, she's coming to this restaurant or bar with you, or, yes, she's coming home with you.

And then, the girl changes her mind.

It can be enough to drive you crazy. All that work just to get her to say "yes"... and then she goes and says, "Wait, on second though - no!"

Or, you're out with a girl and she says, "Let's get some ice cream. Can we get ice cream?" So you say sure, and start heading to the ice cream shop. Then, out of the blue, she says, "Wait, no; let's get some Mexican food. Come on, I want Mexican." So then she turns the two of you around and now you're walking back the way you came, in the direction of the Mexican food she's now so certain she wants.

And God help you if you should find yourself out with a gaggle of girls, where you're the only man and you're not in charge... the endless back and forth between one girl saying, "I want this!" and then minutes later saying, "Wait, I want this!" and the next girl saying the same thing and other girls yelling, "What should we DO?" and still more girls yelling, "Come on! Let's just go!" can be enough to drive a man mad.

Where does all this indecision stem from - and what can you do about it as a man?

In Sunday's article on how to be smooth, Walls made the following comment:

“I truly appreciate all the work you do breaking this down, Chase. It would be so easy to just own this info you learned from years of trial and error and just monopolize it. I was thinking about smoothness in conflict due to this life-changing post and it got me thinking: when do you let comments/threats/faux paus/annoyances roll down your back, and when do you actually put opposers in their place? And what is the best way to ignore when people make fauxpas, such as the ones in your article "Faux Pas of the Social Neveaux." (maybe more faux pas listed too?)”

He's talking about two things here, but the two are in many ways one and the same:

1. When someone is standing in opposition to you, accusing you, or insulting you

2. When someone is making social mistakes around you and creating awkward or disadvantageous situations for you

That is, in other words, when someone is making things challenging for you. And he is asking the question "How do you answer a challenge?"

It's a good question, because it has an answer that can go a variety of ways. Do you remain unreactive to it - and potentially let the challenge eat your chances alive? Or do you challenge your challenger back, and potentially lose your cool - and the girl you were most interested in?

This is a question without a readily apparent simple answer... and sometimes those are the questions we like most on this site. How do you answer a challenge, anyway?

Lately we've had a number of readers asking about more ways to talk to women and keep the conversation going. Here's JFav, answering the question of what he'd like to see in the new forum's bonus book:

“Love to see something on keeping the conversation going. Some strategies a newbie could possibly use to deep dive.”

Wanting to know more about conversation, particularly for newer guys.

And on the recent article about how to pick up girls shopping, Maxz commented:

“Hey Chase, another rocking article.

Question for you man, I have been having problems on the conversational aspect of the game lately. When you talk about deep diving and all, is it all about asking girls qestions about themselves? I can't seem to truly crack this nut. Some of the girls I have talked to lately, we usually just end up in strange silences at some point in the conversation. What kind of easy probing questions will you suggest to carry on these conversations?

Thanks Chase, love every single lessons on here.”

I referred Maxz to a few articles to help him get his bearings, but I realize that a lot of guys need a more basic layout of how to talk to women properly than is laid out in the article on deep diving or being a conversationalist.

So, today's article has been put together to be exactly that: talking to women for beginners (with a few neat tips thrown in here and there to spice things up for the old pros), broken down into four lessons with five points each - a total of 20 ways to talk to women and make it go swimmingly.

Let's dive in.

It's the holiday season, and that means one thing: time to pick up girls out shopping!

If you don't have much experience picking up women who are out shopping for shoes or shellfish, you might think this is rather hard... I mean, walking up to some girl in the middle of a well-lit store and just... hitting on her? Isn't that obvious?

Actually, there are a number of more-or-less smooth ways of going about running pickups in shopping areas, whether malls or shops or grocery stores. A bit of a sense of humor and a good handle on indirect game helps; while you can use direct openers out shopping, they often come off a bit too strong.

Mostly, what you'll be focused on creating in a shopping environment is a feeling of fate, fortune, or destiny... you and the girl met because you simply had to meet. It was written in the stars.

Today, we'll talk about how you go about creating that feeling, and help you bring some holiday cheer into the lives of some beautiful, lonely women out in the wide world.

Note from Chase: Eric is one of the members of the new Girls Chase forum who showed up on the scene with a bang. Offering sage advice to many of the beginner and intermediate-level members, he's quickly demonstrated both an intuitive grasp of a lot of the more advanced concepts in seduction, and a solid and developing ability to break down those concepts into understandable chunks. He asked me if I might be interested in letting him write a few things for the site - I told him I'd be honored. Here's Eric, with his debut article.

In case you aren't quite acquainted with me, I'm a frequent member of the site as well as on the new forum (which is doing quite well - we have a great community thus far). You've probably seen me replying to posts on the blog here in the comments section as "Anon."

Earlier this week I went through a few questions on our forums, and I stumbled across one in particular from a student of the game. I was about to go more in-depth, but I realized to properly explain it, it was going to take a proper write-up, and I thought the answer I had to give would benefit a lot more guys than just whoever reads that forum post.

I wanted to put it on the blog.

I briefly explained the concept a little on the forums, in a response that focused on getting your conversation into "automatic," and the reception was, essentially, this:

“Wow, the insights here are incredible. All the things you said, just these behavioral changes seem so simple, but I can see it working. Is there a certain guide to doing just that? How to make normal conversation or “autopilot” conversation be able to turn on a girl?”

I sent a message to Chase wondering if I should write some stuff up, if that'd be something he'd be open to and something he'd have, and he gave me the go ahead.

Thus, this post - on the other side of effort: efficiency in seduction.

We've had a few questions on here lately about the difference between chasing women vs. persisting with women. A few weeks back William B. raised the point when I asked for ideas on what the new forum's bonus book should be on:

“I'd like to see something fleshing out the nuances between chasing and persistence.”

And more recently, a commenter on the article on how to find the woman you want asked:

“I guess what i want to know is how does all this play in with not chasing her...if you leave enough time between your proposals it doesn't count as chasing?”

I've seen a few other people ask about it on other articles as well.

What's the difference between chasing women and persisting with them, anyway? Aren't they one and the same?

Actually, the two are VERY different - and women are right for desiring persistent men to a point... and fleeing from men who chase after that point.

Let's have a look at why that is, and how you can better walk the line between chasing and persistence.

When I was in college, a bunch of my floor mates wanted to know how to break the ice, and as a result started bandying around a new line to use with women. It went like this:

Guy: Hey, do you know how much a polar bear weighs?

Girl: No... how much?

Guy: Enough to break the ice! Hi, I'm Hal.

It's cute, but fortunately for you, there are many more ways you can use to break the ice with women that are a lot less cheesy than this.

Ice-breaking is a "line" than it is a technique, done properly. And there's more to ice-breaking than simply starting a new conversation.

In the article "How to Be Playful: 4 Tips You'll NEED," on the function of playfulness, I noted:

“Socially talented men employ playfulness for exactly TWO reasons:

1. Breaking the ice, and
2. Reducing tension
   

... that's it. Playfulness only serves those two functions. They're two sides of the same coin, really - the "ice" that you break is really just the tension that comes before initiating a conversation where no one really knows what to say yet to do that.”

And what I'm going to talk about in this article is exactly that - reducing tension, and breaking the ice. Although there are some differences between the two, there's a lot of overlap as well... so we'll cover both in this post.