How to Get a One-Night Stand Tonight

To get a one-night stand, go to where the girl-guy ratios are higher and the atmosphere is hookup-oriented. Approach early and move fast. Invite girls home.

So you want to hook up with a girl and get a one-night stand. Go out, lock eyes with her, walk up to her, smile at her, say hello. Then, not so long after, take her hand and lead her out of there... Straight back to your place or hers. Off come the clothes, and into bed you go. Sounds simple enough.

Over a decade ago, when I set out to teach myself success with girls, one-night stands were my second focus. My first focus was how to get a phenomenal girlfriend (and you can read my guide on how to get a girlfriend here).

It took me a little while to get that first one-night stand, because I did not know what I was doing. But once I figured out how to get them, I got better and better at doing so. After I'd put enough work (and a few years) in, I could just about get one-night stands on command. At that point I'd achieved a major personal milestone: the ability to hook up with girls whenever I wished.

In this article, based on a decade of my own experience hooking up with girls and getting one-night stands, I show you how to do it. In addition, I've tapped 15 scientific studies that will open your eyes to a few elements of one-night stands you likely did not know. And I've laid it all out in simple, clear instructions.

So let's dive in! Let's show you how to get a one-night stand... tonight.

Part
1

Pick a Venue

🕐  Time for this step: 1 hour

How much hooking up actually goes on, anyway? According to a 2014 comparison of 1980s versus 2000s sex partner counts, little's changed (Monto & Carey). College-aged guys and girls still have the same number of sex partners today they did 20 years earlier. However, where more of the 1980s partners were boyfriends and girlfriends, more of the 2000s partners were hookups. People simply have more anonymous, casual sex.

In fact, according to another investigation (Brimeyer & Smith, 2012), by their senior year of college, 55.2% of college-aged girls have hooked up six or more times. Only 21% have hooked up two or fewer times.

Of course, people don't meet casual sex partners just anywhere. The "where" and "how" of it matter. A lot. So, before we get to what to do (so you can get in on some of that hooking up too), first we need to talk where to go.

A. Basics of Hookup Venues

The right venue already has girls in it who want to hook up.

A "hookup venue" is anywhere you stand a good chance to meet a girl you can quickly have sex with. The venue you select makes all the difference. Pick a good venue and it can be simple to find a cute girl to take home. Pick a bad venue and you could be the best-looking guy in the world with the best game and the biggest bank account and you won't find a single girl to hook up with.

Surveys of college students (Kuperberg & Padgett, 2015) have found the following places rank as the most common venues people meet other people to hook up with (at least while in university):

• Bars, parties, and nightclubs: 30% of hookups
• Student dorms: 18.5% of hookups
• Personal recommendations: 10% of hookups
• Common interest groups: 6.5% of hookups
• Public places: 3% of hookups
• Online dating: 2.5% of hookups

One of the more interesting things about hooking up is that the female sex drive appears to be responsive. That is, girls aren't in neutral and then you somehow flip them on. Instead, a girl decides she wants to have sex, and then seeks out a man she thinks will be able to turn her on (Basson, 2000). Yet, at the same time, women are often surprised when they hook up and do not expect it (Herold & Mewhinney, 1993).

What that means for you is girls go looking for one-night stands, but they don't know they're looking.

Because they are looking (even if they don't know it), you need to go to places they're more likely to go looking at... Like one of those places from the list above. If you go somewhere girls don't look to hook up at (like, say, the gym, or a pottery class), you'll be a lot less likely to walk out of there girl-in-hand. You want to find the girls who are already looking for a one-night stand.

B. The Two-Spot System

Warm up in one spot. Finish the night out in a second spot.

One of the most effective strategies I've discovered for one-night stands is what I call the "two-spot system." In essence, you visit two (2) different spots on a given night out. No more or fewer.

For instance, you may go to Bar A as your first venue. Here, you'll warm up. You can socialize, have a drink or two, do a couple of warm-up approaches. Then, as the night picks up more, you'll head next to Bar B. By the time you reach Bar B, you're already warmed up. And now it's easy to meet new girls. At the same time, you beam confidence and sex appeal... And those girls who are out looking for a hookup make themselves known to you.

The two-spot system gets around the entrenched feeling you get if you only go to one place. Because the first venue is a warm-up, you feel less pressure to not mess up (so can be more active). And by the time you reach the second venue you're already firing on all cylinders.

This approach also lets you avoid another common problem guys have when they seek one-night stands: too many venues. What a lot of men do is go to a venue, look around for five to ten minutes, then leave. Go to the next venue. Look around five to ten more minutes, then leave there too. Go to the next venue. I've rarely seen a guy hook up with a girl doing this, and have rarely hooked up when I've done it myself. You don't spend long enough in any one venue to settle in and find girls to meet. You're not there long enough for interested women to signal their availability to you. And your mind is too scattered to notice even if they do. Usually you just bounce around and waste your evening instead.

C. Good Nights & Bad Nights

There's plenty that can go wrong if you drink to excess (or if she does).

You noticed in "Basics of Hookup Venues" a full 30% of hookups happen in places with alcohol, right? Bars, parties, nightclubs. Most of the rest are some variation of social circle. But there's a lot more anonymous hooking up that occurs in the party venues.

People who drink use drink both to disinhibit themselves, and as an excuse for flirtation and hooking up. To illustrate, here's an exchange from a 2009 study titled "Getting Drunk and Hooking Up" (Ven & Beck):

Q: So, if girls are flirtatious when they are drunk, is that the alcohol that makes them that way or does it allow them to be that way?

A: It allows them to be that way. In some cases it is used as an excuse. I have known a girl to drink one beer and I know I can drink way more than that and she can go talk to the guy that she has been liking. It is not so much the physical aspect, just that they have that to fall back on that they can be able to say, 'Oh I was drinking.' They can blame it on that.

Q: So, a built-in excuse.

A: Yeah. (Female, 21)

Here're a few more excerpts from the same study:

The whole night was very fun because I got to kiss a boy ... We got to talk more openly and we were allowed to say things that we had been wanting to say to each other. (Female, 18)

We smoked pot, drank more, then had sex ... I was drunk; however, I do not regret it. I had fun and celebrated my birthday and even got some ass from a guy I liked. (Female, 22)

Of course, while alcohol greases the wheels, it can also lead to the wheels falling off. If a girl gets too drunk, her friends aren't going to let her go home with you. And if she does go home with you, and you hook up, you may be at risk of a false rape accusation if she forgets the night. If you get too drunk yourself, you'll turn sloppy and unattractive.

So for a good night, try to stick to just a few drinks, and look for girls who've had no more than a drink or two themselves.

Some other things that will usually lead to "bad nights":

• You don't talk to anyone / any girls
• You let rejections affect you too much
• You pick bad venues without enough available women
• You miss signals and don't make moves on interested girls

Avoid each of these, and your nights will be a lot more productive.

D. The Online Option

Online dating is a worthwhile backup option... If you have the patience.

If you don't feel like going out, there's also the online option too. The biggest upside of online dating is the girls you'll meet off it are often pretty down to hook up. The big downsides are online is image-oriented (so you need great pictures)... And the caliber of girl you meet on it is lower than what you get in real life.

However, if you've got great, attractive pictures to use, and you want to do online, it's a splendid supplement to "real world game." You can check out my guide to online dating here. And you may want to pick up a copy of Girls Chase author Colt Williams's manual for hooking up with girls on Tinder and other dating apps here.

Part
2

Meet Her

🕐  Time for this step: 2 to 4 hours

Once you've picked a venue (or two), it's time to meet her. Before you head out, make sure you're dressed well and you've got a plan for the night. When you meet the girl you click with, what will do to move things forward? What will you talk about with her? Where will you take her?

We'll discuss all these things in this section and the next... So make sure you read this article the whole way through before you head out for a night on the town.

A. Approach Early

Just because there aren't many people there yet doesn't mean you should wait for it to crowd up.

🕐  Time to budget: 1 hour

The single worst mistake men make when they go out to meet new girls is this: "I'm just going to hang out for a while before I do any approaches." Have a drink, talk to your friends, etc.

When you first arrive at a venue, all the momentum is with you. You've been walking... You're excited... You're motivated. If you then settle in and grab a drink or a bit of food, or settle into a long chat with a pal, how excited will you be after that? Answer: not much.

You don't need to begin guns blazing. You likely won't pick up a girl and take her home within your first 20 minutes out (though it happens sometimes). Instead, what you are aiming for is to lubricate your social skills... And in particular, to get warmed up meeting new people. That way, as the outing progresses, you feel more and more comfortable chatting up strangers. And chatting up strangers is the absolute lynch pin of pulling off one-night stands.

B. Be Sociable

Have fun, and be social.

🕐  Time to budget: 30 minutes

When you go out, you should aim to be sociable in general. Don't just go out to talk to attractive girls and no one else. When you're sociable, you take a lot of pressure off yourself. You also look like a more interesting, attractive guy to anyone around you... Including pretty girls.

You'll want to be sociable with an aim of making new connections with people. Yet you also want to make sure you put yourself in positions to meet new girls. So move about, socialize, but look for the chance to chat up people near to girls you'd like to meet.

One other great effect your socializing has is to get you interacting in a more lively way with others. One of the major traits girls look for in both potential one-night stands and men they'd like to date longer-term? An exciting personality (Stewart, Stinnett, & Rosenfeld, 2000).

C. Abandon Bad Leads

These girls are having a lot of fun, but they're probably not going to be terribly compliant with you.

It can feel pretty good to get into a decent conversation with someone new. This is especially true if you go out alone, or you don't talk to strangers a whole lot. But not every connection is as good as the next.

Just like there are girls who've gone out looking to hook up, there are girls who've gone out looking for good, platonic fun. If you meet one of them, you may talk to her for hours yet end up no closer to a one-night stand. Likewise, there are girls who for whatever reason you just don't do it for. You aren't their type, you said or did something that turned them off, or they already met a guy they like a lot.

It's vital you abandon bad leads as soon as you know a girl is one of these. To sift the good leads from the bad, you'll go through the steps in Part 3: From Hello to Let's Go Home. If at any point you run into a wall of resistance and can't get any forward progress, it's time to cut and run. Do take her phone number... You can always set up a date with her for another time. But don't devote your whole night to a girl who won't devote her night, to you.

Here's all you have to say to cut bait with a girl it's not going anywhere with:

Her: blah blah [this isn't going anywhere].

You: Cool, yeah. Well, tell you what. I'm going to go scout out the rest of the venue now. See what the scene's looking like. If I don't run into you again later, we should still grab food or a drink next week sometime.

Her: Okay.

You: Excellent. Let me take your contact info.

Then save her information and tell her you'll see her around.

You can always reopen her later if you like. Sometimes girls warm up to you more after you've left for a while, then return. But your focus on abandoning a bad lead should be just that: to abandon her, and find someone else. If she's still there later and you can resume with her again, consider it a bonus.

D. Commit to Good Leads

If it's going well, don't run off.

All that socializing and abandoning of bad leads can have an unintentional harmful side effect. That is, you begin to eject from chats with girls too fast... And you ditch cute girls who might've gone home with you had you stuck around longer.

The signs a girl is a good lead, and not a bad one, are as simple as she's receptive to what we'll discuss in the next section. If she responds well when you flirt with her, touch her, and move her, she's a good lead. Don't abandon her! Even if she doesn't respond perfect, if she still complies with most of what you ask, she's good.

It's a bit of a fine line to walk, abandoning bad leads and committing to good ones. Yet this is an essential step to getting one-night stands. If you can't abandon bad leads, you'll get stuck for entire outings with girls it goes nowhere with. And if you can't commit to good leads, you'll move on before you have the chance to make anything happen with a girl. You must look for girls who respond well, and be ready to commit to them for so long as they continue to respond well to you.

Part
3

From Hello to Let's Go Home

🕐  Time for this step: 30 to 90 minutes

You've gone out, hit a venue or two, socialized, and made some connections. And now you think you've found a girl who might be the one you'll take back home.

But for you to do that, you're going to need to press all the right buttons with her, first.

The good news is, if she likes you, she wants you to press them.

A. Playful Banter

It all goes smoother when there's a little flirtatious fun involved.

One of the greatest coups you can have in getting more one-night stands is this: make a conscious effort to inject playful banter at the outset. Look for a few ways to make it playful and fun.

Women seek out what scientists dub "humor production" for both short- and long-term relationships (Bressler, Martin, & Balshine, 2006). Whether you're a hookup or a future husband, she has an eye out for this. Is your sense of humor good or not?

A few examples of playful banter at the outset:

• Joke about something in the environment
• Tease her on something she's doing/wearing
• Chase frame her as trying to attract male attention

You may want to gauge how open she is to teasing before you go in full bore. This way you avoid over-teasing girls who aren't as receptive to teases.

Also, in addition to humor production, women also look for humor receptivity, too. That is, can you laugh, as well as make her laugh? So don't just crack a few witty remarks yet remain unmoved when funny stuff happens. You want to be able to laugh at the environment and at yourself (when it makes sense to), too.

B. Make It Sexual

If you want sexy times, be a sexy man.

A lot of guys try to stay polite when they go out to meet girls. They suppress their sexual sides so as not to offend. But how about girls? What do girls want when it comes to one-night stands?

According to a 1999 study, when girls hook up with guys, it's because they want to sate their sexual desires, experiment sexually, and experience pleasure (Regan & Dryer). If you keep it polite and respectful, you will not do well with a girl who's in this mood.

It's crucial for one-night stands to add that extra bit of sexiness in. You can do this many ways:

• Sex talk
• Innuendo
• Sexual assumptions
• Chase frames
• Flirtation
• Sexy facial expressions

Once you have sexiness mixed in, you'll see an interesting effect. Girls who want to hook up screen themselves in, and every other girl starts to screen herself out. It becomes much easier at that point to find the right girl.

C. Use Plenty of Touch

Start with incidental touch, then move on up the touch ladder.

When you touch other people, you make yourself seem higher status and more socially powerful (Burgoon, 1991). Touch also makes you seem more physically dominant. And both social dominance and physical dominance make a man more attractive for a one-night stand (Bryan, Webster, & Mahaffey, 2011). Touch is an easy, powerful way to make her want to sleep with you.

When you touch a girl, you want to do so in a controlled way. Most guys either don't touch at all, or they're too aggressive with touch. What you want is a balance:

1. Start with incidental touch. This includes touch to her wrist, forearm, or elbow.

2. Move to protective touch. Put your hand on the small of her back as you guide her around.

3. Next, use romantic touch. Hold hands with her, or use your fingers to touch and play with her hair.

4. Last, use sexual touch. Kissing, stroking, sex. Usually you'll want to wait until you're alone with her for this.

It's important to go through the progression in order. If you try to touch her hair or hold her hands without building up to it, it'll often backfire. Get her comfortable with lighter forms of touch first, before you move to more intimate forms.

D. Move Her Around

An easy way to get buy-in from girls who like you: ask them to move with you.

Between 5 to 10 minutes into a conversation, move her somewhere else. When you move a girl, you do a few good things for yourself:

• You have her commit to the interaction

• You get her to invest further in the courtship

• You screen out girls it isn't going anywhere with

Each of these is important. The first two serve as "buy in", where she chooses to go along to the next step with you. The last one (screening girls out) is a way for you to identify girls who are not very good leads after a few minutes of talk.

To ask a girl to move with you, all you need to tell her is, "Let's grab a seat before all the seats get taken," or, "Let's head to the smoking lounge, it's too loud in here."

E. Build a Connection

The more she tells about herself, the more connected she feels.

Each girl's different, and it's going to depend what she's on the hunt for how deep you go. Some girls need a lot of connection; some need just a little. Some don't need any at all. However, you're usually best served to build a least a shred of connection... Just in case.

Scientists have found the more a girl tells you about herself, the more connected both you and her feel (Cohen, 2016). Women are "more excited on first encounters when they have things in common with the man or the man shows interest in what the woman is saying" (McFarland, Jurafsky, & Rawlings, 2013). The more connected to you she feels, the more willing she is to come along with you, comply with you, and trust you.

Trust is an integral part of a successful hook up. If it's there (and you press all the other buttons she needs you to press), she's yours; if it isn't, she isn't. You can build trust other ways than connecting with her; but a connection is one of the most reliable ways to get it.

The easiest way to build connections with most girls is via deep diving. Start with a few basic questions, and once you get answers, drill down on those answers to her motivations - the 'why's of why she's done what she's done. The more you can get her to tell you about what drives her and motivates her, the more intimately she'll disclose... And the more connected both of you will feel.

F. Look for the Window

When she begins to signal she's ready, it's time to get her out of there.

At some point, if you've found a girl who likes you and followed the steps above, a window is going to open up with her. During this window, she's open to going home with you.

If you ask her before the window, she'll say no, because she isn't ready yet. If you miss the window, you'll lose her and she'll excuse herself and leave (or she'll go hook up with someone else).

Some signs the window's opened include:

• She gets very close to you
• Her eyelids lower ("bedroom eyes")
• She stares and smiles at you
• She talks less and her answers are shorter
• She blushes
• Her pupils dilate
• She holds your hand or loops her arm in yours

When you see two or more of these signs together, that's usually a decent indication her window has opened up. And when that window opens up, it's time to invite her home.

G. Invite Her Home

Every good chat should end with an invitation home.

If I had to give guys just a single tool to use to get a lot more one-night stands, it would be this: invite girls home more. No matter how great you do on everything else, the invite is the make-or-break moment. If you invite her back, she may say yes. If you don't invite her, you likely won't get her. Girls rarely invite themselves over on their own.

You can invite her back to your place. Or you suggest you both head to her place. If neither is an option, you'll have to get creative with logistics.

Anything remotely interesting you have at home will work as an excuse to invite her. Wine, hot chocolate, a fire to curl up by, your music collection, a nightcap, a movie. "Let's go and [X]," is the basic formula.

She doesn't need the most incredible offer in the world. However, she does need you to give her an excuse. That's so she can maintain the narrative the next day that, "I had no idea we were going to have sex. I thought we would just watch a movie!" It's also so she can reserve the right to back out if you change your behavior or make her uncomfortable. Don't begrudge her this; just realize that for a smaller, physically weaker human being, preserving her exits "just in case" is often a prerequisite to going home with strangers. Help her make sure she feels like she has an escape hatch if needed, and she'll be happy to go home with you.

H. A Few Thoughts on Closing

The 10-minute kiss rule: it makes everything a lot more fun.

Once she's back at your place, it's down to making a move, and having sex. I suggest you read this article next, for help with that:

• How to Get a Girl in Bed: 10 Crucial Tips for Making Her Yours

A few tips: try to have a clean bathroom, and follow the 10-minute kiss rule. That is to say, make sure you kiss her within 10 minutes of her being alone in your home with you.

Part
4

Troubleshooting

Just because you've got the steps doesn't mean you're out of the woods (or... into the bush?) just yet. Here are a few common concerns men have about hooking up, and the answers.

Q: Do I have to be handsome/muscular/funny/rich/etc. to get a one-night stand?

A: Any and all these things can help. But none are required. What researchers consistently show is that "attractiveness" predicts how much a girl wants to hook up with you. Yet "attractiveness" is a product of a whole mess of factors. Looks, muscles, humor, and money are some of them. But things like physical dominance and social dominance play even larger roles.

Handle your fundamentals and stick to this guide, and you'll have all the tools you need to rack up plenty of one-night stands. Check out the below article if you'd like help figuring out which of your fundamentals you can improve:

• How Many Attraction Factors are There? Infinite
  

Q: Why do girls' friends try to cockblock me?

A: In the 2009 study "Getting Drunk and Hooking Up" (Ven & Beck), some of the reasons girls list for cockblocking are:

• She "forgot about" her boyfriend while partying and her friends wanted to help her stay faithful

• She was with friends who know her well and know all her male friends, and they did not recognize this new guy talking to her

If a girl is drunk, her friends will cockblock more. Or if you come in wrong on your approach and don't make the right impression, they may cockblock to "save" her from you.

If you're running into a lot of issues with cockblocking, I suggest you read this article:

• How to Stop a Cockblock (Without Breaking a Sweat)
  

Q: What do I do if another guy tries to steal her from me?

A: Men become downright predatory at the end of the night. If you're still in the bar or at the party with her as things wind down, it can get cutthroat... Especially if she's in that "I want someone to take me home now" mode.

The solution is simple enough: keep your eyes peeled for windows, and as soon as you see yours with her, get her out of there. Don't flirt with her and get her all excited, then stay there in the bar with her and not ask her home. Do that, and you're just begging for someone else to come pick her off.

If other men intervene, you may have to deal with them at that point. Yet most such attempted thefts are easily avoided, if you just get girls out of the place as soon as their windows open for you.

Q: I have this one specific girl I want a one-night stand with. What should I do?

A: This guide is to help you find women you're attracted to who are open to one-night stands. If you're trying to sleep with one specific woman, this is a very different topic.

She may be open to you, or she may not be. You can still take her through the stages of III. From Hello to Let's Go Home. However, before you invest too much time into her, I advise you to read this:

• Can't Stop Thinking About Her? Here's Why You Need to Meet More Girls
  

Q: If I want to continue to see a girl after we hook up, what’s the procedure?

A: If you meet a girl you'd like to have stick around (that is, you want it to turn into more than a one-night stand), use what's in this article to keep her:

• How to Start a Relationship with a New Girlfriend
  

Part
5

References