Tactics Tuesdays

A great first kiss is what sets a steamy romance into motion. An awkward slurp might put the tension on ice, but a tantalizing lip-lock can lead to so much more.

The first kiss doesn’t need to be magical. It doesn’t need to be special. But it would be a lot better if it was. What is true to women in the context of romance is more about what feels true.

If she feels like a kiss was great, it will be true that it was great.

If she feels that she likes you, precisely because the kiss was so great, then it is true that she really likes you.

The exact nature of how women think and feel is better explained in my article on why women are emotional but not irrational.

To put it simply, what women feel is what’s real.

And for the sake of sexual strategy and navigating the social waters of the world, it’s quite an accurate compass. It’s far more accurate, on average, than cold logic.

How does this tie into giving her a great first kiss?

I explained it above. You want her to feel as if the first kiss was great, so she feels she likes you and that you two are having a great time together.

This may sound overly technical to some, and while I may even grant it is a bit nerdy, it doesn’t mean it’s not a good strategy.

As men, it’s generally good practice to go for strategy over feelings. I’m not saying don’t feel. That would be ridiculous. There would be no point to this entire website if we didn’t embrace our sexual and romantic desires toward women. You would be a machine who sleeps with women and dates them for purely intellectual rewards. That would be strange. Countless other pursuits would be more enjoyable on a purely intellectual field than seduction (and even then, you’re still chasing desire. Intellectual desires and carnal desires are only different in their appearance, but they are both desires all the same).

But enough philosophizing.

What is a good strategy for the first kiss?

There are many factors to cover, and some tips will be universal while others will be based on preference (i.e., you can choose to follow one tip rather than another).

Let’s get to it.

There's a certain kind of girl you'll meet when you frequent social venues.

These girls are out for a specific purpose: they want to be seen.

They want people to see them: how good they look, how popular they are, how in-demand.

Any kind of social venue will have women like this:

• Nightclubs have them
• Lounges have them
• Bars have them
• Parties have them
• Wine tastings have them
• Art gallery events have them
• Charity events have them

Now, you might at first think if a girl is out to be seen, she's not a worthwhile prospect for a night of bedroom delights. Yet that's not always the case. The psychology of a girl like this is one of seeking validation. She desires the validation of 'being seen'... she wants others to see her, think well of her, and admire her.

In some cases, you can turn this drive of hers for validation directly to your advantage, and become a source of validation she pursues. In other cases you can serve as a kind of reprieve from the pressures of validation-seeking; one she can run off with later on in the night once she's quenched her thirst for validation.

Today we'll talk about some tactics to use to bring these types of girls to bed.

But first, we should explain whom these women are and what's happening in their heads a little bit more.

You should always have a few fresh, recent stories to tell about your life.

These don't have to be particularly amazing stories. But they should be a little interesting, they should be recent, and they should display some interesting trait about you.

For instance, do you ever get people run up to you with strange requests? Four days ago I was at a Starbucks, eating a yogurt cup and reading my Kindle. They have this low-fat yogurt at Starbucks that is horrible. I don't know who wants yogurt with the fat out. But if you get the mixed berry yogurt, you can scoop up some berry and granola with the yogurt so it isn't too awful.

Well, I'm sitting there at this table by the window by myself, and I notice some girl hovering nearby. She looks like she's looking out the window, but I think she wants something.

Anyway, I go back to my book and my slightly awful low-fat yogurt.

The girl suddenly appears again, right at my table, and interrupts my reading. She says excuse me, do you have WhatsApp on your phone?

I look at her. She's pretty. But her face is glistening like she's been running a marathon or has a gland problem or something. And she looks all serious and distracted.

I can't tell if she's trying to meet someone and lost her phone, if she's using this as an excuse to meet me, or if she wants to steal my phone.

"I need to log into my WhatsApp account to check my messages," she tells me.

"Oh, sorry," I say. "I don't have WhatsApp."

But she doesn't leave. She just stands there, with her glistening face and her serious, distracted look.

"Oh," she says. "Because I thought everyone has WhatsApp. I just need to log into my account."

I don't know if she didn't hear me or what. She's not even really looking at me now, just glancing around as if scanning for predators. I do a quick mental calculus of "Do I want to go out of my way to help this random sweaty distracted chick? Do I want to tell her she can download WhatsApp to my phone, then sit there and watch her like a hawk while she uses it to make sure she doesn't make a break to run out of Starbucks with it?"

Instead I just tell her "Sorry, I don't have it."

She stands there for another moment, still looking sweaty and distracted. Finally she says "Okay, thanks" and walks off.

I notice her 15 minutes later over at some long table in the Starbucks, texting on a phone, still looking sweaty and serious but now laser-focused on whatever she's texting. So I guess she found someone to lend her a phone.

I dunno, what would you do in that scenario? I might've been more inclined to lend her my phone if she'd used a napkin first and wiped all that sweat off.

When you try to have sex with a girl, but fail, often that's it: you won't get another shot with her. Yet all is not lost with her – you still have options.

Failing in your escalation to sex is, often, a kiss of death.

You were inches away from intimacy with a girl... and then you didn't reach sex.

Perhaps you started to kiss her alone at your place, but she broke things off and left. Or you got her clothes partly off and had your hands on her body, only for her to get up, dress, and depart.

What's more maddening still is the power dynamic shift that occurs after a failed attempt at mating like this. She cools off to you dramatically... while you go crazy trying to get her back!

It's nuts. And it drives you nuts.

How can she be so cool toward you when the two of you were so close to intimacy?

In today's article we'll talk about a few tactics to attempt to turn things around in these sorts of situations. We'll also talk about why, from a strategic point of view, unless the girl is an absolute keeper, it's often better to take at best a few more shots, yet be ready to walk away.

An easy way to get your feet moving despite fears of rejection: just tell yourself "She'll likely reject me anyway... so let's go see what happens.

I just talked with one of our senior discussion forum members, who took on the 30 Days Invite a Girl Home Challenge. This is a challenge for advanced guys, where the singular goal is to invite a new girl home each and every day for 30 straight days. She doesn't have to say yes and you don't have to sleep with her, but you do need to invite her home to do it. The goal is to push a guy's comfort zone and open his eyes to what's possible.

In our forum member's case, his first day on the challenge ended up with the girl he invited home saying yes and going home with him. However, he liked this girl a lot, overthought things a bit, and escalated too timidly, despite feeling like the girl was quite into him.

He didn't get the lay (although he did get a nice start to the 30 day challenge!), and the girl left.

He tried to set a date up with her later, and she LJBF'ed him.

His escalation (too unaggressive for her level of horniness) was the immediate cause, he figured... but the root cause was that he liked her too much, which led him to go too slow for this girl's tastes.

Does he just need to convince himself not to like girls too much, he wondered?

That brought to mind a long-time technique I've used to overcome nervous hesitation with women, that might be useful to some guys.

It's this: you simply tell yourself "Well she's probably going to reject me, so let's try anyway and just see what happens."

When a date or an outing doesn't pan out, use a post-mortem to figure out why. Give yourself clear action items for next time – and recover your emotions, too.

Your dates and outings won't always work out.

Sometimes they don't pan out at all. You go out and approach girls and all you get are stony faces. You take girls onto dates yet can never get past the polite zone. You bring women home and hit a wall of last-minute resistance.

There is one thing you ought to always do, whenever things don't go your way.

That thing is a post-mortem.

The term comes from the Latin for after death, and it's pretty close to how we'll use it here.

After your date, outing, or seduction has 'died'... after the whole thing is over (and not before), you're going to do an 'after death' review to figure out what within your control went well, and what to change next time.

This is so incredibly important to your learning and future success. It takes your progress with women and puts it on the fast track -- and all it takes it a little cognizance of what you could've done better, and enough emotion control to step back and look at everything objectively.

It's basic, but it's also easy to forget to do. Smile when you approach a girl, and your odds of success with her go way up.

Sometimes the simplest stuff is the most important.

Every now and again, despite however many years at this, I will go out and discover things aren't going my way. Women don't glance at me or hover near me; when I approach them, they're lukewarm.

At first, whenever something like this happens, I assume it's randomness and asymmetry. Not everyone who sees you will like you; not everyone you talk with you'll connect with. Yet sometimes the pattern keeps up, well past the point you can chalk it all up as randomness. You meet more girls, talk to more girls, and they're still not as receptive as they should be.

Whenever this happens, I do a post-mortem on the outing. What did I do wrong? Where'd I screw up? I can usually find a few areas.

One of the most common, though, is also one of the most basic. All too often, I've been off in whatever kind of mood, and realize I haven't been smiling.