I just got wind of a special bootcamp that Mystery will be holding at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago on July 21st-23rd. This is a great opportunity to learn from the "greatest pickup artist in the world".
Click here, then go to the main page to book.
"This Special Bootcamp is not designed for those who have already attended a program. Rather, it is a comprehensive overview of the entire Mystery Method, from beginning to end, including live exercises, video, and interaction with all of the Mystery Method instructors.
In addition, Mystery will be breaking down video of his live pickups -- giving you an opportunity to look "over his shoulder" at what exactly he did, and why. Audio, video, commentary, you name it. Also get the an exclusive look at some of Mystery's newer ideas and concepts."
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Monday, May 29, 2006
Miss Out On The Annihilation Method?
If any of you guys had trouble getting the "Annihilation Method". You needn't stress. There are a tonne of great options for you out there.
1. Mystery Method
Taught by the man of the moment - Mystery. He was Neil's instructor and taught him a lot of what he uses now. This is a step-by-step breakdown on everything from meeting to sex.
2. Pickup 101
Lance Mason teaches very similar techniques that Annihilation Method and Mystery Method teach. Perhaps with a more natural feel. I've been reviewing a new product that he plans to release which is delves into Attraction, Comfort Building, and Seduction. Everything you need to know. Look out for that review soon.
3. David DeAngelo
The basics of male to female attraction. What makes a man attractive? What are characteristics of men in which women find attractive. Learn all of that and more. Also if you want an fairly easy way out of approaching women. Check out his Meeting Women Online program (which features Neil Strauss).
It is too bad that you missed out on Style's product, however for $4000 dollars you could definitely purchase a few workshops and products that could transform your lifestyle. It all depends on you. If you haven't already, download the report about when he trained the "Final 5", simply enter your email and get the details!
1. Mystery Method
Taught by the man of the moment - Mystery. He was Neil's instructor and taught him a lot of what he uses now. This is a step-by-step breakdown on everything from meeting to sex.
2. Pickup 101
Lance Mason teaches very similar techniques that Annihilation Method and Mystery Method teach. Perhaps with a more natural feel. I've been reviewing a new product that he plans to release which is delves into Attraction, Comfort Building, and Seduction. Everything you need to know. Look out for that review soon.
3. David DeAngelo
The basics of male to female attraction. What makes a man attractive? What are characteristics of men in which women find attractive. Learn all of that and more. Also if you want an fairly easy way out of approaching women. Check out his Meeting Women Online program (which features Neil Strauss).
It is too bad that you missed out on Style's product, however for $4000 dollars you could definitely purchase a few workshops and products that could transform your lifestyle. It all depends on you. If you haven't already, download the report about when he trained the "Final 5", simply enter your email and get the details!
Friday, May 26, 2006
Pickup 101 In San Francisco Magazine
Sean our contributing columnist here at the Attraction Chronicles Blog told me about an article that Jaimal Yogis from the San Francisco Magazine wrote about Pickup101. Lance Mason, his workshops and products are field tested with workshop attendee's while Jaimal watches on. I thought it was a good review of his techniques, and of the community overall.
Here it is:
"What does it take to get a date in this town?"
By Jaimal Yogis
It's an average afternoon at the Z. Cioccolato candy shop in North Beach. The young employees are bored stiff from hours of arranging taffy and playing with toy cows that defecate Dr. Pepper–flavored jellybeans. That is, until Jesse Hull walks in.
Jesse is a 6-foot-2-inch 33-year-old with a goatee and dark, curly hair that he pins back with, not one, but two pairs of sunglasses. He's flaunting blue and gray snakeskin shoes, Diesel jeans, and a see-through button-down with fishlike creatures embroidered on it. It's a style pickup artists like Jesse call peacocking, a way to set yourself apart from the masses.
Jesse is one of the many acolytes of Lance Mason, the number-one pickup artist in the Bay Area. As founder of PickUp 101, a two-year-old company that teaches men how to flirt, date, and generally pick up women, transforming average guys into flawless ladies' men, Mason is the leader of San Francisco's new posse of PUAs. I'm hanging out with Jesse after my first day at one of Mason's workshops, which I am studiously observing.
If you haven't heard of PUAs, you will. You may have already slept with one. They're men who spend incredible amounts of time zealously analyzing what to wear, say, and do to attract the opposite sex. Yes, there have always been ladies' men, but the new cultlike community of pickup artists is more than that. Using psychological games and other tactics, based partly on primate behavioral patterns and partly on Tom Cruise and James Dean moves, they're developing a pseudoscience that is sweeping the nation. Many PUAs post their results and theories in chat rooms like MysteryMethod.com, teach workshops like Mason's, and brag about their exploits and abilities to pick up high-profile women like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.
Last year, Neil Strauss released The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists. The best-selling book, with its embossed cover resembling a bible, became an instant cult classic. "The PUA thing has grown exponentially since the book," says Strauss, who is heralded as the number-one PUA in the country, having seduced innumerable women before meeting his current girlfriend, the blonde guitarist for Courtney Love. "In the past, I believed there were guys who had it and guys who didn't," says Strauss. "But once you find out that it can be learned, everything changes."
As sleazy as the PUA trend may sound, San Francisco certainly needs something to pull itself out of its dating doldrums. The city has long been a notoriously difficult place to meet people. According to a poll conducted by San Francisco magazine in 2003, over half of singles say it's harder to hook up here than anywhere else. In a city of cliques, we fall into ruts and forget it's possible to fall in love with someone with different politics, career goals, or tattoos. Men let their deeply rooted PC fear of objectifying women prevent them from approaching them. Online dating seemed like a solution, but it often dissolves into the tedious task of résumé swapping, rarely providing the chemistry-induced adrenaline rush that good old-fashioned flirting does.
Still, many women are understandably turned off by the whole idea of PUAs. "Lines are disingenuous," says Lisa, a 26-year-old graduate student I met in a café in Oakland. "I don't use them, and I don't want guys to use them." Moreover, Bay Area women accuse the men here of flighty relationship hopping, and PickUp 101 may exacerbate the problem. Practice makes perfect, and some women could end up as lab rats for a zealous PUA climbing the chick ladder, hoping each conquest will be better than the last.
But Mason offers more than "a line," in part because he knows the women here are different. "They're smart, independent, and they have their lives together," he says, "and they expect the same from men." With a reputation in the PUA world for sincerity, his style is more Bay Area–friendly than most. While he teaches routines for beginners, he encourages men to abandon those routines once they feel comfortable enough to rely on their own instincts.
But even if Mason's weird science does work, what guy is going to humble himself to take a class on meeting women? When I first heard about Mason's workshops, I imagined a room of clueless Silicon Valley techies and Marina Triangle slicksters bragging about how fast they can get women into bed. But I discovered that these guys, like most of us, are simply looking for validation from attractive people - they're just being more proactive about getting it.
Z. Cioccolato is supposed to be my first chance to observe a PUA in action, but suddenly Jesse is pushing me to participate. I'm terrified and uncomfortable. Even if I do get lucky, it feels a bit wrong to hit on strangers for sport. But the first thing PUAs learn is that women want to be picked up. As Will Smith says in Hitch: "No woman wakes up saying, ‘God, I hope I don't get swept off my feet today.'" Besides, Jesse claims to have once been shy himself, unable to meet women who weren't friends of friends. But now he's acting like he owns the place.
Jesse locks in on his target, a darkly tanned clerk who's arranging stuffed animals. I follow, my lower back in a knot, a response Mason says happens when we try to be "cooler than we are." This is why, I'm now realizing, PUAs-in-training need routines.
"I'm looking for a gift for my 8-year-old niece," Jesse says, using step one from one of the pickup routines he learned from Mason. "Any recommendations?" The girl points to some T-shirts, "Paris Hilton really likes these."
Jesse now has to get her laughing: "Are you kidding? I don't want my niece dressing like Paris Hilton!" The comment is also a subtle "neg," a PUA term for a line that playfully cuts a woman down but doesn't actually hurt her feelings. Negs make the suitor seem less needy, and differentiates him from every other guy fawning over her. The girl laughs on cue, and Jesse slaps her a high five, establishing "kino," PUA-speak for touch. Jesse squeezes her hand - a test - and she squeezes back, signaling that he should move on to building rapport.
Suddenly, the young woman working the fudge counter slingshots a stuffed monkey at Jesse's head - she seems to want to flirt, too. He catches it like Willie Mays, in a move that screams alpha confidence.
Impressed, I try my luck with an overly made-up 20-something woman who just walked in with her mother. "This stuff is great, but it's hard to get out of the sheets," the mother whispers, pointing to some body chocolate. Attempting to create banter, I weigh in: "Totally, it's so sticky." The daughter chuckles and touches my shoulder - kino - an invitation to flirt more. But I clam up, acting like what PUAs call an AFC: average frustrated chump. Jesse notices and swings in with backup. "Uh-oh, here come the party girls," he calls out to the women as they turn toward him. Somehow, it works. They giggle and start chatting with him. The employees laugh. Anyone walking into the shop would immediately notice that Jesse is controlling the room. In fact, after a grandmother toddles in, it takes just a few flirty lines before she proposes to him. "Oh my god," says the fudge clerk, beaming. "Who is this guy?" Jesse leans over to me and says: "Imagine. Life could be like this all the time."
I first arrive at the PickUp 101 "mansion" on a Friday morning. It's really just an apartment on Powell Street, but PUAs like to call their homes mansions: if you aspire to be Hugh Hefner, you have to psych yourself up. Inside, it's a bit of a disco frat pad: a velvet love seat sits invitingly in the corner near a tropical aquarium and a wooden wine rack. A disco ball hangs above black leather couches, which frame a gas fireplace with flames leaping up from behind crackled glass.
Eleven men, who have traveled from as far away as New York and as nearby as the Marina, sit patiently, hoping that this $1,700, three-day workshop will help them reach their full player potential. Most of them are software engineers, but there's also a lawyer, an actor, a professional gambler, and a firefighter. They run the gamut from attractive and stylish to dorky and clueless. Since this is an advanced class, the students have all been to at least one other pickup class before, so they know the jargon. As "Rico Suave" and "Sex Machine" blare in the background, I hear guys say things like, "I opened this three-set but was forgetting to kino. Luckily, Bob was winging for me, and he distracted her friends so I could isolate and run the cube." It's the kind of language you'd expect at a Dungeons & Dragons conference, not in a rehash of last night's exploits.
Mason runs different types of trainings, covering everything from how to dress to managing multiple relationships, but this weekend is on Day Game. The more common Night, or Bar, Game involves being entertaining and overtly sexual, but Day Game is more subtle and thus more difficult. The key is establishing an emotional connection without seeming creepy. "Nothing kills attraction faster than being creepy," says Mason.
Mason, 33, has big, sensitive blue eyes that have made hundreds, if not thousands, of women swoon. His smile says all-American farm boy, but his dress - faded jeans with a massive belt buckle and a button-down with an embroidered ram on the sleeve - reads like an Esquire take on California frat. He's charismatic and charming; his posture exudes confidence.
But that wasn't always so. As a UC Davis engineering student, Mason was a total AFC. He had had two long-term relationships with girlfriends who chose him more than he chose them. He was dissatisfied, but afraid to break up.
At the time that his brother was getting a divorce, his second girlfriend was pressuring him into marriage. That's when things started to click. "I realized deciding who to spend my life and raise a family with is the most important decision of my life," Mason says over lunch at the Steps of Rome Caffe, a restaurant known for its flirty waiters. "I needed to make it the focus of my life."
Like a mad scientist, Mason threw himself into learning everything he could about women. He read books, studied films, and approached women constantly, logging what worked and what didn't. Before long, he says, about half the women he approached were accepting his advances, but he didn't want a relationship yet. He spent seven years learning about himself and what he wanted in a woman. He established some guidelines. No going out on three dates in a row - that's how you fall in love. "I recommend everyone date multiple people at once before settling down," says Mason. "That way, you see your partners for who they really are, rather than projecting onto them."
Then in 2002, he discovered a community of guys who were studying the same thing. While it had not yet gone mainstream with the release of The Game, the PUA community was holding workshops and posting blogs. Mason signed up for a class with Mystery, the most hyped PUA at the time. Strauss, who was working with Mystery then, says Mason popped out as a star. Mason quickly gained a reputation as a skilled ladies' man who had a mastery of the pickup techniques but also maintained his respect for women. Men started coming to him for advice on everything from maintaining a marriage to initiating threesomes. After a while he didn't have time to respond to all the e-mails and phone calls, so he quit his computer job and started PickUp 101. Now in its second year, his business is quickly expanding, with nearly 10,000 people receiving his regular e-mails, and 30 workshops a year held here and in New York. Every workshop is booked solid.
It's easy to see why PickUp 101 is attracting so many men. Mason's motto is "Ladies' men aren't born; they're made." He helps guys looking for more action or even a wife, but also men who are depressed or too terrified to talk to women. "Half of it's confidence," Mason says. "If you're not good with women, then early on you probably experienced failure, and each failure reinforced that you were not good with women. I teach men how to be cooler than they think they are."
Mason sells himself as proof that it's possible. "I'll walk into a bar and establish rapport with a woman," he says in his opening speech of the workshop, "and I don't care if Brad Pitt walks in and makes out with her. When she goes to bed that night, she's going to be thinking about that moment with me. That's how powerful this stuff is." What man wouldn't be intrigued?
For our first day, Mason has created communication exercises for the students; they rotate among stations and act out hypothetical situations, overseen by Mason and his assistants, many of whom were once students themselves. Since it's only men, they all take turns in the female roles, creating moments most women would pay to see. "So how did that feel when I touched your elbow?" asks Eric, a New Yorker with a Sting haircut, after running a pretend pickup on George, an actor. "Well, I liked the way it felt," George says earnestly, "but you were a little too close to me, which felt invasive."
At one station, men rehearse "deep rapport" stories - tales about their past that show their sensitive side. Mason says they're one of the most powerful ways to quickly build a connection. "I don't even use these stories with women anymore," he says. "I don't want them to get too attached."
The deep-rapport stories flow for over an hour, creating a full-fledged therapy session. Alex, a former opera singer, tears up as he recounts singing Beethoven in Spain. Jesse weeps while describing a relative's death. When I ask Jesse if it's disingenuous to be rehearsing a supposedly sincere moment, he takes my question seriously. "We all have stories we tell over and over because they explain what we're about deep down," Jesse says. "Just because we tell them a lot, or even rehearse them, doesn't make them less sincere."
But it's more than learning what to say. "You can have the worst line ever," Mason explains, "but if you create a powerful impression with your body language, you can make any line work." Throughout the day, he spends hours correcting the way the students walk, stand, speak, and breathe. "It's not that hard to be the coolest guy in the room when you know this stuff," says Mason. The tips are obvious - shoulders back, smile when entering a room, make eye contact - but it's amazing how difficult it is for the students to break their simple habits of slouching and frowning.
Saturday: time to put the skills to the test. After a couple more hours of rehearsal and a brief round of chanting "Let's go meet some women" along to the Rocky theme song, the class is sent out to Union Square, the San Francisco Centre mall, and the Marina. I hit Union Square with Dominic, a 33-year-old professional gambler from Cleveland. Before Dominic discovered PickUp 101 a few months ago, he rarely left the house. He's a big guy - 240 pounds - with acting skills that are worse than Keanu Reeves's on a bad day. But he already looks less robotic than yesterday, and more important, he's willing to try. Half of pickup is approaching people. Dominic sees two tall, sleekly dressed women buying coffee, and he pounces, using the three-step opening combo he's been practicing all morning.
"Excuse me," he asks, "do you have the time?"
"Uh, sure," one responds disinterestedly. "It's 1:30."
"Thanks," Dominic says. "I should hire you as my personal assistant. You could, like, help me plan my day. Wait a minute, can you type?"
The woman says nothing. Her friend cuts in. "I think you can do that yourself." And they walk away.
Ouch. The lines came off too stiff, which, according to Mason, equals creepy. I run up for moral support, expecting Dominic to be sulking. But he's smiling. "At least I tried," he says. "This is actually kind of fun." And therein lies one of the biggest secrets of pickup: realizing that rejection isn't that bad.
Wandering Union Square, I see more of Mason's students scouting for live test material. I follow Gordon, a 39-year-old programmer from the South Bay. He's 5 feet 8 inches with a pudgy, round belly, but he's wearing a pair of Stacy Adams alligator-skin shoes, which he says bring him luck. He's approaching a woman in a puffy gold jacket, who is standing by the heart sculpture across from the Westin St. Francis. With her athletic body wrapped in tight designer jeans, she's way out of his league. "Don't even try," I want to shout after Gordon as he strides ahead. But it's too late.
"Hey, do you know where an ATM is?" he asks.
"I don't know. I think over there," the woman responds, pointing vaguely toward Market Street.
"You don't know, do you? Damn, I was totally going to hire you as my tour guide," he jokingly replies.
The woman laughs.
"So you're not from around here are you?" he asks, touching her shoulder.
"No, I'm from Vienna, but I just moved here three months ago," she says with a smile.
Gordon takes the bait. "You know what I love about this city…."
Oh my god, I think. It's working. Short, pudgy Gordon is getting positive feedback from the sexiest woman in sight. He's standing up straight and leaning back slightly so as not to convey neediness, and looking pretty slick in an innocent kind of way. After talking to her for a solid hour, he leaves with a phone number and a date for Monday night. We high-five, and I see how this can become an addiction. Pickup is the perfect male bonding exercise: half the rush is showing off.
After four hours out in the field, the PUAs retreat to the mansion. The place is abuzz with stories of phone number exchanges and comical rejections. "I just never thought any women would want to talk to a guy with my body type," says Alex, a PickUp 101 convert who subsequently quit his high-paying tech job to work for Mason full time. Mike, a fit, attractive Marina guy in square, wire-rimmed glasses who had been fumbling all his lines during the morning practice sessions, seems especially happy. He approached a woman and, deciding to just toss his lines, told her how beautiful she was. She gave him her e-mail address. "She just opened up," Mike says in disbelief. "It was amazing."
Not everyone had success - i.e., digits - but everyone had a good time. Part of Mason's strategy is to get his students to be more social in general, so the guys talked to all kinds of strangers, not just beautiful women. "It's amazing how much we feel like we're in these little boxes, separated from everyone," says Daniel, one of Mason's first students, "but we're just not."
The next day, Mason brings in women to offer feedback. One of them is Yuko Yamazaki, Mason's girlfriend, whom he met at a 24 Hour Fitness seven months ago. A no-nonsense, 26-year-old software engineer who struts around in high-heeled boots and a miniskirt, she doesn't seem the type to fall for canned lines. I can't resist asking what she thought of Mason's initial pickup. She says he asked how her iPod worked while she was lifting weights - not exactly what one expects from one of the best pickup artists in the country. But his body language must have been good. "After he got my phone number, I went and called my friends," Yamazaki tells me, blushing. "I told them, ‘I just met the smoothest guy ever.'"
She's a big fan of PickUp 101 and helps out at many of the events. "Some of my friends think it's weird," she says. "But when they meet Lance, they see that he's helping men treat women better."
The other female assistants, who found the company through a job posting on Craigslist, are fans as well. "Guys need it," says Luanne Hernandez, a bubbly 22-year-old who has worked at two other PickUp 101 workshops. "Women get good advice from Cosmo and their friends, but guys don't have anything."
Hearing from these two makes the whole thing seem less scandalous, and the more I ask women what they think, the better I feel about it all. "I think it's necessary and called for," says Natalie Mock, a 28-year-old from Berkeley who says guys try to pick up on her all the time at her restaurant job. "Most guys just go off their instincts, which is generally a bad idea. If these classes are done in a way that's thoughtful to the woman, then I support it."
Even skeptics are getting converted. "Dolly," author of the popular sex blog The Truth about Cocks and Dolls, was put off by PUAs at first. But after she met more, including two from San Francisco, she wrote a letter to the Village Voice defending them, in response to the paper's negative article on the subject in March. "PUAs try to create a fun, positive, and exciting experience for the woman," Dolly wrote. "The credo many follow is ‘Leave her better than you found her.' What's so bad about that? That they want to get laid, too? Guess what? Guys have always wanted sex and will continue to want sex. You can't fault them for finally discovering methods that are successful."
To further inspire us for day three, Mason shows a clip of a true natural: playboy Howard Hughes, as played by Leonardo DiCaprio in The Aviator. In the scene, he picks up a cigarette girl, using many of the techniques Mason teaches, creating a near-orgasmic sexual tension in under two minutes. "Hughes is better than me," Mason admits. "Hollywood understands attraction. You guys can learn from this."
Watching DiCaprio, I'm intrigued by the power of these techniques and eager to cash in on the action. I hit the women's shoe section at Macy's. After making several methodical laps, I force myself to approach a woman in light brown, knee-high leather boots. She's the exact type I never approach cold: stylish, confident, gorgeous. I want to try the "movie-moment method" on her, a technique in which the suitor says something fearless like, "There's just something about you. I had to meet you." But I wimp out.
"Those shoes really bring out your skin color," I say, smiling and standing tall. "You think they have them in baby blue for me?"
"Really?" she says, and I remember that I'm in San Francisco. What was I thinking?
"No, I just came over here to flirt with you," I tell her, using a line I saw Jesse try.
"Oh, OK," she says, laughing, but perhaps slightly intimidated.
At this point I'm supposed to transition into building rapport, but this woman's beauty is making me forget the techniques. Luckily, she initiates more banter.
"Look at my crazy teal socks," she says.
I remember to toss out a "warm read," an intuitive comment based on observation. "Oh, I see. Those must be, like, your inner playfulness hiding behind your cool exterior." Warm reads are what PUAs call chick crack, and indeed, she giggles.
"Yeah, I guess that's true."
She likes me. She really, really likes me. But just when it's getting good, her family arrives. "Well, nice meeting you. I'm shopping with my family today. Have a good day." We wave and smile. She's gone.
My confidence boosted, I spend the day approaching women everywhere - Macy's, H&M, Borders. I'm not going for phone numbers yet, just having basic conversations: baby steps. A tall, stunning brunette exiting Macy's seems genuinely touched when I run across the street to tell her she's beautiful, but she says she has a serious boyfriend. A pale, leggy woman wandering Union Square entertains an awkward 10-minute conversation, but won't offer me any IOIs - indicators of interest - so I abandon ship. But no matter. I'm having an epiphany: I can talk to anyone.
But then, eerily, I run into two guys from Real Social Dynamics, another local pickup group that hosts trainings every weekend. I watch as the short, unshaven guy with an annoying accent and his friend sporting black nail polish and lots of jewelry - classic peacocking - approach two Scandinavian-looking girls who have already been hit on by PickUp 101 guys. I'm with Daniel, one of Mason's assistants, and he explains how their techniques differ, as if they're from a rival kung fu school. "We don't try to entertain the girl as much. They're acting like it's a club in the middle of Union Square."
It turns out that Mystery Method, one of the most well-known PUA groups, is also running a workshop here this weekend. How many Howard Hughes aspirants can Union Square hold at once?
A few minutes later, the Scandinavian girls see me scribbling in a notebook and run up to find out what the hell is going on. "Excuse me," one says, tapping my shoulder. "Guys keep approaching us saying weird things, and I just saw one of them hiding a video camera." It was inevitable: they've spotted Derek, the PickUp 101 intern, trying to film a live pickup to be analyzed later for training purposes. I'm not sure if I should blow the guys' cover, but I had run Mason's techniques on the girls myself earlier that day, and my guilt gets the better of me. I admit what's going on, expecting to get slapped, but instead they're into it. "That's so cool," they say. "Teach us how to pick up on guys." Apparently, they don't read Cosmo in Sweden.
I chastise myself briefly for getting involved in this cult, but only until I spot a petite blonde in a head scarf. She has huge blue eyes and she's handing out fliers on the corner of Stockton and Post; it's a perfect opportunity to talk. I beeline toward her, tossing aside my qualms, but run head-on into another moral quandary. She's a Hare Krishna, and her fliers explain the group's tenets; soon I'm debating human potential and the cosmos with her. She tries to make me a "servant of Krishna," but her body language is terrible. Besides, getting converted to one cult is enough for a weekend.
I remember a cute girl I saw yesterday working at the Borders café and go find her. I had complimented her on her tattoo, but then chickened out and left without making conversation. She's not stereotypically beautiful, but there is something irresistible about her short, curly hair, square glasses, and nose piercing.
This has to be executed perfectly, I tell myself as I walk toward the café like a cowboy strolling into the O.K. Corral, not showing an ounce of indecision.
"I saw you yesterday," I say in an unusually low voice. "And I had to come back and talk to you."
She smiles, and before she even says a word, I know that I've succeeded. Soon, we're exchanging contact info, and Jesse, who just happens to be in Borders coaching another student, watches the whole thing.
"That was awesome," he says afterward with a brotherly high five.
Every successful pickup builds on itself. I feel so on my game that when I walk downstairs to the magazine section and see the woman I met earlier at Macy's, my lines come naturally.
"Hey, are you stalking me?" I joke.
"I think you're stalking me," she says, jabbing me.
And we chat. When she asks me what I do, I have a rehearsed answer from one of Mason's identity exercises. The key is to set yourself apart. "I'm really lucky right now because I get to surf all the time," I say. "Ever since I was a little kid, I've dreamed of being a surfer."
By saying this, instead of just telling her I'm a freelance writer who has written about surfing, I'm surprising her - and showing my sensitive side, appearing vulnerable. Correspondingly, she opens up and tells me about her childhood in the Bay Area, Guam, and Hawaii. The surfing line was a good call. When the conversation ends, she offers me her e-mail address. "So if you're ever in San Antonio, let me know," she says, grinning.
"OK. Great!" I say, dazed. "Wait - San Antonio?" As a typical Bay Area commitmentphobe, my first reaction is relief: the pressure is off. But then I find myself religiously checking my e-mail, hoping for a reply from her - or the Borders barista. No dice.
Turns out flirty banter is one thing, but closing the deal is another. Mason reminds us that even with a killer pickup, you need the personality to back it up.
But I refuse to believe I don't have what it takes. Still, instead of replies from my crushes, my in-box is filled with e-mails from Mason, reminding me that another $1,700 workshop could get me closer to the perfect pickup. Hmmm. For now, I think I'll stick to my instincts - Mason's mansion is always there if I need it.
To check more about Pickup101's workshops, products and services visit their homepage.
Here it is:
"What does it take to get a date in this town?"
By Jaimal Yogis
It's an average afternoon at the Z. Cioccolato candy shop in North Beach. The young employees are bored stiff from hours of arranging taffy and playing with toy cows that defecate Dr. Pepper–flavored jellybeans. That is, until Jesse Hull walks in.Jesse is a 6-foot-2-inch 33-year-old with a goatee and dark, curly hair that he pins back with, not one, but two pairs of sunglasses. He's flaunting blue and gray snakeskin shoes, Diesel jeans, and a see-through button-down with fishlike creatures embroidered on it. It's a style pickup artists like Jesse call peacocking, a way to set yourself apart from the masses.
Jesse is one of the many acolytes of Lance Mason, the number-one pickup artist in the Bay Area. As founder of PickUp 101, a two-year-old company that teaches men how to flirt, date, and generally pick up women, transforming average guys into flawless ladies' men, Mason is the leader of San Francisco's new posse of PUAs. I'm hanging out with Jesse after my first day at one of Mason's workshops, which I am studiously observing.
If you haven't heard of PUAs, you will. You may have already slept with one. They're men who spend incredible amounts of time zealously analyzing what to wear, say, and do to attract the opposite sex. Yes, there have always been ladies' men, but the new cultlike community of pickup artists is more than that. Using psychological games and other tactics, based partly on primate behavioral patterns and partly on Tom Cruise and James Dean moves, they're developing a pseudoscience that is sweeping the nation. Many PUAs post their results and theories in chat rooms like MysteryMethod.com, teach workshops like Mason's, and brag about their exploits and abilities to pick up high-profile women like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.
Last year, Neil Strauss released The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists. The best-selling book, with its embossed cover resembling a bible, became an instant cult classic. "The PUA thing has grown exponentially since the book," says Strauss, who is heralded as the number-one PUA in the country, having seduced innumerable women before meeting his current girlfriend, the blonde guitarist for Courtney Love. "In the past, I believed there were guys who had it and guys who didn't," says Strauss. "But once you find out that it can be learned, everything changes."
As sleazy as the PUA trend may sound, San Francisco certainly needs something to pull itself out of its dating doldrums. The city has long been a notoriously difficult place to meet people. According to a poll conducted by San Francisco magazine in 2003, over half of singles say it's harder to hook up here than anywhere else. In a city of cliques, we fall into ruts and forget it's possible to fall in love with someone with different politics, career goals, or tattoos. Men let their deeply rooted PC fear of objectifying women prevent them from approaching them. Online dating seemed like a solution, but it often dissolves into the tedious task of résumé swapping, rarely providing the chemistry-induced adrenaline rush that good old-fashioned flirting does.
Still, many women are understandably turned off by the whole idea of PUAs. "Lines are disingenuous," says Lisa, a 26-year-old graduate student I met in a café in Oakland. "I don't use them, and I don't want guys to use them." Moreover, Bay Area women accuse the men here of flighty relationship hopping, and PickUp 101 may exacerbate the problem. Practice makes perfect, and some women could end up as lab rats for a zealous PUA climbing the chick ladder, hoping each conquest will be better than the last.
But Mason offers more than "a line," in part because he knows the women here are different. "They're smart, independent, and they have their lives together," he says, "and they expect the same from men." With a reputation in the PUA world for sincerity, his style is more Bay Area–friendly than most. While he teaches routines for beginners, he encourages men to abandon those routines once they feel comfortable enough to rely on their own instincts.
But even if Mason's weird science does work, what guy is going to humble himself to take a class on meeting women? When I first heard about Mason's workshops, I imagined a room of clueless Silicon Valley techies and Marina Triangle slicksters bragging about how fast they can get women into bed. But I discovered that these guys, like most of us, are simply looking for validation from attractive people - they're just being more proactive about getting it.
Z. Cioccolato is supposed to be my first chance to observe a PUA in action, but suddenly Jesse is pushing me to participate. I'm terrified and uncomfortable. Even if I do get lucky, it feels a bit wrong to hit on strangers for sport. But the first thing PUAs learn is that women want to be picked up. As Will Smith says in Hitch: "No woman wakes up saying, ‘God, I hope I don't get swept off my feet today.'" Besides, Jesse claims to have once been shy himself, unable to meet women who weren't friends of friends. But now he's acting like he owns the place.
Jesse locks in on his target, a darkly tanned clerk who's arranging stuffed animals. I follow, my lower back in a knot, a response Mason says happens when we try to be "cooler than we are." This is why, I'm now realizing, PUAs-in-training need routines.
"I'm looking for a gift for my 8-year-old niece," Jesse says, using step one from one of the pickup routines he learned from Mason. "Any recommendations?" The girl points to some T-shirts, "Paris Hilton really likes these."
Jesse now has to get her laughing: "Are you kidding? I don't want my niece dressing like Paris Hilton!" The comment is also a subtle "neg," a PUA term for a line that playfully cuts a woman down but doesn't actually hurt her feelings. Negs make the suitor seem less needy, and differentiates him from every other guy fawning over her. The girl laughs on cue, and Jesse slaps her a high five, establishing "kino," PUA-speak for touch. Jesse squeezes her hand - a test - and she squeezes back, signaling that he should move on to building rapport.
Suddenly, the young woman working the fudge counter slingshots a stuffed monkey at Jesse's head - she seems to want to flirt, too. He catches it like Willie Mays, in a move that screams alpha confidence.
Impressed, I try my luck with an overly made-up 20-something woman who just walked in with her mother. "This stuff is great, but it's hard to get out of the sheets," the mother whispers, pointing to some body chocolate. Attempting to create banter, I weigh in: "Totally, it's so sticky." The daughter chuckles and touches my shoulder - kino - an invitation to flirt more. But I clam up, acting like what PUAs call an AFC: average frustrated chump. Jesse notices and swings in with backup. "Uh-oh, here come the party girls," he calls out to the women as they turn toward him. Somehow, it works. They giggle and start chatting with him. The employees laugh. Anyone walking into the shop would immediately notice that Jesse is controlling the room. In fact, after a grandmother toddles in, it takes just a few flirty lines before she proposes to him. "Oh my god," says the fudge clerk, beaming. "Who is this guy?" Jesse leans over to me and says: "Imagine. Life could be like this all the time."
I first arrive at the PickUp 101 "mansion" on a Friday morning. It's really just an apartment on Powell Street, but PUAs like to call their homes mansions: if you aspire to be Hugh Hefner, you have to psych yourself up. Inside, it's a bit of a disco frat pad: a velvet love seat sits invitingly in the corner near a tropical aquarium and a wooden wine rack. A disco ball hangs above black leather couches, which frame a gas fireplace with flames leaping up from behind crackled glass.
Eleven men, who have traveled from as far away as New York and as nearby as the Marina, sit patiently, hoping that this $1,700, three-day workshop will help them reach their full player potential. Most of them are software engineers, but there's also a lawyer, an actor, a professional gambler, and a firefighter. They run the gamut from attractive and stylish to dorky and clueless. Since this is an advanced class, the students have all been to at least one other pickup class before, so they know the jargon. As "Rico Suave" and "Sex Machine" blare in the background, I hear guys say things like, "I opened this three-set but was forgetting to kino. Luckily, Bob was winging for me, and he distracted her friends so I could isolate and run the cube." It's the kind of language you'd expect at a Dungeons & Dragons conference, not in a rehash of last night's exploits.
Mason runs different types of trainings, covering everything from how to dress to managing multiple relationships, but this weekend is on Day Game. The more common Night, or Bar, Game involves being entertaining and overtly sexual, but Day Game is more subtle and thus more difficult. The key is establishing an emotional connection without seeming creepy. "Nothing kills attraction faster than being creepy," says Mason.
Mason, 33, has big, sensitive blue eyes that have made hundreds, if not thousands, of women swoon. His smile says all-American farm boy, but his dress - faded jeans with a massive belt buckle and a button-down with an embroidered ram on the sleeve - reads like an Esquire take on California frat. He's charismatic and charming; his posture exudes confidence.
But that wasn't always so. As a UC Davis engineering student, Mason was a total AFC. He had had two long-term relationships with girlfriends who chose him more than he chose them. He was dissatisfied, but afraid to break up.
At the time that his brother was getting a divorce, his second girlfriend was pressuring him into marriage. That's when things started to click. "I realized deciding who to spend my life and raise a family with is the most important decision of my life," Mason says over lunch at the Steps of Rome Caffe, a restaurant known for its flirty waiters. "I needed to make it the focus of my life."
Like a mad scientist, Mason threw himself into learning everything he could about women. He read books, studied films, and approached women constantly, logging what worked and what didn't. Before long, he says, about half the women he approached were accepting his advances, but he didn't want a relationship yet. He spent seven years learning about himself and what he wanted in a woman. He established some guidelines. No going out on three dates in a row - that's how you fall in love. "I recommend everyone date multiple people at once before settling down," says Mason. "That way, you see your partners for who they really are, rather than projecting onto them."
Then in 2002, he discovered a community of guys who were studying the same thing. While it had not yet gone mainstream with the release of The Game, the PUA community was holding workshops and posting blogs. Mason signed up for a class with Mystery, the most hyped PUA at the time. Strauss, who was working with Mystery then, says Mason popped out as a star. Mason quickly gained a reputation as a skilled ladies' man who had a mastery of the pickup techniques but also maintained his respect for women. Men started coming to him for advice on everything from maintaining a marriage to initiating threesomes. After a while he didn't have time to respond to all the e-mails and phone calls, so he quit his computer job and started PickUp 101. Now in its second year, his business is quickly expanding, with nearly 10,000 people receiving his regular e-mails, and 30 workshops a year held here and in New York. Every workshop is booked solid.
It's easy to see why PickUp 101 is attracting so many men. Mason's motto is "Ladies' men aren't born; they're made." He helps guys looking for more action or even a wife, but also men who are depressed or too terrified to talk to women. "Half of it's confidence," Mason says. "If you're not good with women, then early on you probably experienced failure, and each failure reinforced that you were not good with women. I teach men how to be cooler than they think they are."
Mason sells himself as proof that it's possible. "I'll walk into a bar and establish rapport with a woman," he says in his opening speech of the workshop, "and I don't care if Brad Pitt walks in and makes out with her. When she goes to bed that night, she's going to be thinking about that moment with me. That's how powerful this stuff is." What man wouldn't be intrigued?
For our first day, Mason has created communication exercises for the students; they rotate among stations and act out hypothetical situations, overseen by Mason and his assistants, many of whom were once students themselves. Since it's only men, they all take turns in the female roles, creating moments most women would pay to see. "So how did that feel when I touched your elbow?" asks Eric, a New Yorker with a Sting haircut, after running a pretend pickup on George, an actor. "Well, I liked the way it felt," George says earnestly, "but you were a little too close to me, which felt invasive."
At one station, men rehearse "deep rapport" stories - tales about their past that show their sensitive side. Mason says they're one of the most powerful ways to quickly build a connection. "I don't even use these stories with women anymore," he says. "I don't want them to get too attached."
The deep-rapport stories flow for over an hour, creating a full-fledged therapy session. Alex, a former opera singer, tears up as he recounts singing Beethoven in Spain. Jesse weeps while describing a relative's death. When I ask Jesse if it's disingenuous to be rehearsing a supposedly sincere moment, he takes my question seriously. "We all have stories we tell over and over because they explain what we're about deep down," Jesse says. "Just because we tell them a lot, or even rehearse them, doesn't make them less sincere."
But it's more than learning what to say. "You can have the worst line ever," Mason explains, "but if you create a powerful impression with your body language, you can make any line work." Throughout the day, he spends hours correcting the way the students walk, stand, speak, and breathe. "It's not that hard to be the coolest guy in the room when you know this stuff," says Mason. The tips are obvious - shoulders back, smile when entering a room, make eye contact - but it's amazing how difficult it is for the students to break their simple habits of slouching and frowning.
Saturday: time to put the skills to the test. After a couple more hours of rehearsal and a brief round of chanting "Let's go meet some women" along to the Rocky theme song, the class is sent out to Union Square, the San Francisco Centre mall, and the Marina. I hit Union Square with Dominic, a 33-year-old professional gambler from Cleveland. Before Dominic discovered PickUp 101 a few months ago, he rarely left the house. He's a big guy - 240 pounds - with acting skills that are worse than Keanu Reeves's on a bad day. But he already looks less robotic than yesterday, and more important, he's willing to try. Half of pickup is approaching people. Dominic sees two tall, sleekly dressed women buying coffee, and he pounces, using the three-step opening combo he's been practicing all morning.
"Excuse me," he asks, "do you have the time?"
"Uh, sure," one responds disinterestedly. "It's 1:30."
"Thanks," Dominic says. "I should hire you as my personal assistant. You could, like, help me plan my day. Wait a minute, can you type?"
The woman says nothing. Her friend cuts in. "I think you can do that yourself." And they walk away.
Ouch. The lines came off too stiff, which, according to Mason, equals creepy. I run up for moral support, expecting Dominic to be sulking. But he's smiling. "At least I tried," he says. "This is actually kind of fun." And therein lies one of the biggest secrets of pickup: realizing that rejection isn't that bad.
Wandering Union Square, I see more of Mason's students scouting for live test material. I follow Gordon, a 39-year-old programmer from the South Bay. He's 5 feet 8 inches with a pudgy, round belly, but he's wearing a pair of Stacy Adams alligator-skin shoes, which he says bring him luck. He's approaching a woman in a puffy gold jacket, who is standing by the heart sculpture across from the Westin St. Francis. With her athletic body wrapped in tight designer jeans, she's way out of his league. "Don't even try," I want to shout after Gordon as he strides ahead. But it's too late.
"Hey, do you know where an ATM is?" he asks.
"I don't know. I think over there," the woman responds, pointing vaguely toward Market Street.
"You don't know, do you? Damn, I was totally going to hire you as my tour guide," he jokingly replies.
The woman laughs.
"So you're not from around here are you?" he asks, touching her shoulder.
"No, I'm from Vienna, but I just moved here three months ago," she says with a smile.
Gordon takes the bait. "You know what I love about this city…."
Oh my god, I think. It's working. Short, pudgy Gordon is getting positive feedback from the sexiest woman in sight. He's standing up straight and leaning back slightly so as not to convey neediness, and looking pretty slick in an innocent kind of way. After talking to her for a solid hour, he leaves with a phone number and a date for Monday night. We high-five, and I see how this can become an addiction. Pickup is the perfect male bonding exercise: half the rush is showing off.
After four hours out in the field, the PUAs retreat to the mansion. The place is abuzz with stories of phone number exchanges and comical rejections. "I just never thought any women would want to talk to a guy with my body type," says Alex, a PickUp 101 convert who subsequently quit his high-paying tech job to work for Mason full time. Mike, a fit, attractive Marina guy in square, wire-rimmed glasses who had been fumbling all his lines during the morning practice sessions, seems especially happy. He approached a woman and, deciding to just toss his lines, told her how beautiful she was. She gave him her e-mail address. "She just opened up," Mike says in disbelief. "It was amazing."
Not everyone had success - i.e., digits - but everyone had a good time. Part of Mason's strategy is to get his students to be more social in general, so the guys talked to all kinds of strangers, not just beautiful women. "It's amazing how much we feel like we're in these little boxes, separated from everyone," says Daniel, one of Mason's first students, "but we're just not."
The next day, Mason brings in women to offer feedback. One of them is Yuko Yamazaki, Mason's girlfriend, whom he met at a 24 Hour Fitness seven months ago. A no-nonsense, 26-year-old software engineer who struts around in high-heeled boots and a miniskirt, she doesn't seem the type to fall for canned lines. I can't resist asking what she thought of Mason's initial pickup. She says he asked how her iPod worked while she was lifting weights - not exactly what one expects from one of the best pickup artists in the country. But his body language must have been good. "After he got my phone number, I went and called my friends," Yamazaki tells me, blushing. "I told them, ‘I just met the smoothest guy ever.'"
She's a big fan of PickUp 101 and helps out at many of the events. "Some of my friends think it's weird," she says. "But when they meet Lance, they see that he's helping men treat women better."
The other female assistants, who found the company through a job posting on Craigslist, are fans as well. "Guys need it," says Luanne Hernandez, a bubbly 22-year-old who has worked at two other PickUp 101 workshops. "Women get good advice from Cosmo and their friends, but guys don't have anything."
Hearing from these two makes the whole thing seem less scandalous, and the more I ask women what they think, the better I feel about it all. "I think it's necessary and called for," says Natalie Mock, a 28-year-old from Berkeley who says guys try to pick up on her all the time at her restaurant job. "Most guys just go off their instincts, which is generally a bad idea. If these classes are done in a way that's thoughtful to the woman, then I support it."
Even skeptics are getting converted. "Dolly," author of the popular sex blog The Truth about Cocks and Dolls, was put off by PUAs at first. But after she met more, including two from San Francisco, she wrote a letter to the Village Voice defending them, in response to the paper's negative article on the subject in March. "PUAs try to create a fun, positive, and exciting experience for the woman," Dolly wrote. "The credo many follow is ‘Leave her better than you found her.' What's so bad about that? That they want to get laid, too? Guess what? Guys have always wanted sex and will continue to want sex. You can't fault them for finally discovering methods that are successful."
To further inspire us for day three, Mason shows a clip of a true natural: playboy Howard Hughes, as played by Leonardo DiCaprio in The Aviator. In the scene, he picks up a cigarette girl, using many of the techniques Mason teaches, creating a near-orgasmic sexual tension in under two minutes. "Hughes is better than me," Mason admits. "Hollywood understands attraction. You guys can learn from this."
Watching DiCaprio, I'm intrigued by the power of these techniques and eager to cash in on the action. I hit the women's shoe section at Macy's. After making several methodical laps, I force myself to approach a woman in light brown, knee-high leather boots. She's the exact type I never approach cold: stylish, confident, gorgeous. I want to try the "movie-moment method" on her, a technique in which the suitor says something fearless like, "There's just something about you. I had to meet you." But I wimp out.
"Those shoes really bring out your skin color," I say, smiling and standing tall. "You think they have them in baby blue for me?"
"Really?" she says, and I remember that I'm in San Francisco. What was I thinking?
"No, I just came over here to flirt with you," I tell her, using a line I saw Jesse try.
"Oh, OK," she says, laughing, but perhaps slightly intimidated.
At this point I'm supposed to transition into building rapport, but this woman's beauty is making me forget the techniques. Luckily, she initiates more banter.
"Look at my crazy teal socks," she says.
I remember to toss out a "warm read," an intuitive comment based on observation. "Oh, I see. Those must be, like, your inner playfulness hiding behind your cool exterior." Warm reads are what PUAs call chick crack, and indeed, she giggles.
"Yeah, I guess that's true."
She likes me. She really, really likes me. But just when it's getting good, her family arrives. "Well, nice meeting you. I'm shopping with my family today. Have a good day." We wave and smile. She's gone.
My confidence boosted, I spend the day approaching women everywhere - Macy's, H&M, Borders. I'm not going for phone numbers yet, just having basic conversations: baby steps. A tall, stunning brunette exiting Macy's seems genuinely touched when I run across the street to tell her she's beautiful, but she says she has a serious boyfriend. A pale, leggy woman wandering Union Square entertains an awkward 10-minute conversation, but won't offer me any IOIs - indicators of interest - so I abandon ship. But no matter. I'm having an epiphany: I can talk to anyone.
But then, eerily, I run into two guys from Real Social Dynamics, another local pickup group that hosts trainings every weekend. I watch as the short, unshaven guy with an annoying accent and his friend sporting black nail polish and lots of jewelry - classic peacocking - approach two Scandinavian-looking girls who have already been hit on by PickUp 101 guys. I'm with Daniel, one of Mason's assistants, and he explains how their techniques differ, as if they're from a rival kung fu school. "We don't try to entertain the girl as much. They're acting like it's a club in the middle of Union Square."
It turns out that Mystery Method, one of the most well-known PUA groups, is also running a workshop here this weekend. How many Howard Hughes aspirants can Union Square hold at once?
A few minutes later, the Scandinavian girls see me scribbling in a notebook and run up to find out what the hell is going on. "Excuse me," one says, tapping my shoulder. "Guys keep approaching us saying weird things, and I just saw one of them hiding a video camera." It was inevitable: they've spotted Derek, the PickUp 101 intern, trying to film a live pickup to be analyzed later for training purposes. I'm not sure if I should blow the guys' cover, but I had run Mason's techniques on the girls myself earlier that day, and my guilt gets the better of me. I admit what's going on, expecting to get slapped, but instead they're into it. "That's so cool," they say. "Teach us how to pick up on guys." Apparently, they don't read Cosmo in Sweden.
I chastise myself briefly for getting involved in this cult, but only until I spot a petite blonde in a head scarf. She has huge blue eyes and she's handing out fliers on the corner of Stockton and Post; it's a perfect opportunity to talk. I beeline toward her, tossing aside my qualms, but run head-on into another moral quandary. She's a Hare Krishna, and her fliers explain the group's tenets; soon I'm debating human potential and the cosmos with her. She tries to make me a "servant of Krishna," but her body language is terrible. Besides, getting converted to one cult is enough for a weekend.
I remember a cute girl I saw yesterday working at the Borders café and go find her. I had complimented her on her tattoo, but then chickened out and left without making conversation. She's not stereotypically beautiful, but there is something irresistible about her short, curly hair, square glasses, and nose piercing.
This has to be executed perfectly, I tell myself as I walk toward the café like a cowboy strolling into the O.K. Corral, not showing an ounce of indecision.
"I saw you yesterday," I say in an unusually low voice. "And I had to come back and talk to you."
She smiles, and before she even says a word, I know that I've succeeded. Soon, we're exchanging contact info, and Jesse, who just happens to be in Borders coaching another student, watches the whole thing.
"That was awesome," he says afterward with a brotherly high five.
Every successful pickup builds on itself. I feel so on my game that when I walk downstairs to the magazine section and see the woman I met earlier at Macy's, my lines come naturally.
"Hey, are you stalking me?" I joke.
"I think you're stalking me," she says, jabbing me.
And we chat. When she asks me what I do, I have a rehearsed answer from one of Mason's identity exercises. The key is to set yourself apart. "I'm really lucky right now because I get to surf all the time," I say. "Ever since I was a little kid, I've dreamed of being a surfer."
By saying this, instead of just telling her I'm a freelance writer who has written about surfing, I'm surprising her - and showing my sensitive side, appearing vulnerable. Correspondingly, she opens up and tells me about her childhood in the Bay Area, Guam, and Hawaii. The surfing line was a good call. When the conversation ends, she offers me her e-mail address. "So if you're ever in San Antonio, let me know," she says, grinning.
"OK. Great!" I say, dazed. "Wait - San Antonio?" As a typical Bay Area commitmentphobe, my first reaction is relief: the pressure is off. But then I find myself religiously checking my e-mail, hoping for a reply from her - or the Borders barista. No dice.
Turns out flirty banter is one thing, but closing the deal is another. Mason reminds us that even with a killer pickup, you need the personality to back it up.
But I refuse to believe I don't have what it takes. Still, instead of replies from my crushes, my in-box is filled with e-mails from Mason, reminding me that another $1,700 workshop could get me closer to the perfect pickup. Hmmm. For now, I think I'll stick to my instincts - Mason's mansion is always there if I need it.To check more about Pickup101's workshops, products and services visit their homepage.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Do You Do This On LIVE TV?
This is a show I watched occasionally when I lived back in Australia. It's like the Today show. Well this guy certainly goes to a great length to make sure the relationship goes somewhere! Oh sweet... Somewhat PUA related...
Style, Mystery, and Mehow on Current TV
Neil Strauss, Mystery, and Mehow, are featured on the cable channel Current TV. This was the actual seminar I attended in Las Vegas, and if you look closely you can see me (in the background eating my BLT jk) lol
A very balanced view of the game, that I think you will enjoy.
Enjoy!
http://www.current.tv/video?id=1758929
A very balanced view of the game, that I think you will enjoy.
Enjoy!
http://www.current.tv/video?id=1758929
Women That Flake Out
This is what my mate Zack wanted to share about Tyler Durden's "When To Call... What To Say If She Flakes... How To Finally Handle It!" I thought his points and perspective were helpful:
We both know that the subject of calling and flakiness is one of the biggest obstacles men face when they're in the process of increasing their success with women, so feel free to post this. I hope my thoughts will be of some help to our fellow guys. First, however, let me tell you a bit about myself and how far along I am in improving my dating life. I believe it is important to know where a person is coming from before listening to what they think:
My name is Zack. I'm 23 years old. I'm 5 ' 7, skinny, and a decent-looking guy. Like many others, my life was an endless cycle of frustration, failure, and low self-esteem until recently. David DeAngelo's "Double Your Dating" is what helped me change that. I've only been practicing his teachings for 8 months and I haven't yet checked out material from the other big names in the "seduction community", but the improvement has been HUGE. I see women all the time and I can get phone numbers easily. I'm still growing and evolving, so my view on the calling-flaking topic may change in the future (I don't think that even the best eventually master this stuff, you can always get better and life is a continuous learning process); nonetheless, I feel experienced enough to comment.
BEING PERSISTENT FOR THE WRONG REASON
Many guys fall into the trap of repeated effort with a woman due to a mindset that says "Oh, but this one is interesting" when in reality, the real reason they keep attempting to build a presence in her life or set up a date is BECAUSE she's being distant and evasive. When a woman makes it difficult for me to get in touch or meet with her, I only continue trying if I'm actually interested enough in hanging out with her. I've got more women than I know what to do with and I meet more constantly (not to mention that I also have a life).
Out of the dozens of girls who give me their contact info every week, a few make stronger impressions than the rest. I just don't have time to keep calling every single lady who acts unresponsive, especially if she is not one of the women who triggered a higher level of interest from me when we met. I do what Tyler recommends if my higher level of interest in the woman is genuine, not a result of her being elusive.
A good rule to have when dealing with flaky or hard to get-women is this: Don't apply the "NEXT!" attitude indiscriminately to all the women you meet. If she made enough of an impression on you during that first encounter, don't be a dumbass and dismiss her...get the ball rolling! But if she's one of the girls whom you couldn't even remember, move on! A limitless number of other women are waiting in the wings.
SITUATIONS ARE DIFFERENT
In my experience, I have found that most attractive women don't have regular access to alpha-men who are sexually skilled and understand attraction. Many aren't lucky enough to even run across one. I know so many attractive women who, prior to my having met them, hadn't had sex in over 3 months. The majority of attractive women are bored with men or are "sexually dormant", as DeAngelo would say. Sure, they might be sleeping with their ex-boyfriend, some bad boy, or "a player on the side", and these guys may have "game" or be more physically attractive than you...but men who have it all together, are going somewhere in life, know attraction INSIDE-OUT, and can give women UNBELIEVABLE experiences in the bedroom are RARE.
Attractive women do typically have options, but those "options" are usually average chumps or players with limited skill. Since this is the situation I most often face, not calling too much, not calling too soon, and not spending too much time on the phone works extremely well. Now there are times when I meet a woman who does have many options that include men like me. I don't meet this kind of woman often, and I don't always experience a higher level of interest in her when I do. But assuming I AM specifically interested in meeting with her, I do the things that Tyler advises if she starts flaking or not calling me...and it works.
To surmise: Projecting "scarcity and value" will work on MOST attractive women you'll meet. But if you're interested in meeting with one who has many equally smooth or smoother guys available to her, you have to handle the situation differently. Call as many times as you need to and spend as much time talking to her as you feel comfortable with; just be playful, calm, and indifferent about it, i.e. don't be a wussbag.
AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT WAY TO HANDLE THIS
I have some news for you: Everything I have said so far is how I USED to view the whole problem of flakiness, unreturned calls, and "women with options."
While dismissing women based on interest-level and judging different situations are still good ideas for newbies, there is a MUCH SIMPLER philosophy you can embrace. In fact, it's so simple that when it first occurred to me a few months ago I slapped myself in the head and thought "I'm so STUPID, why didn't I look at it that way before!"
Here it is in a nutshell:
Stop caring whether or not a woman has options and just focus on BEING THE BEST OPTION. Wow, I know...DUH.
Try to follow me here. Tyler is correct when he says that if a woman with options (good options) doesn't call you or flakes on you, it doesn't mean she isn't attracted you; she just has A LOT of quality men on her plate and you're simply "one of the many." But what you also have to realize is that out of the many skilled and attractive men she has on speed dial, she probably sees one or two of them more often than the rest. Obviously, she likes these guys THE MOST. All the others serve as backup choices when one of the "top two" isn't available.
When you think about that, it becomes clear that attraction is "quantifiable."
Most hot women don't feel attraction AT ALL for almost all the guys in their lives and do feel it for a few of them. Other hot women feel attraction for MOST of the men they know but feel EVEN GREATER ATTRACTION for a small number of those men. Once you understand this, your frame of mind should be simple: Work endlessly on being as attractive as you possibly can; believe that YOU are the best option the women you meet can have.
When you completely dedicate yourself to being a man that no sane woman would "shuffle down the list", guess what...she will ALMOST ALWAYS see you as a guy who deserves priority. If you develop your body language, eye contact, physical presence, voice tone, and social skills to a level that is RIDICULOUS (that's what you've gotta shoot for), all the options a woman might have won't make a difference. Your impression will stand out in her mind.
This idea skyrocketed my success with women. Now I don't "decide" if I want to continue trying to connect with a woman or forget her, I do whatever I want. I know I am the best option and therefore, I can call or not call, keep conversations brief or longer, call often or sparingly, and it doesn't matter! She still feels MORE ATTRACTED to me than to any of her other guys, regardless if they're skilled players or regular chumps.
I very rarely find myself in a situation where the woman I'm interested in hanging out with has one or more guys who are really good options. Those times that I do, I simply know that whoever I'm "competing against" is better at attraction than I am...and then I find these dudes and learn from them!
So there you have it. When a woman with options makes it tough for you, it's not because "she has options"; it's because she has GOOD options who might be better selections over you. Be the best option! When you do this, you'll notice that 99 percent of the time...you'll be the one who gets her.
- Zack
We both know that the subject of calling and flakiness is one of the biggest obstacles men face when they're in the process of increasing their success with women, so feel free to post this. I hope my thoughts will be of some help to our fellow guys. First, however, let me tell you a bit about myself and how far along I am in improving my dating life. I believe it is important to know where a person is coming from before listening to what they think:
My name is Zack. I'm 23 years old. I'm 5 ' 7, skinny, and a decent-looking guy. Like many others, my life was an endless cycle of frustration, failure, and low self-esteem until recently. David DeAngelo's "Double Your Dating" is what helped me change that. I've only been practicing his teachings for 8 months and I haven't yet checked out material from the other big names in the "seduction community", but the improvement has been HUGE. I see women all the time and I can get phone numbers easily. I'm still growing and evolving, so my view on the calling-flaking topic may change in the future (I don't think that even the best eventually master this stuff, you can always get better and life is a continuous learning process); nonetheless, I feel experienced enough to comment.
BEING PERSISTENT FOR THE WRONG REASON
Many guys fall into the trap of repeated effort with a woman due to a mindset that says "Oh, but this one is interesting" when in reality, the real reason they keep attempting to build a presence in her life or set up a date is BECAUSE she's being distant and evasive. When a woman makes it difficult for me to get in touch or meet with her, I only continue trying if I'm actually interested enough in hanging out with her. I've got more women than I know what to do with and I meet more constantly (not to mention that I also have a life).
Out of the dozens of girls who give me their contact info every week, a few make stronger impressions than the rest. I just don't have time to keep calling every single lady who acts unresponsive, especially if she is not one of the women who triggered a higher level of interest from me when we met. I do what Tyler recommends if my higher level of interest in the woman is genuine, not a result of her being elusive.
A good rule to have when dealing with flaky or hard to get-women is this: Don't apply the "NEXT!" attitude indiscriminately to all the women you meet. If she made enough of an impression on you during that first encounter, don't be a dumbass and dismiss her...get the ball rolling! But if she's one of the girls whom you couldn't even remember, move on! A limitless number of other women are waiting in the wings.
SITUATIONS ARE DIFFERENT
In my experience, I have found that most attractive women don't have regular access to alpha-men who are sexually skilled and understand attraction. Many aren't lucky enough to even run across one. I know so many attractive women who, prior to my having met them, hadn't had sex in over 3 months. The majority of attractive women are bored with men or are "sexually dormant", as DeAngelo would say. Sure, they might be sleeping with their ex-boyfriend, some bad boy, or "a player on the side", and these guys may have "game" or be more physically attractive than you...but men who have it all together, are going somewhere in life, know attraction INSIDE-OUT, and can give women UNBELIEVABLE experiences in the bedroom are RARE.
Attractive women do typically have options, but those "options" are usually average chumps or players with limited skill. Since this is the situation I most often face, not calling too much, not calling too soon, and not spending too much time on the phone works extremely well. Now there are times when I meet a woman who does have many options that include men like me. I don't meet this kind of woman often, and I don't always experience a higher level of interest in her when I do. But assuming I AM specifically interested in meeting with her, I do the things that Tyler advises if she starts flaking or not calling me...and it works.
To surmise: Projecting "scarcity and value" will work on MOST attractive women you'll meet. But if you're interested in meeting with one who has many equally smooth or smoother guys available to her, you have to handle the situation differently. Call as many times as you need to and spend as much time talking to her as you feel comfortable with; just be playful, calm, and indifferent about it, i.e. don't be a wussbag.
AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT WAY TO HANDLE THIS
I have some news for you: Everything I have said so far is how I USED to view the whole problem of flakiness, unreturned calls, and "women with options."
While dismissing women based on interest-level and judging different situations are still good ideas for newbies, there is a MUCH SIMPLER philosophy you can embrace. In fact, it's so simple that when it first occurred to me a few months ago I slapped myself in the head and thought "I'm so STUPID, why didn't I look at it that way before!"
Here it is in a nutshell:
Stop caring whether or not a woman has options and just focus on BEING THE BEST OPTION. Wow, I know...DUH.
Try to follow me here. Tyler is correct when he says that if a woman with options (good options) doesn't call you or flakes on you, it doesn't mean she isn't attracted you; she just has A LOT of quality men on her plate and you're simply "one of the many." But what you also have to realize is that out of the many skilled and attractive men she has on speed dial, she probably sees one or two of them more often than the rest. Obviously, she likes these guys THE MOST. All the others serve as backup choices when one of the "top two" isn't available.
When you think about that, it becomes clear that attraction is "quantifiable."
Most hot women don't feel attraction AT ALL for almost all the guys in their lives and do feel it for a few of them. Other hot women feel attraction for MOST of the men they know but feel EVEN GREATER ATTRACTION for a small number of those men. Once you understand this, your frame of mind should be simple: Work endlessly on being as attractive as you possibly can; believe that YOU are the best option the women you meet can have.
When you completely dedicate yourself to being a man that no sane woman would "shuffle down the list", guess what...she will ALMOST ALWAYS see you as a guy who deserves priority. If you develop your body language, eye contact, physical presence, voice tone, and social skills to a level that is RIDICULOUS (that's what you've gotta shoot for), all the options a woman might have won't make a difference. Your impression will stand out in her mind.
This idea skyrocketed my success with women. Now I don't "decide" if I want to continue trying to connect with a woman or forget her, I do whatever I want. I know I am the best option and therefore, I can call or not call, keep conversations brief or longer, call often or sparingly, and it doesn't matter! She still feels MORE ATTRACTED to me than to any of her other guys, regardless if they're skilled players or regular chumps.
I very rarely find myself in a situation where the woman I'm interested in hanging out with has one or more guys who are really good options. Those times that I do, I simply know that whoever I'm "competing against" is better at attraction than I am...and then I find these dudes and learn from them!
So there you have it. When a woman with options makes it tough for you, it's not because "she has options"; it's because she has GOOD options who might be better selections over you. Be the best option! When you do this, you'll notice that 99 percent of the time...you'll be the one who gets her.
- Zack
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
The One-Girl-a-Day Challenge
Welcome to Sean, our special columnist for the Attraction Chronicles Blog. He will provide amazing insights into the world of pickup and seduction. He is currently a full-time instructor for Pickup 101 based in San Francisco. Take it away Sean. We look forward to your upcoming Seduction Masters Interview and ongoing posts!
-Donovan
We're here to learn about attracting women, right? And we all acknowledge that nothing improves your skills like practice. But approaching can still be scary stuff, especially if you haven't been talking to many people on a regular basis. So if you really want to get practice, you need incentive.
Take this challenge upon yourself. Every day you see that one girl that you know you should talk to (doesn't mean you have to pull off the highway at high-speed... just that girl that passes where you know you COULD talk to her, but you CHOOSE not to. Well from now on, make the opposite choice (yes, the old Costanza opposite theory). Instead of not walking up and saying "Hi," or whatever you like to say, do it.
Here's the thing. It's gotta be all day, every day. No excuses about not being in state, or dressed poorly, or not in your usual environment. This will force you to be always on, and see your game as just part of who you are, as opposed to something you do.
And if you don't, you gotta pony up. Pick a charity that you will donate money to for every day you don't talk to that girl. It's all an honor system, since we are men of honor. But just this incentive may be enough to shake you loose from your perfectly reasonable excuses. Get competitive. Do it because you know you can, and because now you have no choice. It's a good bet all around... either you get better real fast, or a charity gets money it needs.
I'm in. $10 each day to Big Brothers/Big Sisters if I miss my chance.
-Sean
-Donovan
We're here to learn about attracting women, right? And we all acknowledge that nothing improves your skills like practice. But approaching can still be scary stuff, especially if you haven't been talking to many people on a regular basis. So if you really want to get practice, you need incentive.
Take this challenge upon yourself. Every day you see that one girl that you know you should talk to (doesn't mean you have to pull off the highway at high-speed... just that girl that passes where you know you COULD talk to her, but you CHOOSE not to. Well from now on, make the opposite choice (yes, the old Costanza opposite theory). Instead of not walking up and saying "Hi," or whatever you like to say, do it.
Here's the thing. It's gotta be all day, every day. No excuses about not being in state, or dressed poorly, or not in your usual environment. This will force you to be always on, and see your game as just part of who you are, as opposed to something you do.
And if you don't, you gotta pony up. Pick a charity that you will donate money to for every day you don't talk to that girl. It's all an honor system, since we are men of honor. But just this incentive may be enough to shake you loose from your perfectly reasonable excuses. Get competitive. Do it because you know you can, and because now you have no choice. It's a good bet all around... either you get better real fast, or a charity gets money it needs.
I'm in. $10 each day to Big Brothers/Big Sisters if I miss my chance.
-Sean
Monday, May 22, 2006
Is Double Your Dating by David DeAngelo Worth Buying?
I've been in the community for a little while now. About two years ago I started with an e-book called Double Your Dating by David DeAngelo, a lot of you have heard of this. When I first opened the e-book I was amazed, I felt that my eyes have seen the light, and I began to understand a new found world of seduction and the "secrets of women".
That's until I found more material.
Then it became a virus of information seeking, always looking for the new "hidden tactics". I started reading all of these e-books, and got even more confused. Until I learn't the proper way to do things...
Now, I had success that I never thought possible. Before reading David DeAngelo's Double Your Dating, I hadn't even kissed a girl. Then a month after reading, I had a two week long relationship with a hot woman. It was working to some degree. I moved onto more advanced material. It is foolishness to skip ahead to advanced material before you have a foundation of what's going on between men and women.
This brings me to discussing the topic that David DeAngelo's material is irrelevant or a waste of time.
I believe that notion is wrong for a number of reasons.
The first reason is that he provides a framework for understanding human relations that you really can't find elsewhere. He has a lot of theory in Double Your Dating that helps build a foundation for what you will find the REAL WORLD. The second reason is it gives you a insight into what you need to do to become a MAN. Typically men are ass-kissing losers, that supplicate themselves tremedously around women. This is unattractive and "I'll be the king of all masturbaters the rest of my life" approach. Don't be a WUSSY (according to David DeAngelo).
Now, the problem I see with most guys that download the Double Your Dating e-book is that they go to the opposite side of the spectrum and start being verbally unattractive to women. Throwing out cocky and funny like its just in fashion, and making themselves seem super insecure to these women. This is not what the e-book teaches. He gives a road-map to being an alpha-male, not a cocky and funny machine gun.
David DeAngelo writes about alpha body language, and how to hold yourself in a variety of situations. Leaning back and slower eye movement are among some of the advice Deangelo brings to the table. He does offer suggestions of things to say, how to ask a woman out, basic interactions to generate serious attraction, and characteristics of a engaging conversation.
If you're looking for a step-by-step guide, then Double Your Dating is not for you. However, if you are NEW to the community, I would definitely read the e-book Double Your Dating first, then move on to more routine based procedures, or natural conversation based skills. This does two things.
One, Double Your Dating helps you conquer your inner issues. It will give you a road-map to all the beta behavior you could be portraying, once you know what they are you can start eliminating them.
Second, Double Your Dating helps you the basic understanding of what attraction is, how it is developed, and how you can implement certain ideas into your thinking. For example, I had know idea why women LOVED bad boys. I had NO CLUE. It baffled me. When I was a jerk to women, they were simply repulsed. I never had the chicks flocking to me. David DeAngelo explained that.
Ok, I've ranted enough.
Do yourself a favour and if you haven't already, and pay the meager $20 and download his e-book with the bundle of freebies that come with it. Do something to get your life in order, because when all is said and done, ACTION is what will make you a success with women.
P.S. Just remember to ONLY sprinkle cocky and funny into your reactions for added potency. Spices lose their bite when you use them constantly, and it shows your a bad cook. (Beautiful metaphor huh?)
That's until I found more material.
Then it became a virus of information seeking, always looking for the new "hidden tactics". I started reading all of these e-books, and got even more confused. Until I learn't the proper way to do things...
Now, I had success that I never thought possible. Before reading David DeAngelo's Double Your Dating, I hadn't even kissed a girl. Then a month after reading, I had a two week long relationship with a hot woman. It was working to some degree. I moved onto more advanced material. It is foolishness to skip ahead to advanced material before you have a foundation of what's going on between men and women.
This brings me to discussing the topic that David DeAngelo's material is irrelevant or a waste of time.
I believe that notion is wrong for a number of reasons.
The first reason is that he provides a framework for understanding human relations that you really can't find elsewhere. He has a lot of theory in Double Your Dating that helps build a foundation for what you will find the REAL WORLD. The second reason is it gives you a insight into what you need to do to become a MAN. Typically men are ass-kissing losers, that supplicate themselves tremedously around women. This is unattractive and "I'll be the king of all masturbaters the rest of my life" approach. Don't be a WUSSY (according to David DeAngelo).
Now, the problem I see with most guys that download the Double Your Dating e-book is that they go to the opposite side of the spectrum and start being verbally unattractive to women. Throwing out cocky and funny like its just in fashion, and making themselves seem super insecure to these women. This is not what the e-book teaches. He gives a road-map to being an alpha-male, not a cocky and funny machine gun.
David DeAngelo writes about alpha body language, and how to hold yourself in a variety of situations. Leaning back and slower eye movement are among some of the advice Deangelo brings to the table. He does offer suggestions of things to say, how to ask a woman out, basic interactions to generate serious attraction, and characteristics of a engaging conversation.
If you're looking for a step-by-step guide, then Double Your Dating is not for you. However, if you are NEW to the community, I would definitely read the e-book Double Your Dating first, then move on to more routine based procedures, or natural conversation based skills. This does two things.
One, Double Your Dating helps you conquer your inner issues. It will give you a road-map to all the beta behavior you could be portraying, once you know what they are you can start eliminating them.
Second, Double Your Dating helps you the basic understanding of what attraction is, how it is developed, and how you can implement certain ideas into your thinking. For example, I had know idea why women LOVED bad boys. I had NO CLUE. It baffled me. When I was a jerk to women, they were simply repulsed. I never had the chicks flocking to me. David DeAngelo explained that.
Ok, I've ranted enough.
Do yourself a favour and if you haven't already, and pay the meager $20 and download his e-book with the bundle of freebies that come with it. Do something to get your life in order, because when all is said and done, ACTION is what will make you a success with women.
P.S. Just remember to ONLY sprinkle cocky and funny into your reactions for added potency. Spices lose their bite when you use them constantly, and it shows your a bad cook. (Beautiful metaphor huh?)
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Reader Question with Answer: Approach Anxiety, and One Night Stands
Some guys have all the luck? It's not always what it seems...
Ok before I address the situation with the girl. First off you see a problem, and you want to fix it. Approaching doesn't get easier, until you start approaching. So get out in the field and do it! Write up a few routines that you can use consistently and practice. Feel the fear and do it anyway. Check out the definitive guide to approaching beautiful women, which is the Art of Approaching, and make up some original routines that fit your personality perfectly.
Ok, now onto the main question:
I think you might be barking up the wrong tree trying to arrange plans with this girl again. Mostly because you rushed into the sexual relationship without building enough of a connection. Perhaps it was love at first sight, or maybe she'll do it at another club the next week? I'm not sure. The best indicator of future behavior is past behavior...
What usually happens is if your sexual relationship begins before the absolute MINIMUM 4 hours (recommended 7 hours) you get what is called FOOL'S MATE.
You got lucky, basically. She wouldn't consider you as a permanent thing to come back to unfortunately. The key is rapport and comfort after you generated the attraction before a sexual relationship.
From the Magic Bullets ebook
It's the same situation when you don't give build enough rapport and comfort to battle flakes in my previous Reader Question with Answer. Similarly, if you do the same thing and get laid, it will result in flakiness with her not wanting to associate her feelings on the day (when you call) with the feelings of the night before.
I'm fairly new to pick up and am far from good at it. I went out to a club recently and ended up hooking up with someone that night. She was a very cute Spanish girl that is much more attractive than I normally pick up, but I know not to judge success only on results. I can tell you that I did not resemble a pickup artist that night and she more or less fell into my lap. I attribute this to meeting her right before the club closed so she was already drunk.Congratulations on the successful lay. I can feel from your email that you aren't overly impressed with it however. Hey, at least you still got laid without paying right?
She actually approached me saying, "I think I know you from my school..." She goes to college at my school's arch rival so I teased her about that and I think I did a good job keeping her interested in me because we hooked up that night, but if she
approaches. That's another issue. I have her number but no email. I would like to hook up with her whenever I go up there or when she comes down to my school to visit friends. What is the best way to make that situation happen?
Ok before I address the situation with the girl. First off you see a problem, and you want to fix it. Approaching doesn't get easier, until you start approaching. So get out in the field and do it! Write up a few routines that you can use consistently and practice. Feel the fear and do it anyway. Check out the definitive guide to approaching beautiful women, which is the Art of Approaching, and make up some original routines that fit your personality perfectly.
Ok, now onto the main question:
I think you might be barking up the wrong tree trying to arrange plans with this girl again. Mostly because you rushed into the sexual relationship without building enough of a connection. Perhaps it was love at first sight, or maybe she'll do it at another club the next week? I'm not sure. The best indicator of future behavior is past behavior...
What usually happens is if your sexual relationship begins before the absolute MINIMUM 4 hours (recommended 7 hours) you get what is called FOOL'S MATE.
You got lucky, basically. She wouldn't consider you as a permanent thing to come back to unfortunately. The key is rapport and comfort after you generated the attraction before a sexual relationship.
From the Magic Bullets ebook
If you go to far (into seduction) before you have enough comfort, you'll
feel like a great player at the time but you won't get laid when (a) you fool's
mate backfires and (b) you get buyers' remorse the next day.
It's the same situation when you don't give build enough rapport and comfort to battle flakes in my previous Reader Question with Answer. Similarly, if you do the same thing and get laid, it will result in flakiness with her not wanting to associate her feelings on the day (when you call) with the feelings of the night before.
Something that you want, is to attract and KEEP the girls you interact with. Therefore, you'll have choice. The choice I think most of us started in this game for. So don't rush in. Control yourself. What's better? One night of sex, or endless nights of sex?
With saying all that, maybe this beautiful Latina will be the 2% of all women that will want to meet up again and pursue you into having you around for sex. Try setting something up, but I personally wouldn't count on much. Work on improving your overall game so that you can get consistent day2's from meeting in clubs.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Reader Question with Answer: How To Prevent Those Frustrating Flakes
Prevention is better than a cure right? Read on...
I have a buddy (no really) who can number close but then has trouble organising a second meeting with the girl. For example, he number closed this one girl who worked at a cafe, waited a couple of days, called her up, got her laughing on the phone, etc. but didn't arrange a meeting, called her up a second time at which point she said she was busy and asked him to call at 9pm the next day, so he did but she didn't answer.He goes over to the cafe where he first met her to speak to a friend of his who was working there, bumped into her, struck up another conversation, got her laughing, etc. again, and then was on his way out when she said 'hey we were supposed to go out', so he asks if she is free on a couple of days and she says no (you know,
Such a common common problem that we've all dealt with at some point throughout this journey of pickup. Glad to know it's your "buddy" and that you'd never have any such problem.
You may have heard about David DeAngelo's 3-minute email and phone number technique. It's a great tool for guys new to pickup to practice. It will give you a huge boost of confidence, especially if you haven't gotten many numbers from beautiful women in the past, and it's remarkably easy (after the first time). The main issue I have with the 3-minute phone number technique that David DeAngelo promotes, is that it doesn't build enough rapport and comfort, and those numbers flake out 98% (unless you're a male model).
Comfort and rapport are both heavily ESSENTIAL for a non-flaking day2. (Day 2 is simply a term for another meetup after the initial meeting, usually isolated with the woman)
From Magic Bullets ebook
This is exactly why so many phone numbers are flakes - not enough comfort. Thus, it's important to have fun, natural conversations with girls, using wide rapport and multiple conversational threads. When she looks back on that conversation, she should be thinking about how she enjoys talking with you and looks forward to doing so again.
The reason for flakes is that she doesn't feel any distinct difference between other men and you. I mean seriously, you asked for her number, and you expect a beautiful woman to simply say "That guy had the BALLS to get my number, I'll give up my valuable time!"
You need to change that into, "I felt we had a good connection, he didn't pressure me or make me feel awkward. I think I'll give him a chance, and I'll see where this goes!"
I started running my game recently to include a deeper level of rapport, and compatibility after I ran my attraction routines. Women RETURN calls, they RETURN text messages, they RETURN to have dates with you.
How do you generate this strong rapport and comfort?
You can try some quick cold reading, grounding routines, even palm reading or handwriting analysis. Something in order for her to feel that you have built rapport and comfort. Although, if you build rapport and comfort right off the bat, it will only hurt you. You could be placed into the friendship hole. You defintely don't want that.
Generate attraction first, then comfort. If you haven't read the Magic Bullets ebook (Mystery Method), I urge you to do so immediately. It outlines the step-by-step method for seduction from meeting through to an intimate relationship. I've previously posted an entire outline to the Mystery Method here.
If you want answers to your questions, simply email me, attractionchronicles @ gmail.com
Donovan
Sunday, May 14, 2006
What To Do When A Woman Flakes Out
Do Women Flake On You?
***QUESTION FROM A READER***
I will try to keep this short, but if you don't read it all, just refer to the question at the bottom regarding the question.
Okay, I have read through all of your newsletters ever since I signed up for the service & purchased your E-Books.
On a Tuesday I am out with a friend & we bump into his ex & her roommate. Both girls are 9's (pushing 10's). I immediately go to work! She's wearing a turtle neck sweater (I see a weak spot) so I start calling her "Tippy the Turtle" all night. She acts all defensive about it, but keeps laughing & asking me WHY, WHY, WHY do you keep calling me that?...So I just keep pouring it on. I bust on her humorously every chance I get. Within 2 hours, she's leaning on me, squeezing me & following me around the club like a puppy..... SO, we go to another club & I go to the bar to get a drink and the waitress at the bar (whom I know from being there in the past) asks me why I have never asked HER to go out & do anything (LIGHT BULB GOES ON).
So I tell her it's "because I don't have a way to get a hold of her". So she pulls out a dollar bill from her money holder & writes her number down and gives it to me (this girl is a solid 10 by the way... and trust me, IM PICKY!). Needless to say, IM STOKED! So I tease her a little about her name (because her name is B... a guys name), take the number & go back to my friend & the girls..... Everything is great RIGHT????
Now the problem & the question:
I ask a friend of mine about her (the waitress). He works at the same night club she does. He said that she was "all about money". He also told me that she just quit her job that weekend & didn't work there anymore...
So I called her on the following Sunday (gave it about 5 days). I decided to check this "money thing" out in a humorous way. When she finally realized who I was (which kinda pissed me off that I had to explain to her who I was on the phone...I went as far as suggesting that I hang up & call back & try this again) I told her that I heard she quit her job & then asked her "How are you going to take me to lunch & pay my way if you don't have a job"? I thought it was funny & was awaiting a laugh, but she responded with "why do you have to start the conversation off like that? I had to support my last 2 boyfriends, so don't go there". Needless to say Im shocked & respond with "Its becoming a habit huh?"...and then heard silence & broke the silence with "Im just giving you sh**!" (I know, I know....a WUSS moment)
SO, I set a simple meeting with her (for some lunch before I had to go to work) for that same Thursday (today actually...4 days later). She said the date & time were cool so I closed the deal (kept the phone call at about 3-4 minutes). Before I hung up she said "why don't you call me between now & then so we can talk". Well Im picking up on that one right away, so I respond with. What would be the point in that? We are getting together Thursday to talk". And we said our goodbyes & that was it....
NOW I get a phone call 3 hours before we have to meet & she tells me some BS story about her brother coming in town & she can't meet me for lunch. Well Im not stupid, and I just had another girl cancel in a similar fashion on me last night. DUHH!!!... So my question is this:
QUESTION: If a girl cancels on you, how should you really handle it? Especially if you know her excuse is bull sh**?!?! (I can pick liars out a mile away... its a gift!). I realize she maybe testing me, but when a girl expresses interest in YOU & makes it a point to make sure that YOU leave WITH HER PHONE NUMBER, how should you handle it when they cancel last minute with a lame ass excuse? My feelings are to talk to them in a manor making them feel as stupid as they think YOU are.
For Example:
When she tells me her brother is going to be in town & she had to cancel THREE HOURS before we meet, I felt like saying "Well I gave you 4 days notice to meet me for ONE hour. Your brother hasn't seen you in six months & you didn't know this when we talked the first time??"
I was just real quiet & said nothing when she fed me this "Line" & responded with "ok, whatever... maybe some other time...you have my number" & that was the end of the conversation, I hung up.
Are they testing to see if you WILL be an a**hole (DO THEY WANT YOU TO?), or are they testing to see if you will be sympathetic (WHICH WOULD BE BAD)..... Personally, I want to be an asshole because I get kind of upset with flakey people in general...
Also, do you think I should ever call & set a date up again with a woman like this, or did I already blow it?
My novel......
C. (Kansas)
****DAVID DEANGELO'S COMMENTS****
OK, first things first.
You really have the right idea here. Your thinking is right on, and your use of the Cocky & Funny attitude is great!
And I'm guessing that the REASON why the cute waitress started asking why you never ask her out is BECAUSE you showed up with a hot girl that was chasing you around.
It certainly helps the stock value when you're seen around with a hottie.
I'd love to talk more about all the RIGHT things you did, but, alas, I'm going to focus this newsletter on the WRONG things you did.
Now, please don't take any of what I'm about to tell you PERSONALLY, because it's all in good fun.
But pay attention, because by making fun of you in a public newsletter (that many thousands of guys read) only hurts a little (but remember the joy I'm getting from it, and maybe you'll feel better).
MISTAKE #1: LISTENING TO YOUR FRIEND
Dude, what are you thinking?
When your friend who worked with her told you that she was "all about money", it probably meant:
- He was in love with her.
- She wasn't interested in him.
- He tried to buy her dinner and gifts, but she only wanted to be friends.
- He hated the idea that you were going to date her.
- He wanted to put you off the trail.
Think about it.
MISTAKE #2: WAITING 5 DAYS TO CALL HER.
Now, of course you don't want to call a woman ten seconds after you meet her and say, "Hi, I'm the needy dork you just gave your number to...".
But think about it...
This girl works in a BAR. She meets about a million guys every night.
She probably gives her number to more guys every week than you have FRIENDS.
I would have called her the next evening... two days later at the most.
This way she'll at least REMEMBER you.
And I would have said "You know, I've never had a woman PAY ME to call her. But this dollar is only going to buy you about 15 seconds. You can ask me what I'm wearing or something, and then you'll have to give me a Visa card to continue the call..."
MISTAKE #3: DISCUSSING THE "MONEY THING" ON THE PHONE
What are you thinking... bringing up something like this by telling her that you heard she quit her job?
Something like this at the beginning of a first call CAN'T go anywhere but a BAD place.
I can see what you were trying to do, but you were on a slippery slope, and you were only irritating her.
Save the ball busting for when you're alone with her in person.
This is where you REALLY screwed up, man.
At this point she was probably thinking "What the hell is this guy talking about?" because it was a sensitive subject for her, and you didn't have enough of a connection with her to be talking to her about this topic. Too early.
I'm going to say that you basically SET HER UP to flake on you.
Shortly after that, she gave you the NEON SIGN of "why don't you call me between now and then so we can talk".
TRANSLATION: "I'm going to flake on you for SURE, but I just don't want the confrontation right now, so I'll put doubt in your mind".
MISTAKE #4: LETTING HER THINK THAT FLAKING WAS OK
When you just let the "call me between now and then" comment go by and hung up, you made a big mistake.
Right then and there you should have STOPPED the conversation and said something to the effect of:
"Whoa. I'll tell you what, I have a pet peeve, and I HATE it when people flake out on me. So, if you're gonna flake, just tell me now. I'm only going to make plans if you're CERTAIN that you're going to be there."
Now, a lot of times when you say something like this, you'll scare a woman off. But it's worth it.
The last thing you need in your life is a flaky woman.
Better to get it handled early on.
But, if she's NOT a flaky woman... but only trying to figure out how to flake on YOU because you acted like a DUMB ASS, then this might change things.
When a woman sees you standing up for yourself, and basically saying "Look, if you're going to flake out or be late, then I don't want to meet you", it shows her beyond the shadow of a doubt that YOUR TIME is more important to you than HER. This is a good thing.
This kind of comment will often result in a woman saying "No, no... I'll be there. I'll be there."
MISTAKE #5: LETTING HER FLAKE ON YOU
If a woman called me three hours before we were supposed to meet and said, "Oh, my long lost brother is coming to town..." I would say:
"Well thanks for the three hours notice. What are you going to do to make this up to me?"
NOW IS THE TIME TO BUST BALLS!
Of course, you don't want to do it in an emotional, hurtful way... or in a way that lets her know that you have been upset by her.
I'll mention one thing here... I have a friend who has gotten tired of women flaking out on him. So he now calls THEM on the day he's supposed to meet them for the first date, and FLAKES ON THEM.
He tells me that this works like a charm, and they always show up for the next planned meeting. Go figure.
Now, I personally don't like the idea of lying to or deceiving women, but it's an interesting lesson. In the final analysis, I'd say that you screwed up in the beginning, and created your own problems.
Instead of saying, "I heard you quit your job" (which makes you sound like an amateur stalker), you should have just said a few charming things, set up a meeting with her, and gotten off the phone.
That probably would have prevented your problems.
Which leads me to another idea...
EVERY STEP with a woman will go MUCH SMOOTHER if you set it up well beforehand.
My experience is that most guys CREATE THEIR OWN PROBLEMS with women, then come to me to solve them.
Isn't it a much better idea to not run into these problems in the first place?
I mean, you'll never reach a point where you never have any problems with women, but you sure can prevent and eliminate about 80% of them by just knowing what to do to set up each step with women, and how to respond to certain situations.
Where's the best place to learn how to do just that?
In my eBook "Double Your Dating", then you need to do that NOW. It's my original manual for success with women and dating, and it's the place to get started if you want to take your success with women to the next level. You can download it here.
I'll talk to you again soon!
Your Friend,
David D.
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Herbal (Seduction Masters Interview)
Tell Me About Yourself!
I'm 25, living in Austin TX. I've been in the game for about 3 years, tovarying degrees. Right now I barely go out, but back in LA I would often times go out seven days a week and used to teach workshops with Mystery.
Download Tynan's MP3 Rap about Mystery (Click here)
I just started working for a friend who moved his tech company to Austin, and on the side I run my site, www.BetterThanYourBoyfriend.com. I'm actively working on becoming a rapper as well.UPDATE: Herbal has written his own guide for bringing charisma and energy to your conversations and lifestyle. Read my new interview with Tynan at my new blog.
Describe the moment, when you suddenly realized, "I need to work out this part of my life."
I had a huge crush on this girl for three years. I took a certain amount of pride in not going after other girls - I had the AFC mentality that waiting for her to move back to Austin was a romantic thing to do.
In retrospect, of course, it was pretty creepy.
One day, after having this crush for three years, I decided that I had enough and that I needed to change. A friend had showed me ASF a year prior, but not being ready to give up my crush, I had ignored it. I searched for it again, and read it until the wee hours of the morning. That's when I was hooked.
I then got involved with the Austin Society, and got lucky and got a number my first night out. That success gave me the false confidence to press forward through a lot of rejection.
Have you had any mentors (perhaps well-known pickup artists) within the community/life that have helped you improve your game, and what did they teach you?
Mystery, Style, and Tyler Durden are probably my biggest mentors. Before moving to Project Hollywood I had a nagging worry in the back of my head that I was nothing more than a tenant. What if I moved there and they wanted nothing to do with me? After all, I'd never met Mystery or Style, and had only briefly talked with TD.
However, as soon as I got there any worries I had disappeared. Mystery began teaching me the first week and we were soon going out every night together as wings. Eventually I started teaching workshops with him, which only furthered my knowledge.
I went out with Style and Tyler less, but both of them taught me more than I can thank them for. Tyler helped me understand the importance of learning the skill, and was a huge motivating factor. He was always brutally honest with his feedback, which was very helpful.
Style also gave me a lot of good advice, and his lifestyle which integrated pickup and his real personality and hobbies inspired me.
It's incredibly important to have mentors. Being around someone teaches a lot more than reading what they write.
Can you describe the first time you used a counter-intuitive routine that yielded it's promised results, and how you felt?
The whole game was counterintuitive. It honestly never really occurred to me that I could cultivate any sort of relationship with a stranger. I had never been in a bar or club before the game, and hadn't ever asked a girl for her number. That first number I got just blew away my reality and made me wonder what else I didn't know (the answer: a lot).
Could you describe what you're life was like before you were aware of this, and what options you have with women now?
Life was fine before, but I never felt like I had much control. If a girl liked me, I could usually guide things in the right direction. However, the girls always picked me - I had no choice in the matter.
I don't really go out anymore. I'm not terribly interested in girls who are into the party scene. But now when I see a girl I'm interested in, I can start talking to her and know that she will be attracted to me. In fact, the process is so internalized and subconscious now that I KNOW that any girl I spend fifteen minutes around will like me.
What was your biggest sticking point?
My biggest sticking point was, and still is, going for the first kiss. I am awful at it. I get nervous and then usually end up finally doing it much later than I should have.
Part of the problem is that I'm much more picky than I deserve to be, and I've never "practiced" with less desirable girls. Oh well - I guess there are worse problems to have.
Do you have a favorite routine/step in your model, can you describe it, and what it accomplishes?
"When I first met you, I didn't really like you. Now that I get to know you - you're amazing"
I don't know if I actually ever say those exact words, but I love the sentiment. It's one of Mystery's lines. It's usually also the truth, and I love the reaction it gets.
It says...
"I am picky"
"I like you for more than your beauty"
"I'm not chasing you"
"I'm honest"
And "I like you"
... all in one little phrase.
Have you had the experience yet, where you feel that you've reached a certain degree of mastery? Can you explain the time, and how you got the realization?
I wouldn't consider myself a master. I'm not an AFC either, but when I see people like Mystery or Tyler Durden in the field I realize how much better it's possible to be.
There was one set I did in LA that really sticks out in my mind, though. I was at Lotus with Tyler and a bunch of other people. I chatted up the hottest girl in there, and she was head over heels. I had her feeding me sushi that some other guy bought, begging for my number while these tall modely guys begged for hers, and kissed her goodbye. Later I found out that she was a professional model and even had model trading cards that people bought and sold on ebay.
When I got home she had already left a message on my phone. We never ended up seeing each other because shortly after meeting her I got involved with Katya, but she was still calling me even after I moved back to Austin.
That set made it blatantly obvious that I COULD attract any girl. Before pickup, I would have assumed that she would have no interest in even talking to me. Now I walk around with the confidence that I can get any girl, which is a great feeling to have.
What advice would you give to newbies starting out, in order to greatly accelerate their learning curve?
I could write a book here. Take a workshop, first of all. I was always too proud to take a workshop. I didn't need to spend money to get good. It's true - I didn't, but I would have gotten much better much faster if I had.
Now I'm fortunate enough to be friends with most of the seminar and workshop people, so I can sit in, but it's not the same. If I could go back and pay to have a real workshop, I'd do it. I had no idea how high quality these programs were (specifically Mystery, RSD, Pickup 101, and The Approach).
After you take your workshop, go out religiously. I taught with Mystery for a while, and the people who got good were the people who applied what they learned.
Also - dedicate your life to it. EVERYONE who has gotten very good has done this. It's equally important to take a step back later and see what's stuck with you. But in the beginning - dedicate your life to it.
I MOVED ACROSS THE COUNTRY to get involved. I had a house in Austin that I kept paying the mortgage on while I was in LA. I literally spent all of my savings on the deposit for my chunk of Project Hollywood and had no idea how I was going to pay the rent when I got there.
You're not going to get good starting out two nights a week on your own. It just won't happen. Surround yourself with people who are GREAT (not your fellow AFC friends who are also learning). Go out a lot.
Pickup is both the hardest skill you'll ever learn and the most important. Everyone I know who is any good will say it's the most important thing they've learned, because it applies to EVERYTHING, not just women. I have better relationships with friends, family, and business associates because of it. Do what it takes to get this.
What's your belief on inner game, and how did you improve it?
Inner game is essential, especially as you get later in your game. Don't use it as an excuse, though. I see a lot of guys "working on their inner game" instead of going out. That's crap.
You improve your inner game by being in the field. What would have helped me more? 1000 affirmations saying "hot girls love me" or picking up that model and KNOWING that hot girls love me?
Learning pickup should be the process of amplifying who you are. You're not changing who you are. That's a mistake. You weed out your bad traits and amplify the good ones. Figure out what you like about yourself and what others like about yourself and make THAT be your core.
Habits that you want to kick and that are unattractive need to be minimized or eliminated.
The best way to cultivate a strong inner game is to be out in the field constantly while being hyper aware of everything you do and how it affects others. Every single thing you do or say will get a subtle reaction from everyone in the set. Take note of that.
Do you have a personal favorite field report (your own) that you could relay?
It was the 2004 pickup summit that I organized (see how involved I got?), and everyone was there. More importantly, everyone was trying to show off.
Thundercat and Cristophe were talking to two girls of a three set. The last girl was facing away from the group and had the coldest body language I'd ever seen.
The One came up to me and pointed her out.
"Dude, that girl is really cold. Try talking to her."
It sounded like a challenge to me. PUAs from all over the world were watching, and I had a lot to prove since I had just moved to ProHo.
I walked up and started talking. She ignored me. I just stacked and stacked and stacked, totally unwilling to walk away as a failure. She didn't acknowledge my presence. In any other situation I would have given up long ago, but too many people were watching.
Finally I said something funny and I noticed that the corner of her mouth, the only part I could see, had broken into a slight smile.
"I caught you!" I said, "You've been sitting here being entertained this whole time while I stand here like an idiot? Forget this..."
I started walking away, knowing that she would turn around.
"No... wait!"
I turned and saw that she was smiling. She looked embarrassed. We started talking like normal, and she became attracted to me. Hey, who can blame her?
Thundercat, Cristophe, the three girls, and I walked to Mel's as I had gotten used to doing every night.
During dinner I tried to use a new lying game Style had taught me. Unfortunately I introduced it without really knowing how to follow up.
"Did you know that you can tell if someone's lying just by looking in their eyes?"
"Really, how? Ask me something and tell me if I'm lying or not"
Oops. That's not how this is supposed to go. I got an idea.
"Ok. Do you want to kiss me?"
"No."
"You're lying."
Really, was there anything else I could say? Kissing's always been my big sticking point, so I figured I might as well practice. She was cute.
"No I'm not."
It was a test. I could now tell that she was attracted.
"Yes you are. And now that you've lied to me, I'm NOT going to kiss you."
There was a pause.
"I'm sorry for lying! I didn't know what to say!"
I shrugged apologetically and kept eating. She apologized a couple more times, now very eager to kiss me.
On the way back up to the house I asked her why she was in a bad mood earlier. It was a guy.
Some guy had chatted her up. She didn't like him, but gave him her number in hopes that it would end the conversation.
It did, but then he called her every day until she finally answered. He badgered her into going on a date with her.
Then he badgered her into being his girlfriend.
She had broken up with him earlier that day and was calling her incessantly. That's why her phone was ringing every few minutes. I answered once and told him I was her new boyfriend and to stop calling. He was furious.
We got up to the house and laid down in the pillow pit. I made out with her, but it wasn't really appropriate. There were 20+ PUAs standing in the living room. Maybe that's why I did it.
It didn't seem to be going as well with Thundercat and Cristophe's girls (maybe they weren't interested in the girls, I dunno), so soon the girls left.
My girl and I called each other a few times, but suddenly she stopped calling back. Oh well.
More than six month later I was eating dinner with Mystery when he got a call from TD.
"Dude... tell Herbal to answer his phone. Someone's going to call him."
Sure enough my phone rang. It was that girl. I let it go to voicemail for some reason and her message said :
"Hey Herbal! I'm so sorry I never called you back. I lost your number! I just met your friend Tyler and he used the same tricks on me that you used! We should hang out again! Call me!"
I was dating Katya at the time, so I never called her back. I like that set because I learned a lot. It shows how importance persistence is (both with her boyfriend and me). If I can turn around a set like THAT, I can turn around any set. I probably talked to her back for at least five minutes.
That's a long time when the other person is totally ignoring you.
What is your current sticking point (if any)?
The biggest problem I have these days if finding girls I'm seriously interesting in pursuing.
As it's become easier to attract higher quality girls, my standards have gone up to match. How many beautiful girls do you know who are interesting and fun to be around, but don't drink or smoke?
Luckily I've got some ideas that I'll be putting into action soon for meeting women like that.
What are you goals now within the community, and in life?
I don't really have any goals within the community now, other than to see my friends who are actively involved in it succeed.
In life I focus on constant improvement. I want my relationships to be better, my business to be better, and for my health to be better.
I was hanging out with JLaix in San Francisco last week and he told me that his goal was to gain proficiency in 10 new areas this year (or was it in six months?) I thought that was a great goal and I might borrow it.
Other Seduction Masters Interviews:
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Mystery Method (6): Seduction
UPDATE! Do you want to get Mystery to teach you every step of the way? Check out hisDVD Home Course.
If you remember from OAP 5, you enter the Seduction phases after you and her have spent (usually) at least a few hours together, but not more than about 10.
Seduction is a pretty easy element in itself. It goes wrong for a lot of guys, but this is because of mistakes in Comfort that only become apparent when you try to close the deal in Seduction. It's like trying to tell a joke. You may feel that you can't deliver punch lines well, because you don't get the laughs. But the mistake may not be in the delivery of the punch line. Your punch line may be just fine. But if the buildup and lead-in aren't any good, no punch line in the world will save you. Seducing a woman is the same way. If you haven't done your groundwork, there's no Seduction game in the world that will help you.
If you'll permit me a small tangent here, this is a frequent pattern in the Mystery Method. Problems in one phase often don't become apparent until a later phase. For example, many guys who think they have problems in attracting a woman (A2: Attraction) often have decent attraction skills but are bad at opening (A1: Opening). If you start off badly or awkwardly, it's much harder to make a woman receptive to your attraction material. So the cause of the problem is in A1, but the symptom only appears in A2. Similarly, guys who have trouble in Comfort don't realize that this is often due to rushing through or skipping (A3: Qualification).
How do you know if your Comfort game was smooth? Well, ideally, you should be entering Seduction with the following elements already in hand:
All good with Comfort? Great. Now let's jump into Seduction.
Seduction, to a successful man, is mostly about logistics. You have attraction. You have comfort. She is ready to sleep with you. She may not think she is, but that's because she is conditioned to avoid -- at all costs -- feeling like she is 'easy'. That's one of the worst things one woman can say to another. So be understanding of her psychology, and LEAD her to sex so she doesn't have to take responsibility or feel easy. Three key rules:
Make it Feel Natural
Have you been a passenger in a car, when you are enjoying the ride, talking to your friend who is driving, and then looked up and thought "wow, we're here already". This is because there were no 'state breaks'. Nothing that made you suddenly change your mental state. For example, the driver never stopped to ask for directions, felt nervous about arriving at your destination, or left you feeling bored and wondering where you were going. More than likely you were talking about enough interesting things and sharing each others' company enough that you stopped thinking about the fact that you were in a car going someplace. That's how to seduce a woman. In bed afterwards, try asking her "so . . . how did THIS happen?" If she says "well, I was horny, you were cute, you did this, I did that, and now here we are", you still have room to improve your game (though congratulations on the result anyway). If she says "I don't know . . . it just happened" you are on the road to becoming a Mystery Method man.
Distract her when it's Necessary to be "Unnatural"
Also known as managing state breaks. Some state breaks are inevitable. A few techniques are valuable to getting over them. One is to oversell whatever is on the other side. For example, if you are moving her from your living room couch to the bedroom, say something like "I have more pictures in here . . . you said you like Miro right? Oh my god, come check this out, you will DIE" while holding her hand and leading her into your bedroom. Much better than "I have a new lamp in my bedroom, want to see?"
Location, location, location
Let's assume you got her to your house. You're on home turf now. Everything is perfectly set up for seduction, right? It had better be. This is something TOTALLY under your control and there is NO excuse for not giving yourself every chance to succeed. It's like training for months for the big race and then wearing running shoes with broken laces. There is so much that is difficult or not under your control in this game that you can't afford to make mistakes on the stuff that is.
It should be clean. It doesn't have to be spotless, but it should be clean enough for a woman to be comfortable. The bathroom, especially, should be hygienic.
The living room (or wherever you plan to bring her) should be laid out so there is no obvious way for you both to sit down but side by side together on a couch. If you have chairs, pile stuff on them or get rid of them before she comes over so she can't sit there.
Have fun things to do if you still need to build comfort. Interactive fun is better than cool DVDs. Fun truth-or-dare games, an easy 3D jigsaw puzzle, whatever.
Some romance and implied sexuality never hurt. Have champagne, have strawberries, and have whipped cream around. Don't be cheesy with them, but realize you have them and can break them out when needed.
Alcohol can build comfort and also let a woman feel less responsible ("I can justify this to myself because I'm drunk even if I just had two drinks"). Have drinks that women like. Many women -- not all, of course -- prefer wine to beer, shooters to shots, vodka to rum, and sweet mixers to bitter ones. Learn how to make drinks women order when they are having fun. Cosmopolitans and Margaritas are good places to start.
Condoms are the ultimate state break. Keep them near the bed, where you can get to them easily and unobtrusively. You will inevitably lose out at least once with a woman who was quite happy to sleep with you until you introduced a state break and reached for the condoms. Live with this. Literally. Unsafe sex is never an option. Lose the girl, not your health.
Seduction is kind of a touchy subject for a lot of people. Especially when we talk about minimizing state breaks and not giving women a lot of time to sit and think about whether they really want to begin a sexual encounter. So I want to be very clear that we are talking about seduction, not manipulation. There's no need to manipulate a woman into sex. All we're trying to do is lessen her feelings of guilt and responsibility for the first time. Yes, we tell it like it is, not how society wants it to be. And yes, some women are very comfortable with their sexuality and choices and don't require men to lessen their feelings of guilt and responsibility. They are often great catches, but are not the majority.
One final thing to remember -- to you, No will always mean No. Even when it doesn't mean No to the woman who said it (it can mean no, but it can also mean not yet, not like that, not here, not until you've convinced me, or yes but don't make me feel easy), it will mean No to you. You can try again later or you can try something else, but you cannot ignore a "no". You have no way of knowing for sure what no means, and it's simply wrong to assume that you do. Successful men never have to ignore a "no" and successful men also know that there are many willing women ready to replace the one who might not be.
ATTRACT 1:
Opening
Opening
ATTRACT 2:
Female-to-male attract phase (often called "attracting")
Female-to-male attract phase (often called "attracting")
ATTRACT 3:
Male-to-female attract phase (or "qualifying")
Male-to-female attract phase (or "qualifying")
COMFORT 1:
Connection
Connection
COMFORT 2:
Trust
Trust
COMFORT 3:
Intimacy
Intimacy
SEDUCTION 1:
Arousal
Arousal
SEDUCTION 2:
Last-minute Resistance
Last-minute Resistance
SEDUCTION 3:
Sex
Sex
If you remember from OAP 5, you enter the Seduction phases after you and her have spent (usually) at least a few hours together, but not more than about 10.
Seduction is a pretty easy element in itself. It goes wrong for a lot of guys, but this is because of mistakes in Comfort that only become apparent when you try to close the deal in Seduction. It's like trying to tell a joke. You may feel that you can't deliver punch lines well, because you don't get the laughs. But the mistake may not be in the delivery of the punch line. Your punch line may be just fine. But if the buildup and lead-in aren't any good, no punch line in the world will save you. Seducing a woman is the same way. If you haven't done your groundwork, there's no Seduction game in the world that will help you.
If you'll permit me a small tangent here, this is a frequent pattern in the Mystery Method. Problems in one phase often don't become apparent until a later phase. For example, many guys who think they have problems in attracting a woman (A2: Attraction) often have decent attraction skills but are bad at opening (A1: Opening). If you start off badly or awkwardly, it's much harder to make a woman receptive to your attraction material. So the cause of the problem is in A1, but the symptom only appears in A2. Similarly, guys who have trouble in Comfort don't realize that this is often due to rushing through or skipping (A3: Qualification).
How do you know if your Comfort game was smooth? Well, ideally, you should be entering Seduction with the following elements already in hand:
- You've spent 4-10 hours together
- You've kept the attraction/sexual tension with her going while making her comfortable with you and trusting you.
- It feels totally normal to both of you that you are touching each other (non-sexually).
All good with Comfort? Great. Now let's jump into Seduction.
Seduction, to a successful man, is mostly about logistics. You have attraction. You have comfort. She is ready to sleep with you. She may not think she is, but that's because she is conditioned to avoid -- at all costs -- feeling like she is 'easy'. That's one of the worst things one woman can say to another. So be understanding of her psychology, and LEAD her to sex so she doesn't have to take responsibility or feel easy. Three key rules:
- Make it feel "natural". Any time a woman thinks "If I do this (go home with him / let him take my bra off / etc), it's going to lead to sex", there is a risk that she won't do it, even if she actually wants to sleep with you. Don't argue with this logically; it is part of many women's psychological makeup and we have to work with it. This can be very subtle. Saying to a woman "would you like to come back to my house" makes her decide right then and there if she wants to escalate sexually. In contrast, going for a walk, passing by your house, leading her inside "for a second" while you get your wallet or use the bathroom, will not trigger that reflex in women if done properly. Result is the same -- she's in your house -- but you haven't triggered any of her reflexes to avoid thinking of herself as "easy".
- Distract her when it's necessary to be "unnatural". Say you are leaving a party with an attractive woman. You each live 20 minutes away, in opposite directions. No matter how good you are, and how good your excuse is to bring her home, you will not be able to avoid the fact that she's going in the opposite direction from her home to go to a man's house. In this case, don't make it a decision for her. Hold her hand and lead her to your car. Don't ask; assume she's getting in. Keep talking the whole time, telling her interesting stories so she's not left alone with her thoughts. I've literally gone on 20-minute monologues to entertain and distract a woman through especially awkward "unnatural" moments (e.g., waiting in line to check into a hotel).
- Location, location, location. Attraction and Comfort can -- theoretically -- take place anywhere. Seduction can usually only take place in private. While it's theoretically possible to close the deal in a restaurant bathroom, it's not what most of us are going for here. So realize that you are going to have to get her to your house (or possibly her house, but yours is better). Plan for this. Don't spend all of your Comfort-building time on the other side of town. Make her comfortable with your living quarters before you get into Seduction. If she's learned that she's safe and can have fun at your house during Comfort without your trying to sleep with her, she's much more likely to follow you there when it's time for sex.
Make it Feel Natural
Have you been a passenger in a car, when you are enjoying the ride, talking to your friend who is driving, and then looked up and thought "wow, we're here already". This is because there were no 'state breaks'. Nothing that made you suddenly change your mental state. For example, the driver never stopped to ask for directions, felt nervous about arriving at your destination, or left you feeling bored and wondering where you were going. More than likely you were talking about enough interesting things and sharing each others' company enough that you stopped thinking about the fact that you were in a car going someplace. That's how to seduce a woman. In bed afterwards, try asking her "so . . . how did THIS happen?" If she says "well, I was horny, you were cute, you did this, I did that, and now here we are", you still have room to improve your game (though congratulations on the result anyway). If she says "I don't know . . . it just happened" you are on the road to becoming a Mystery Method man.
Distract her when it's Necessary to be "Unnatural"
Also known as managing state breaks. Some state breaks are inevitable. A few techniques are valuable to getting over them. One is to oversell whatever is on the other side. For example, if you are moving her from your living room couch to the bedroom, say something like "I have more pictures in here . . . you said you like Miro right? Oh my god, come check this out, you will DIE" while holding her hand and leading her into your bedroom. Much better than "I have a new lamp in my bedroom, want to see?"
Location, location, location
Let's assume you got her to your house. You're on home turf now. Everything is perfectly set up for seduction, right? It had better be. This is something TOTALLY under your control and there is NO excuse for not giving yourself every chance to succeed. It's like training for months for the big race and then wearing running shoes with broken laces. There is so much that is difficult or not under your control in this game that you can't afford to make mistakes on the stuff that is.
It should be clean. It doesn't have to be spotless, but it should be clean enough for a woman to be comfortable. The bathroom, especially, should be hygienic.
The living room (or wherever you plan to bring her) should be laid out so there is no obvious way for you both to sit down but side by side together on a couch. If you have chairs, pile stuff on them or get rid of them before she comes over so she can't sit there.
Have fun things to do if you still need to build comfort. Interactive fun is better than cool DVDs. Fun truth-or-dare games, an easy 3D jigsaw puzzle, whatever.
Some romance and implied sexuality never hurt. Have champagne, have strawberries, and have whipped cream around. Don't be cheesy with them, but realize you have them and can break them out when needed.
Alcohol can build comfort and also let a woman feel less responsible ("I can justify this to myself because I'm drunk even if I just had two drinks"). Have drinks that women like. Many women -- not all, of course -- prefer wine to beer, shooters to shots, vodka to rum, and sweet mixers to bitter ones. Learn how to make drinks women order when they are having fun. Cosmopolitans and Margaritas are good places to start.
Condoms are the ultimate state break. Keep them near the bed, where you can get to them easily and unobtrusively. You will inevitably lose out at least once with a woman who was quite happy to sleep with you until you introduced a state break and reached for the condoms. Live with this. Literally. Unsafe sex is never an option. Lose the girl, not your health.
Seduction is kind of a touchy subject for a lot of people. Especially when we talk about minimizing state breaks and not giving women a lot of time to sit and think about whether they really want to begin a sexual encounter. So I want to be very clear that we are talking about seduction, not manipulation. There's no need to manipulate a woman into sex. All we're trying to do is lessen her feelings of guilt and responsibility for the first time. Yes, we tell it like it is, not how society wants it to be. And yes, some women are very comfortable with their sexuality and choices and don't require men to lessen their feelings of guilt and responsibility. They are often great catches, but are not the majority.
One final thing to remember -- to you, No will always mean No. Even when it doesn't mean No to the woman who said it (it can mean no, but it can also mean not yet, not like that, not here, not until you've convinced me, or yes but don't make me feel easy), it will mean No to you. You can try again later or you can try something else, but you cannot ignore a "no". You have no way of knowing for sure what no means, and it's simply wrong to assume that you do. Successful men never have to ignore a "no" and successful men also know that there are many willing women ready to replace the one who might not be.
For complete coverage of everything the Mystery Method can offer, download the Magic Bullets ebook
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