I've mostly been a lurker here for quite a while now. I have done approaches in my life, but my total approach count so far is around 50, which I did over a period of over 2 years. So haven't really learned much except for a lot of theory.
About two weeks ago I decided to do 100 approaches diligently in a month and right now I am at 41. So let me start by describing some of the interesting experiences I've had so far. This post contains some of my approaches, some observations, and some questions. Any feedback will be much appreciated. I have written all questions in bold, for ease of reading.
Day 1. Went out to a mall alone in the day with the aim of doing some direct openers. Completely freaked out upon reaching there and realizing how crowded it was. Approaching felt like "performing" and seeing so many people around meant that if I screwed up, I'd have a thousand witnesses. So I just walked around for a while trying to muster some courage. After thirty minutes of doing nothing, I decided to start asking some innocuous questions such as "where is the nearest starbucks?" just to get out of my head. After doing this with 3-4 girls, spotted a girl who was standing alone playing with her phone. Asked her where the nearest starbucks was and left, but then felt comfortable enough to do a second approach with her and this time I went direct. She was nice and friendly, but had a boyfriend. We had a chat for about 5 minutes about the dating scene in general (since I'd gone direct that seemed like the most natural topic of conversation). Her friendly response was pleasant and my fear of approaching eased off a bit. Unfortunately, precisely at this point, I decided that I'd accomplished enough for the day and went home.
Day 2. Went out with a wing for some night game, but stopped at a mall again around 9pm to do some day game (day game in spirit, even though it was night). Approached two different girls with a direct opener. Something along the lines of "I was walking by, and I saw you, and I thought you were cute. So I came here running to introduce myself." Once again, the response was much less scary compared to the amount of anxiety I had about approaching them. Both blushed, both said thanks, and both looked like I could've gotten their numbers or something if I'd known what to do after doing the opener. Since I didn't, I ran out of things to say pretty soon and ejected.
Later that night me and my wing were joined by a third friend, and we went to bars and clubs and such. I did 8-9 approaches there but they all pretty much went horribly. It seemed like direct game was probably not suited for night game, because everyone else seemed to be doing exactly the same thing. What do you guys think? When you go up to a girl in the day time and say "Hi, I'm X, I think you're cute/I like your style/whatever" the girl is probably thinking "Holy shit, look at this guy coming up to me in broad day light and hitting on me openly, he must be a confident man." In the night, however, 10 other guys have already done that in the last hour, so her immediate reaction is "OK another one of these".
Day 3. Went to a "language exchange meetup". A lot of foreign exchange students go there to learn English, so it's a nice place for practising some game. I met a cute Mexican girl there and talked to her for quite a bit. It looked like it was on. Some Egyptian dude tried to cockblock by hitting on her in front of me but I had built enough rapport with the girl that I was kind of making fun of the guy in front of her. Anyway, the guy left after a while and I continued chatting with the girl. I eventually decided to leave the conversation for a bit, mingle with some more people, then go back and get her number. While I was talking to other people, I noticed that the Egyptian dude was trying again to hit on her. After a while I felt hungry so I thought I'd ask the girl if she wanted to get something to eat. She said she was going with some friends to Burger King and invited me to join. So I went down with her and realized that one of these "friends" was the Egyptian guy. Also, when she saw her friends, they said they were not really going to Burger King but were going home directly. So she told me she would go home too. I felt kind of annoyed and went back to the meetup to talk to other people. The Egyptian dude went with them though. Anyway, the bottomline is, do I have something to learn from the Egyptian dude here? If you are kind of lame, but keep hitting on the girl even after she's rejected you, would you do better than someone less lame but who plays it cool?
Day 4. Did some night game again. It was slightly less horrible than last time, but was still horrible. Did around 10 approaches but always kept running out of things to say.
Day 5. Night game again, but this time I did some analysis on the last two night game failures and realized that one thing missing so far was any sort of physical contact. So just for experimentation, I decided to go overboard on the touching. Always tried to hold the girl's hand (after a handshake or a high five for example) for uncomfortably long and if she looked comfortable, pull her in closer to me. This was interesting although nothing positive came out of it. Once a friend of the girl said "let go of her hand please".
I also had one of the most embarrassing approaches this night. I have always found the idea of approaching a walking girl kind of scary. There's this small street with a high density of bars and I saw this girl walking there clearly not interested in the bar scene, as if she was just coming back from work or something. I wanted to practice the "run and tap on her shoulder" move. So I did exactly that. But as I tapped, she got visibly scared and instead of stopping, increased her speed and scurried away. I said "Stop for a sec, I need to ask you a question." But she kept walking as if I was trying to rape her. It was enough to make me feel like a rapist. The fact that both sides of the street were full of people standing in queues to get into the bars didn't help because now I was a rapist in front of hundreds of people. This was one rejection that was a bit hard to shake off.
Day 6. Went out for some day game with a buddy. There was some sort of art exhibition going on. Saw a cute girl taking pictures. Opened her, talked for about 10 minutes, got her number. In hindsight though, I should have tried for an instadate. Texted her later that day, she didn't reply. Called her the next day, she didn't answer. Anyway, next.
Day 7. Day game again. Went to an art exhibition of some sort. There was a random Moroccon band playing some amazing drums. Saw a very cute chick in the audience swaying to the rhythm of the beats. Went and stood next to her, started talking and it went quite well. At one point she was asking me questions about me. It looked like she was invested enough that I could have asked for her number. But I didn't. Later when I tried to figure out why, I realized that the main problem was that I'd opened indirect. When you do a direct opener, asking for her number is the most natural thing to do, because you both know that you are hitting on her and exchanging numbers will help you keep in touch later. But with an indirect opener, there's no reason by default to exchange numbers. You need to first establish that there's something to be gained for both of you from future interactions. So what are some ways you guys ask for numbers after opening indirect?
Later I did another street stop, i.e., stopping a girl who's walking on the street. Ran up to her, tapped on her shoulder and started talking. Realized immediately she was not good looking. Somehow she'd looked much better from far. Anyway, I ejected soon.
So far, my overall impression is that I get much warmer responses and a higher success rate in day game than night. Generalizing from my admittedly limited experience, it seems that if you tell a girl during day time that she's cute and you want to talk to her, you are pretty much never going to get a bad response from her. At night though, I once said hi to a girl and she replied with, "Don't even think of talking to me!" Although not all approaches are this bad, there are some really bad ones. Do you guys agree with these observations?
About two weeks ago I decided to do 100 approaches diligently in a month and right now I am at 41. So let me start by describing some of the interesting experiences I've had so far. This post contains some of my approaches, some observations, and some questions. Any feedback will be much appreciated. I have written all questions in bold, for ease of reading.
Day 1. Went out to a mall alone in the day with the aim of doing some direct openers. Completely freaked out upon reaching there and realizing how crowded it was. Approaching felt like "performing" and seeing so many people around meant that if I screwed up, I'd have a thousand witnesses. So I just walked around for a while trying to muster some courage. After thirty minutes of doing nothing, I decided to start asking some innocuous questions such as "where is the nearest starbucks?" just to get out of my head. After doing this with 3-4 girls, spotted a girl who was standing alone playing with her phone. Asked her where the nearest starbucks was and left, but then felt comfortable enough to do a second approach with her and this time I went direct. She was nice and friendly, but had a boyfriend. We had a chat for about 5 minutes about the dating scene in general (since I'd gone direct that seemed like the most natural topic of conversation). Her friendly response was pleasant and my fear of approaching eased off a bit. Unfortunately, precisely at this point, I decided that I'd accomplished enough for the day and went home.
Day 2. Went out with a wing for some night game, but stopped at a mall again around 9pm to do some day game (day game in spirit, even though it was night). Approached two different girls with a direct opener. Something along the lines of "I was walking by, and I saw you, and I thought you were cute. So I came here running to introduce myself." Once again, the response was much less scary compared to the amount of anxiety I had about approaching them. Both blushed, both said thanks, and both looked like I could've gotten their numbers or something if I'd known what to do after doing the opener. Since I didn't, I ran out of things to say pretty soon and ejected.
Later that night me and my wing were joined by a third friend, and we went to bars and clubs and such. I did 8-9 approaches there but they all pretty much went horribly. It seemed like direct game was probably not suited for night game, because everyone else seemed to be doing exactly the same thing. What do you guys think? When you go up to a girl in the day time and say "Hi, I'm X, I think you're cute/I like your style/whatever" the girl is probably thinking "Holy shit, look at this guy coming up to me in broad day light and hitting on me openly, he must be a confident man." In the night, however, 10 other guys have already done that in the last hour, so her immediate reaction is "OK another one of these".
Day 3. Went to a "language exchange meetup". A lot of foreign exchange students go there to learn English, so it's a nice place for practising some game. I met a cute Mexican girl there and talked to her for quite a bit. It looked like it was on. Some Egyptian dude tried to cockblock by hitting on her in front of me but I had built enough rapport with the girl that I was kind of making fun of the guy in front of her. Anyway, the guy left after a while and I continued chatting with the girl. I eventually decided to leave the conversation for a bit, mingle with some more people, then go back and get her number. While I was talking to other people, I noticed that the Egyptian dude was trying again to hit on her. After a while I felt hungry so I thought I'd ask the girl if she wanted to get something to eat. She said she was going with some friends to Burger King and invited me to join. So I went down with her and realized that one of these "friends" was the Egyptian guy. Also, when she saw her friends, they said they were not really going to Burger King but were going home directly. So she told me she would go home too. I felt kind of annoyed and went back to the meetup to talk to other people. The Egyptian dude went with them though. Anyway, the bottomline is, do I have something to learn from the Egyptian dude here? If you are kind of lame, but keep hitting on the girl even after she's rejected you, would you do better than someone less lame but who plays it cool?
Day 4. Did some night game again. It was slightly less horrible than last time, but was still horrible. Did around 10 approaches but always kept running out of things to say.
Day 5. Night game again, but this time I did some analysis on the last two night game failures and realized that one thing missing so far was any sort of physical contact. So just for experimentation, I decided to go overboard on the touching. Always tried to hold the girl's hand (after a handshake or a high five for example) for uncomfortably long and if she looked comfortable, pull her in closer to me. This was interesting although nothing positive came out of it. Once a friend of the girl said "let go of her hand please".
I also had one of the most embarrassing approaches this night. I have always found the idea of approaching a walking girl kind of scary. There's this small street with a high density of bars and I saw this girl walking there clearly not interested in the bar scene, as if she was just coming back from work or something. I wanted to practice the "run and tap on her shoulder" move. So I did exactly that. But as I tapped, she got visibly scared and instead of stopping, increased her speed and scurried away. I said "Stop for a sec, I need to ask you a question." But she kept walking as if I was trying to rape her. It was enough to make me feel like a rapist. The fact that both sides of the street were full of people standing in queues to get into the bars didn't help because now I was a rapist in front of hundreds of people. This was one rejection that was a bit hard to shake off.
Day 6. Went out for some day game with a buddy. There was some sort of art exhibition going on. Saw a cute girl taking pictures. Opened her, talked for about 10 minutes, got her number. In hindsight though, I should have tried for an instadate. Texted her later that day, she didn't reply. Called her the next day, she didn't answer. Anyway, next.
Day 7. Day game again. Went to an art exhibition of some sort. There was a random Moroccon band playing some amazing drums. Saw a very cute chick in the audience swaying to the rhythm of the beats. Went and stood next to her, started talking and it went quite well. At one point she was asking me questions about me. It looked like she was invested enough that I could have asked for her number. But I didn't. Later when I tried to figure out why, I realized that the main problem was that I'd opened indirect. When you do a direct opener, asking for her number is the most natural thing to do, because you both know that you are hitting on her and exchanging numbers will help you keep in touch later. But with an indirect opener, there's no reason by default to exchange numbers. You need to first establish that there's something to be gained for both of you from future interactions. So what are some ways you guys ask for numbers after opening indirect?
Later I did another street stop, i.e., stopping a girl who's walking on the street. Ran up to her, tapped on her shoulder and started talking. Realized immediately she was not good looking. Somehow she'd looked much better from far. Anyway, I ejected soon.
So far, my overall impression is that I get much warmer responses and a higher success rate in day game than night. Generalizing from my admittedly limited experience, it seems that if you tell a girl during day time that she's cute and you want to talk to her, you are pretty much never going to get a bad response from her. At night though, I once said hi to a girl and she replied with, "Don't even think of talking to me!" Although not all approaches are this bad, there are some really bad ones. Do you guys agree with these observations?
My game blog.