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Build Rapport
Your goal is for the two of you to get to know each other. You’re trying to build connections – you want to engage her emotionally by building rapport while keeping some playful fun in the interaction, even taking the opportunity to show off a little about how awesome you are.
This means you need to brush up your conversational skills. And this means knowing how to maintain a conversational flow – not holding up the entire conversation yourself but simultaneously not putting the onus on her to provide a lot of information for very little emotional incentive. You want to connect and follow conversational links, finding commonalities and passions without either making it all about you or leaping from topic to topic.
Think of it this way: When you’re talking with someone you’re attracted to, you don’t want to make them feel as though they’re being interviewed for a job or a magazine; it puts all of the pressure on her and it doesn’t leave any room to take the conversation in new and interesting directions. You’re not building a connection, you’re just pumping her for data. Similarly, if you’re just relating everything she says to you, you’re showing her that you have no interest in her; you’re caught up in your own little world and likely rapidly running out of air.
You want to take what she has to say and follow it to the next level – get beyond the surface by trying to relate to her. One of the best ways to do this is to make statements or observations about her and what she has to say.
For example:
You: “So what do you do when you’re not meeting strange men at parties?”
Her: “Well, I study archeology and I play guitar.”
You: “Wow, that’s really cool. It must be an incredible feeling to be exploring history in such a concrete and tactile way. Bringing the past to life, trying to piece it all together and understand it in new and practical ways – that’s really refreshing. Too many people seem to be stuck in the here-and-now and aren’t interested in learning about what came before. Or do you just like finding ancient treasures in buried tombs?”1
You’re taking the interaction deeper, getting into the core of a passion, relating to it and giving her feedback: you’re connecting with her passion and telling her you think it’s cool. From there, you have any number of other ways to take the conversation – talking about music, asking her about what lead her to archeology or cutting the conversational thread and moving on to another conversational topic entirely. Everything she has to say is a potential springboard to a new topic. The more you can relate to her – making an observation or a statement about what she has to say – the more of rapport you can build.
In general, you want to lead the conversation – guide, not force – in a direction that leads to building rapport. This means being willing to avoid small-talk about work or TV – topics that she might talk about with casual friends – and towards areas where you can get to know each other better.
Break Rapport (Or: Push and Pull)
Now, this isn’t to say that the two of you should be in perfect harmony; while we do find ourselves more attracted to people with whom we share commonalities, if you show you have everything in common, then you’re going to start coming off as… well, a little phony. Lots of guys will agree to just about anything an attractive woman says. In fact, most women will have an experience with guys who think that pretending to love Dr. Who and knitting is the way into her pants. Other guys – especially if they’re less secure in themselves – will be hesitant to disagree with her or to challenge her for fear of “ruining” everything.
A guy who seems to love everything and is perfectly in sync with them is frankly, a little suspicious.
Deliberately breaking rapport over a minor issue (“Really? You loved Prometheus? Man, I couldn’t make it through the first 20 minutes…”) is a way of show you have your own mind and aren’t afraid to disagree with her.
Now, this isn’t to say that you have to make something up in order to break rapport; you want to be authentic, not playing weird dominance games. You just want to establish that you’re not going to be constantly “me-too” her as a way of sucking up. You’re demonstrating that you are showing her the respect of being willing to disagree… respectfully.
Remember: you don’t want to do this over a major issue. You don’t want to tell the woman in the above example that you think archeology is stupid; you’ve just insulted her passion in life, after all. Keep it to small and specific issues; particular bands, books, movies, that sort of thing.
Breaking rapport should be followed up with a compliment about her – “you know, you really have a great smile” – and moving the conversation somewhere else. It follows the idea of push and pull – keeping things interesting by varying the emotional interaction. It also doesn’t hurt that part of human nature means that we instinctively chase after things that run from us. Give a person approval or attention and then suddenly pull it away and then they’ll want it back. A compliment followed by a tease or a tease followed by a compliment, for example, is a way of yanking way attention away, then giving it back.
Ping Her Interest Level
Every once in a while, you want to be able to gauge how things are going – is she into you, or is she being polite and killing time until the social contract says she’s allowed to leave?
Observe how she’s acting.
- Is she showing interest in you? Is she asking probing or involved questions that go beyond the 10 standard “getting to know you” questions? Is she asking follow-up questions to the things you have to say?
- How is she responding to your questions? Is she giving short, curt answers or is she going in depth?
- Has her body language changed? Is she more open, facing you more directly or leaning in?
- Has her energy level dipped – she seems tired – or spiked?
- If you touch her – putting the back of your hand on her arm to emphasize a point, for example – does she touch you back? Is she comfortable with physical contact, willing to give you a playful smack on the shoulder?
These are all passive ways of gauging whether she’s starting to be interested in you. You can also take a more active role by seeing if she’s willing to move with you. It doesn’t have to be a big deal; a simple “hey, I want to find something in the Mystery section/grab a coffee across the street… come with me?”, “hey, let’s sit down,” or “Why don’t we go over here where it’s a little quieter/cooler/where I can smoke?” all work. A woman who is willing to follow you is telling you she’s emotionally invested in continuing her interaction with you… and also showing a fair amount of trust.
The classic high-five test – offering a high-five and seeing if she grasps your hand or twines her fingers in with yours – is a subtle and accurate way of measuring her interest as well.
Go Deeper
If she’s showing signs that she’s interested in you, then it’s time to take things to a more intimate and personal level; you want to talk about passions and life goals, not just surface issues.
You don’t just want to ask questions – “what are you passionate about”, but make statements building off what you’ve already shared. To the guitar-playing archeologist, you might say “I bet you’re the sort of person who gets lost in music; you start playing and it seems like the world just… disappears and there’s nothing but you and the melody.” You want to get to the core of who she is; what she feels passionately about and has a great deal of interest in.
You might challenge her with a qualifying question – “OK, obviously you’re pretty, but I bet there’s more to you than meets the eye. What do you have going on that might surprise me?” or “What’s the one thing you could do if you never had to worry about failure?” These are questions that require a fairly significant emotional investment because they’re getting fairly personal; if she’s not that interested in you, she’s not going to have a reason to want to take your question seriously
Ultimately, much like when you’re building rapport earlier, what you want to do is elicit an emotional response – finding her passion, and build a connection and feed back into that passion. You’re communicating you want to know what makes them awesome, then agree that yes, that does make them awesome and the reason why that makes them awesome is because X, Y and Z.
When you’ve started achieving this deeper rapport, you’ll often find that she will mention feeling as though she’s known you for longer than however long you’ve been talking. After all, you’re both talking about things that you would not normally talk about with someone you haven’t known for 30 minutes, an hour, two hours, however long you’ve been talking. You’re clearly both comfortable with one another and willing to share more than you might with someone you didn’t connect with.
Seal The Deal
If you’ve been following the general plan and things have been going well – she’s showing that she’s into you, you’re starting to reach that deeper rapport, you’ve been talking for 20 minutes or more – then it’s time to work towards the close. You want to start directing the conversation towards making a date and getting her number. As a general rule, you want to make plans before getting her phone number. Having concrete plans – even if you don’t end up going on that specific date – will minimize the likelihood that she will flake out and stand you up. In addition, by making plans, she will be in the mindset of expecting to hear from you, rather than trying to rebuild the emotional momentum from scratch.
You should keep track of potential first date ideas in your area; the more you have to choose from, the more options you have If you’ve been doing your job – connecting with her, finding out what her interests are – you should have a good idea what she would be interested in and can plan accordingly. You seed the idea of the date earlier – “You like modern art? Cool! There’s this exhibit on Mondrian coming next week that I’ve been curious to check out…” and come back to it when you’re getting ready to leave.
“Hey, you know, I’m planning on checking out that Mondrian this weekend. You should come with me! Great, here, give me your number…” and have her enter her number into your phone. Don’t ask: by this point, you should assume that it’s on. After she’s entered her number, I’m a fan of the follow-up text to make sure she has my number, as well as setting up the pretext for keeping the conversation rolling via text and maintaining the emotional momentum.
Just don’t forget: this is a guide. You don’t want to follow it like gospel or turn it into a crutch. All this road map is for is to give you some sign-posts and landmarks to help keep you on track. You still have to make the journey yourself.
Related Posts
- Yes, I know archeology is nothing like Indiana Jones but I had far too much fun needling one archeologist I dated with Tomb Raider and Indiana Jones jokes. [↩]
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