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If there’s one hard and fast truth in life as you’re striving to get better with women it’s this: the hotter the girl is, the more guys she’s going to have in her life.
It’s not terribly surprising. If you’re attracted to her, there will almost certainly be other guys into her as well… and you’ll have to deal with them. Sorry.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that these men are your competition; they’re obstacles on the path to what you want to be sure, but the automatic assumption that you need to blow them out or show them up is rarely the correct one. Coming in with an antagonistic attitude is going to poison your entire interaction and make you look like the jerk.
In fact, when handled correctly, those other guys can be the best ally you have.
Whether she’s the popular girl in class or the cute girl at the corner of the bar, you’re going to have to finesse the guys in her life .
Establish Relationships
The thing you need to understand: the hotter the girl, the more men she’s going to have in her life. She’ll have suitors, orbiters, gatekeepers, and these are all potential cockblocks for you. It’s important to keep in mind the concept of social pressure: the collective agreement to behave in a particular way in social situations. If you go blundering around, you will feel the social pressure working against you and killing any momentum you have.
If you just roll up on a girl hanging with her friends, the guys will instinctively bunch up to keep you out; after all the last thing they need is more competition for her attention. Just remember that she has the ultimate control. If you want to defuse their potential to shut down your approach immediately, you want to establish the relationships in the group.
After you’ve introduced yourself, always ask “So, how do you guys know each other?” Then, pay attention to her responses. Guys, especially orbiters, will try to intimate that they’re “together” with the girl or give off a vibe of “I was here first, back off.” The girl, however, will ultimately define the relationships. When she says “Oh, we go to class together,” or “Oh, we’re just friends,” or even “Oh, we just met five minutes ago,” it removes the guy’s authority (for lack of a better word) and makes them look a little ridiculous besides. Suddenly, their ability to claim the girl as their own is diminished; they may still be acting as the cockblock, but the social contract now defines their actions… and trying to wave you off is asshole behavior. It also reaffirms the guy’s status as a non-sexual companion, removing him from the threat matrix while leaving your status open and undefined. Social pressure is your friend here, and it can be used to your advantage.
(Plus, you don’t want to be hitting on a girl when her boyfriend’s there with her – and if he’s there, it’s a safe bet that he really is her boyfriend.)
This works whether you’re talking to the hot girl you see at the bar with her friends or the one you notice hanging out on the quad every Tuesday and Thursday after lunch. Always establish the relationships.
Befriend Them, Then Flip Them.
It seems almost counter-intuitive, doesn’t it? Make friends with the guys who would otherwise be keeping you away from the girl of your dreams?
Yup.
You see, the guys you assume are the barrier can be your best friends when it comes to getting the girls. Establishing yourself as a cool guy will reset them from being an obstacle to an ally; if you play it right, they’ll actually help you get with the girl… even if they don’t recognize that’s what they’re doing.
You see, you’re trying to insert yourself into a group of pre-existing relationships, and at the start, they have no reason to want to include you. Everyone in that group has perceived social value to the others while you have none. Being funny, having what’s known as social proof – the state of convincing others that your behavior is correct, causing them to conform to you… these can provide the social value that you want, but it isn’t as powerful as having your value confirmed by someone the girl trusts. If you can befriend the guys in the group, they will become your ticket in. When you befriend them, they now will vouch for you being a cool guy, which sends your social value through the roof and firmly establishes you as someone that the girl should get to know.
In addition, making friends with the guys can turn them into impromptu wingmen. Before, you’re coming in alone; if her female friends start to feel jealous about the attention that they’re not getting or the other guys are feeling threatened by your presence, you have no allies. Your only recourse is your ability to distract them, reassure them and then try to plow through before they can kill your interaction. Befriend the guys and then suddenly you have people on your side, guys who will instinctively stand up for you and help keep the obstacles occupied while you’re talking with the girl.
So how do you befriend the guys? To start with, you need to engage them. Too many guys will attempt to ignore a girl’s guy friends and focus all of their attention on her. Instead, you want to make sure that you treat the group as a unified whole; you need to spread your attention around, rather than spending all of your time trying to keep the girl’s interest. Don’t be afraid of physical interaction; if a guy says something funny, clap him on the shoulder or give him a fist-bump. Ask the guys for their opinions on subjects or bring up subjects that you know that they can relate to; remember that the three nigh-universal guy subjects are sports, girls and money. If you can hold forth on these subjects, you’ll have a leg up on making the men in her life your ally.
Hell, even if ultimately you don’t get with the girl, you may have made some cool friends, and you can always use more cool friends.
Distract The Orbiters
Orbiters are one of the most noxious forms of male obstacles that you can encounter when meeting girls. These are the dogged “nice” guys who firmly believe that if they just hang around long enough, the girl they like will finally realize how much she loves them and they’ll float off into a make-believe wonderland filled with flying cherubs and bunnies who fart candy cane clouds and piss rainbows. They instinctively see any other man as a threat and will actively work to sabotage them; after all, as long as she’s single, he has a chance. If the orbiter isn’t getting any, ain’t nobody gettin’ any.
Orbiters are tricky to deal with; they will actively resist being befriended. They’ll use social pressure against you to make you look like the asshole by being as passive-agressive as possible. Because orbiters frequently position themselves as the girl’s platonic friends, you can’t simply call them out, threaten them or insult them; all this will do is kill any social value you’ve built up and make you into the bad-guy for being a dick to her friends. As a platonic friend, they’re perfectly positioned to interfere with your attempts to get her alone or to hold a private conversation; they will have any number of ready-made reasons to intrude, and their previous relationship will make it difficult for you to extract them from the scene.
The best thing you can do here is to give the Orbiter someone else to focus on. It’s dead simple, really; you tell the Orbiter “Hey, I have someone you need to meet,” and introduce them to a new girl. It doesn’t matter if you actually know her or not; they will feel compelled to talk to them. In fact, I have actually pulled a Barney Stinson on Orbiters in bars before: walk the Orbiter up to a random girl, and say “Haaaaaave you met $NAME?” before walking off to keep talking with his previous obsession.
Orbiters are loathe to violate the social contract and will spend far more time talking with the new girl than they intended, just by virtue of the fact that they won’t be willing to cut off the conversation before reaching some natural end-point. If you’re especially lucky, they’ll transfer their crush to the new girl, leaving yours free and clear.
Defuse The Alphas
There is an immutable law that anyone talking to attractive girls will eventually have to deal with assholes. Call them AMOGs1, Bro’s, douchebags… they are the bullies of the dating world who march around as though they were the asshole in the Charles Atlas ads, kicking metaphorical sand in your face. These are the guys who will come up and try to steal your target away from you; they will try to clown you, intimidate you or otherwise just try to crowd you out.
Nerds will recognize this behavior instinctively; it’s as though the jocks who made your life hell in high-school have followed you out into your every day life just to continue the torture. Fortunately, there are ways of handling these tools, effectively disarming them.
Your best bet is to use social pressure against them; when they come up, interrupt them in the middle of their spiel and just say “Hey, don’t be rude. Introduce yourself.” Then smile, clap them on the shoulder and say “Cool man. Nice meeting you,” and turn your back to them and resume talking to your girl; trying to proceed at this point will make them look rude, which works in your favor. By cutting into their routine and forcing them to start addressing you, you’ve changed the frame of the interaction; he’s no longer talking to the girl, he’s talking to you. By breaking the rapport and cutting him out of the interaction, he’s forced to re-insert himself – a social violation.
Being unreactive is key here; the more that they get a reaction out of you, the worse you look. This works both ways, by the way. By flipping the script on them, you can make them react to you. If he tries to make fun of you, your best option is to agree and magnify; if he calls you gay, you’re not just gay, you’re super gay. “Oh, you got me, I’m totally into cock. Hey, you wanna make out in the corner?” If he makes fun of your clothes, you can play up how “cool” he is. “Oh dude, you’re right, you’ve got awesome style. You’ve gotta be my personal style guru, we’re gonna go shopping, you can find all the specials for me…”. You can even just call him out on what he’s doing. “Hey, it’s cool that you’ve worked up the courage to come over here and chat her up. Not a lot of guys will have the guts to do that. Congrats.” Then, again, dismiss him “Cool, man. Nice meeting you,” then turn your back on him.
If you can, ignore them. Not giving them attention establishes that once again, they’re causing the social violation, which works against them with the girl they’re trying to impress. Indifference is incredibly powerful; cool people don’t give a shit. If George Clooney were to wander into the group to pick up the girl you’re talking to, he wouldn’t give you a second’s notice.
Just keep in mind: some guys – especially if you’re at bars or clubs – will react with aggression. You can’t argue with a fist; your safety comes first, so be willing to walk away if need be.
Related Posts
- Alpha Male of the Group – a pick-up artist term I find fairly useful. [↩]
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