Pushing Myself

It came to my attention recently that I haven't been pushing myself. An alternate theory (to those posited earlier) is that my slump can be attributed to one huge chode-out. This actually came from a conversation that I had with a guy who I really respect. He started as a social circle natural, and built himself into a force to be reckoned with (through years of hard work). When I look back at the times when I was making a lot of progress, I was pushing myself super-hard. As soon as I decided that I was going to "have fun," I stopped progressing. Sure its fun to go out with your buddies, drink, and open a few sets, but you don't make as much progress as when you really push. So I'm adopting a new game plan:

1) Keep paper notebook of progress
2) At least one night solo game every week
3) Set goals every night (the default is 10 sets)
4) One FR per week on Boston Lair

Let's go!

State-Independent Game

A major focus recently has been state-independent game. Lately I've been feeling less than optimal, due to a combination of:

- hating my internship
- lack of recent success with women
- crappy weather
- general malaise with my direction in live

This has caused my game to slump into a tailspin, and it has been hard to recover. I did a 1-on-1 with Doc Holliday about a week ago, and his most important feedback is that my game is too state-dependent. When I'm having a bad night (usually determined by my mood when I go out), my game sags into an unrecognizable mess.

His solution was to open with something a bit higher energy, and then to transition into a story. I resolved to do this - I started out by using one of his suggested openers. I then came up with a story, and resolved to transition into this story directly off the opener. To my surprise, it worked pretty well. Sets started hooking, even when I wasn't super high-energy and in-state. The problem is middle-game. I run these sets for a while, and they go ok, but I'm still not getting the level of interaction that I would randomly get before with state-based game. I think that its going to take a lot of work to make my game consistent to the point where I can run good game in any situation.

Here are some perceived sticking points:

Groups
I'm not yet good at running groups (still). A lot of times, I start out with a group, but then get left alone with one of the girls. The problem is that the pull-away inevitably comes a few minutes later. Even if the girl is enjoying the interaction, she is going to go with her friends (and girls pull their friends away with the most fucking retarded excuses). The only way to get around this is to ENGAGE THE GROUP. You have to befriend the entire group to get them to like you. At that point, you can switch to one girl, and they will leave you alone.

Another strategy that I could try is that, when the friends go away, I ask the girl where the friends went. We then find and reengage them.

I think that I should be able to get to the point where I always get blown out by the girl, and never by her friends.

Banter
I've been trying to tease, but haven't quite gotten there. My current method is to cold read things about the girl that are contrary to the topic of the conversation. This works sporadically (sometimes it gets a laugh, and sometimes it pushes the conversation forwards), but a lot of the time it is miscalibrated. Learning proper teasing is important. Champagne has some posts on this - I need to read these and try some of his techniques.

Building Attraction
Still not happening. I'm using a lot more kino, and girls usually aren't resistant to it, but it isn't necessarily building attraction. I think that I need to verbally escalate. On Friday, I unintentionally verbally escalated on a girl, and it definitely built attraction. She had a boyfriend, who we bumped into later, but she was definitely into me.

State Control

God, everything that I touch turns to shit these days. I think that I've been on a gradual downslide for the past few weeks - probably evident by a number of different things that have gone wrong. I've gained a few pounds, my success with women has been going downhill (I've screwed up 3 Day2s in the past 2 weeks), and I'm not really happy at work.

I think that it kind of culminated last night, when I did a 1-on-1 with Doc Holliday. As the night went on, I first started to get in state, and then for some reason my state crashed. Probably a combination of tiredness, the fact that none of my sets had been going exceptionally well. I was too low energy for the venue, and try as I might, I couldn't pump the level up. At the end of the night, I could barely open sets (it wasn't so much AA as shitty state that caused me to blow out everything that I opened).

I wouldn't say that it wasn't really a good night from an improvement perspective, but Doc Holliday had some interesting insights about my sticking points. The first is that I need more hardcore material to plow with. This has been something that I've realized for a while, but I don't really know how to fix it. I've been doing natural game for about seven months, and it just isn't getting me the results that I want. When I'm having a good night, I can just shoot the shit with girls, and they are into me, but when I'm having a crappy night, I need a bit more ammunition. Because my state seems to come from running good sets (especially at the beginning of the night), I need to make sure that my first couple of sets go better. I've actually noticed that my first set typically opens fine, but a few minutes in I run out of things to say.

I think that the second insight comes down to state control. I am shitty at controlling my state. When I'm having a crap night, I might as well just go home and catch up on sleep. Once I decide mentally that the night is going to be bad, I can open a shitload of sets, and I'll just blow them out or my mind will blank and I'll eject. Smallville referred to this as "quasi-quitting." Doc Holliday never seems to quasi-quit. He pulled a girl who he opened at about 1:30 AM. I was ready to go home (and did about 15 minutes later), but he still had the closer mentality. There is a lot to be learned from that.

This can be mitigated somewhat by having great wings who detect my state and help to push it up, but it is dependent on great wings (which I often have, but not always). Last night's shitty state seemed to carry over into today. When I woke up, I was still in a bad mood. I went to a lunch, and had a lot of trouble talking to people. I felt like I had regressed to square one.

I know that this crappy mood will end. I think that having one good thing happen to me could snap me out of it. I just need to figure out how to better control my state, so that one thing happens sooner. Sometimes I think that I'm afraid to change, afraid to get better. There is some solace in going out night after night, talking to girls, and coming home alone. It might not be the desired outcome, but it seems to be pretty comfortable at this point.

Add one more

So, last night was yet another date that didn't quite work out. I met this girl a while back. I was actually at a friend's birthday dinner, and when we were waiting for a table, he bumped into a girl he had met once, who was also waiting for a table. She and I started talking, and we hit it off pretty well. We agreed to meet up some other time, but it was difficult to connect for about the last month. I pretty much wrote it off, when all of a sudden she texts me. We go back and forth for a while, and finally agreed to meet up this week.

I meet her for a drink and it seems on. I'm getting good eye contact off the bat, and kinoing plenty. Conversation was great - this girl is really cool (and pretty good looking too). We have some food, and then get free ice cream at JP Licks. Then we walk back to her front door to finish the ice cream. We stand around on her doorstop for a while, talking and eating ice cream. I should have manned up and gone in for the kiss, but for some reason I didn't. I think there is a decent chance that I get another shot, but I really need to push the interaction further. She didn't invite me in, but I got the sense that she wanted more.

For some reason, I have been afraid to kiss girls during dates recently. I need to get over it. The worst thing that could happen is that I get rejected. Most girls are ok with hanging out with guys who like them, so it probably won't even ruin the interaction.

A Tale of Two Blown Dates

So I've had a lot of blown dates recently (meaning that I didn't get laid, and didn't end up with another date). In the past week, I've had two. Here is a brief recap of the two.

First Date
I met this girl at an event thrown by some people that I sort of know. She was an acquaintance of an acquaintance. She came in late, and we started talking. It was going pretty well - she was teasing me a lot. Then the guy who invited her to the party pulled her away so that he could introduce her to his loser friend. I went and talked to some people I knew, and then reopened. She wasn't all that interested in talking to him, but the guy who had invited her saw that I had taken over the set, and came in to blow me out. Considering that he will have other parties, I tried not to make a big deal out of it. I wrote it off and left with some friends.

However, she added me on Facebook a day or two later. I did a pretty good job at teasing her via FB messaging, such that she was pretty much begging me to go out with her (texted me unsolicited several times). We agreed to meet up on a Saturday afternoon to see a movie (at a local independent theater). Normally I wouldn't take a D2 to a movie, but I wanted to see this film, and it seemed appropriate.

We met up a couple of hours before the movie, and went for some lunch. That seemed to go ok. I found out that she was really conservative (I'm fairly liberal). This didn't bother me - it may have even increased the interest level. Kinoed a bunch, and we had a good conversation. Can't remember what we talked about - it didn't matter.

Then we went to the movie. Obviously, we didn't talk during the movie (well we did, but got shushed by someone sitting next to us). I took her hand, and held it for a good part of the movie. The movie was great - I was glad that I went, irrespective of the date.

Then, she said "what's next?" I decided to walk her back to my neighborhood. I tried to hold her hand, but she rejected it. She was obviously interested on some level by virtue of spending so much time with me (4+ hours at this point), but I interpreted this as an IOD. She could be somewhat prude. Intuitively, I should have walked her by my house, and tried to get her in, but I took her a different way.

We went to a local restaurant for dinner, and had a pretty good time. We did talk a lot about religion (she is Christian, I'm Jewish), which wasn't necessarily a plus, and more about politics (not an argument, but we clearly didn't see eye-to-eye). We hung out for several hours, and then she went home. I didn't go for the kiss, which was probably a mistake.

Didn't followup to try to get another date.

Second Date
Met this girl online. At the surface, it looked like we had a lot in common. We messaged back and forth for quite a while (about two weeks), and then set up a date. My typical system is to try to get three or four messages back from the girl, and then seed a date idea into the conversation. Even if she can't do the original thing, she will usually say that she is interested in a date (in which case I pick something convenient to my house).

We met at a coffee shop. I probably screwed up here - we met for breakfast (my suggestion). We met at 10, and she had plans at around 12. I need to make sure to get an uninterrupted block of time (this has happened multiple times on dates).
We started talking, and we got breakfast. I noticed some awkward pauses early on - I worked hard to keep the conversation going, but when I come to think of it, she wasn't giving me all that much. She wasn't unresponsive - just not super-conversational. I think she is quiet, and not very social. Maybe I didn't hit any of her hot buttons (although we did talk about animals, which is one of her loves). Kept up the light kino - we were sitting at a table, but I picked a table where I could slide my chair around to get close to her. Didn't work perfectly, but better than the alternative.

It was raining pretty hard, so we couldn't really bounce elsewhere. I could have suggested the bounce back to my place, but it didn't seem appropriate. After about 1.5 hours, breakfast was played out. She decided to go home. Got a limp hug goodbye.

I think that I'm going to email her again with a neutral email. I'll see whether she responds.

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Here is an analysis of my sticking points:

1) Groundhog Day
I don't have a good groundhog day setup (credit Doc Holliday). The second date got closer, but wasn't ideal. I need a meeting place (a local cafe), a bounce location (a bar or dessert place), and some good reasons to bounce back to my place. I'm going to get a hookah, a Playstation 2 with SingStar, and some alcohol. I think that I'm uncomfortable with escalating the interaction because I feel nervous about bouncing the girl back to my place.

2) Aggressively Escalate
I don't escalate enough. I do kino on D2s, but probably don't ramp quickly enough. I usually don't go for the kiss until the end of the date. This probably has to do with anxiety. It also probably has to do with the setup not being conducive to escalation. I'm thinking that I should get to the point where I try and kiss her during the first bounce.

I also need to become tougher in the face of IODs. I have noticed that I tend to stop kino whenever I get an IOD (both in-set and on dates). This is wrong, and usually kills the interaction. What I want to do is to back off a bit and then start escalating again.

Finally, I need to get more comfortable with pulling the trigger. I have had girls in my room a number of times in the past several months, and have never successfully closed (the only closes were in the girl's room).

3) If it doesn't close on the First Date, try for a Second
Going on too many dates with the same girl (who you haven't closed) isn't a good idea. You get into the dating frame. However, it is fine to go out on two (or maybe even three) dates with a girl. A lot of times, I have a fairly good first date, but get down on myself because I didn't close. Then I don't try for another date. Or, worse yet, I get the second date but chode out on the escalation.

My Pussy Hurts

I recently had a realization, which is that I'm being a wimp. Sure, my game isn't developing as quickly as I would like, but that is no excuse for not pushing myself to the max. I'm not going to get any better by being a chode, and wallowing in my own self misery doesn't solve any problems. 

A lot of guys go out for a while, make progress but not enough, and they try to "find themselves." The problem is that they don't keep pushing themselves in set. They do better with the sets that they find themselves in, but they stop actively approaching at a high intensity. Before you know it, they have an UG girlfriend and are settling down with her. If you haven't figured it out yet, that describes me to a T. I've opened every time that I've gone out, but myabe 2 or 3 sets, and I haven't been pushing to the max. Last Thursday, I had a golden pull opportunity that was mine for the taking. I fucked it up.

Last night, I went out with a bunch of guys from the community. I didn't open at all at the first venue (to be fair, there were only two sets, and they were opened many times by everyone else). At the second venue, I put straws in my ears, and then went and opened a set. It didn't really go anywhere. Then I saw a two-set that I wanted to open. I said something to Doc Holliday, and he said something along the lines of "what are you waiting for?" I opened, and it didn't go all that well. He said that my body language got pretty bad as soon as I went into set, and I didn't kino enough. He was completely right - when I'm not in state, I sometimes have shitty BL and don't kino (or not enough). Fortunately, these things are easy to fix.

So, I have acknowledged that my pussy hurts. I'm going back to actively approaching. It's funny, because a wing recently asked me for feedback. My primary feedback was that he almost never actively approaches. Considering that we go out a lot, its probably something that we could work on together. I also want to start working on solo game again (it has been a while since I went out by myself).