"Just go talk to her:" how to think about meeting women

Xbtusd returns, with the ways talking to strangers has improved his game, and life.

I’ve been privately sharing some FRs with RPD and RQ over the summer, and I’ve started to notice some things shifting; RPD, for example, reports that some of his clients don’t stick around long because a lot of them need an accountability buddy more than they need specific dating tactics and strategies. They start approaching women, and instantly their results with women get better. To that end, I have to give credit to RPD, because I’ve never met anyone who so consistently cold approaches. He gave me a lot of confidence that yes, I too could and should approach more girls. It’s been amazing to have someone who I can always come to with n00b questions and, more importantly, an accountability buddy who wants me to succeed. Who would have predicted that speaking to women would be a crucial part of having sex with them?

I’ve never called myself a PUA, nor do I have any desire to identify with that label, as I think there are a lot of toxic beliefs wrapped within. There’s an old saying, “holding a grudge is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to get sick.” Game, at its best, is a way to facilitate positive-sum connections and interactions—including sexual ones. At its worst, “game” is a way to treat people like objects, which is usually bad for the person being treated as an object but even worse for the person doing that. “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes”. If you play the game wrong for long enough (internalizing some of the most toxic views of the community), it will eventually kill your ability to enjoy the thing that brought you to it—having great experiences with beautiful women. 

While I’m not a PUA, I am a guy who wants to get better at everything I do: I am always in the process of becoming, of doing more, of trying new things, evaluating possibilities, discarding that which doesn’t work and incorporating that which does. Like a constitutional scholar, if we go back and study Strauss’ text, and treat it with the seriousness it deserves, we see that “game” is a process. It is the scientific method applied to male-female interaction. It is a way of thinking about reality which relentlessly questions cultural orthodoxies and attempts to strip things down to their most fundamental parts. And yet, “game” offers us no moral framework. It is a powerful set of tools that require you to bring meaning to them. At the end of “The Game”, most of the men who took part in “Project Hollywood” were left broken—victims of their own success. My “game” is attracting smart, fun, beautiful women into my life and having what RQ would call “peak experiences”. Doing it ethically, without losing my soul and love for those women is my north star.

I’ve had unusually good success through my social circle and OLD, so I’ve never been seriously interested in “cold approach,” which seemed like a hell of a lot of work for very little results with limited  ability to retain girls for any meaningful length of time. I’m much more interested in quality than quantity, and everything I do in life I want to do in an ethical manner, which means I don’t want to be someone creating negative experiences for women (however I define that). Daygame, or approaching women while they’re on the street on their way somewhere else, has always struck me as an imposition that I would not want done to me. You get approached all the time on the street where I live, and you instinctively develop all manner of ways to avoid stopping. The minute you stop, you know they have you, so we do an elaborate dance to avoid ever coming to a full stop while trying not to be too rude to whomever is trying to get your attention. Headphones are a must. A fast walking speed is key and looking at your phone is the ultimate escape. When I was a few years out of college I listened to a mediocre comedian’s album, and it had a track called “Just go talk to her”. It’s short but it perfectly captures how I used to feel about approaching women. Oh like it’s just that easy...just go talk to her? What the fuck would I say? Why the hell would she want to talk to me? You really think it’s that easy? Just go fucking talk to her?

And yet, this summer, I’ve realized it can be that easy. To be fair, I’m coming from a position of strength: I’m not some weirdo loner. I have an elite social circle I’ve spent the last 14 years building in a major city. I’m well dressed, tall, and good looking. RPD and I have been brainstorming all the places where it is definitely not an imposition to chat up a woman. I committed to initiating a conversation every time I saw a woman alone in a context where she was otherwise just waiting. For example, if I’m standing in line to go to the bathroom at a bar, or get a drink. I’ve also been working on escalating much more aggressively, which has also paid dividends. Most girls are latently bored and lonely: they want to be talked to, if the right guy comes along. How do I know which ones want to be talked to? I have to find out. Women are socially passive. For anything to happen, a man must make it happen. 

Two big hurdles I’ve had when approaching have been the cold start problem, and the larger fear of what happens if she actually responds positively—and I have to say a second thing! Coming up with the first thing I’ve actually found quite easy. Given that my rule is to approach anytime I’m waiting with someone somewhere, I just use the environment. I’ve also read a thousand times that you should make statements rather than ask questions, yet it’s never sunk in until this summer. Making statements coupled with the insight of making assumptions, and sometimes intentionally assuming incorrectly has proved to be conversational gold.

So, for example, recently I was riding my bike to pick up food before heading to a friend’s house. I saw a bar having an unusually large street drinking scene—so I stopped next to two beautiful women and, rather than saying “what’s happening?”, I said something like, “street party at 6pm!?” and they responded with “It’s Oktoberfest”. I realized we were at one of the largest German Bier Halls in my city and then launched into some BS about how much I love Oktoberfest. It lasted maybe 10 seconds at best because I had to keep riding, but they were clearly hoping I’d stay and continue the conversation. A small fun interaction that made both of our days better and clued me in that I was missing a great party. I ended up quickly grabbing some food and dragging my gf back to the bar, selling her on Oktoberfest but really hoping to find those two girls (sadly, they’d exited). 

While I was in line to get food, there was a cute girl behind me doing what girls do, Instagram, and I said, “Looks like lots of good stuff on the internet today”. My intent was to playfully point out that women are morons who are addicted to Instagram and she caught my subtle neg and put her phone away, embarrassed by being spotted mindlessly scrolling. This conversation was a bit more difficult as she was pretty introverted. I told her I’d just found out it was Oktoberfest, and we chatted about that and how she loves Oktoberfest. At one point I even joked about bothering her by talking her ear off and she responded that she was happy I had opened her because she’s addicted to her phone and was having fun talking to me. Girls want to live better lives but often don’t know how, or lack the will to implement better lives. I invited her to join me and my gf to head over to Oktoberfest but she said she was going back to her apartment to sit alone and recharge (introverts!). 

Sometimes I’ll  assume/guess where the person is from. If the girl is high fashion…”I like your vibe I’m getting a strong Cleveland ‘good midwestern’ girl thing from you.” If the girl is a Cali surfer girl, “you have a nice Miami Beach vibe”. When I say these statements I smile and laugh because I’m showing that I’m actually saying the opposite and demonstrating that I CAN tell where they're from, but I’m teasing them that their dress and presentation is actually the opposite of what they want, and they’re showing up like the girls they hate. This works well in my city because we have women from all over the country/world, and it’s pretty easy, if you’re socially well calibrated, to peg what women are going for and then guess the opposite. Additionally it introduces a topic I’m fluent in and like talking about, how humans signal through clothing aka fashion (cue gay jokes). It starts the interaction off on a fun playful tone and disqualifies them because you’re telling them that what you like is the opposite of how they’re presenting.

Now they have to both correct you and somehow convince you that because they’re the opposite of what you like, you should still like them. This is easy for her given that you both are in on the shared joke. Sometimes they will even run with the bit and pretend they are from X place, and you both can laugh about it and continue making up more shit to build out that joke. Often I will eventually reveal that I knew where they were from all along and then start a new thread making another incorrect assumption repeating the same pattern, or just asking an actual question now that I’ve built up enough social cred that they now want to share more about their life/world that I’m confident I’m not going to get one word answers. Historically, my biggest difficulty was trying to get girls into conversation and slipping into interview-style rapport, peppering them with questions and having them not give me enough to fork into a more equal back and forth conversation. Shifting to statements from questions changes this dynamic, and leveraging the environment and her particular style/presentation means there’s no end to the things you can point out, meaning the fear of not being able to continue the conversation and having the conversation awkwardly stall is zero.

In addition to this mindset shift, I’ve begun to leverage all the social capital I’ve built. The best sex party group I’m a part of has been having a mixer (no sex at the venue) once a month since the beginning of the summer. I’ve volunteered to “work” at the events, which allows me to solidify my position within the network, get to know the organizers better, provide value, meet other core members, and generate status with all who attend the events, because I’m running things rather than on the other side of the bar like a mere commoner. Once my shift ends, I walk out from behind the bar where all the women saw me in a high-status position, and running game becomes as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. “Just go talk to her” has become my mantra. I’ve opened more girls in the last few months than maybe my entire life combined. At a recent event I was able to escalate from meeting a hot girl to confirming a threesome for the following weekend within 20 minutes. It was a feat I would not have believed possible if it had not happened to me. The point of the story though is that for many years I was already there but I was still constrained by my own limiting beliefs. This clip perfectly captures how I felt:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feeIOZH7wr4

Mentally committing to approach anytime I’m not in violation of any kind of morality or sense of ethics has unlocked a world of possibilities. Creating rules for when I will and when I won’t approach has eliminated the ethical excuses I used to pretend were the reasons I wouldn’t approach women. It has always been because I’m too much of a pussy, but it’s hard to disambiguate when the reasons have a basis in reality. Whatever your sense of ethics around approaching women, it’s useful to create a set of conditions where you WILL take the step and hold yourself to doing it every single time.

Also, baby steps are important. The first time I did it all I held myself to was saying ANYTHING, because something is better than nothing. And I allowed myself to eject at any time, just making contact broke the invisible barriers down because you see you're not bothering them, and they respond positively. In “The Power of Habit” Charles Duhigg suggests changing your identity to I am the type of person who does X. If you want to start working out, always put on your gym clothes and go to the gym even if you don’t workout. Now you are the type of person who GOES to the gym. Once you’re at the gym, working out is a no brainer.

Lastly, I’ve been re-reading the masters. RQ and I have lamented about how and why no one cares about getting laid, but there was a time when people did. Humans have a recency bias, but the men who created “Project Hollywood” unearthed and shared timeless wisdom that has faded from memory in recent years. In particular, I’m a huge fan of Juggler's work and have been diving back in with my renewed context. More on that next time.