Sometimes it just doesn’t work out how you wanted it to.
Sometimes you feel confident, cocky even. And you see a girl that you like. And you decide to approach her.
Well, you are a daygame survivor, after all. You’ve read the books. You’ve watched the YouTube videos. You’ve attended the seminars.
You are fully and entirely versed in every aspect of the ‘game’ game. It’s safe to say that you are an old pro and you know what you are doing.
The girl herself, well, she’s the usual type. Long-legged, in a tight, red PVC miniskirt and one of those sixties, Bardot-style caps. A style queen. A Joe & The Juice sensation, sipping on Sex Me Up, reading a script, learning her lines.
Outside, Soho crawls by. The shoppers on their way to Carnaby Street. The relentless search. Everyone looking for something.
Mystery
So much mystery in the lives of other people. We all live together in this vast city, and yet for the most part we know nothing about one another, other than what we create in our imaginations.
As such, the assumptions we make about this girl or that girl we might want to approach are invariably coloured by our own desires and prejudices.
On the one hand, well yeah. Duh! That’s just the way it is.
On the other hand, there’s nothing like talking to 100x more people in a city than the regular person to see how atomised we all really are.
Model-Actress
This girl, this model-actress girl, gets up from the table and makes ready to leave the cafe. You make the mental calculation. Far better to speak to her in the street. In this enclosed space it will be embarrassing both for you and for her.
And so you wait while she gathers up her things, packs the script carefully into her handbag, and walks to the exit.
You get up and follow. You feel light as air. You’ve done this before how many thousands of times?
And sometimes, you even get that extra-special sense that fortune is on your side. A kind of mental assurance from the Venusian overlords that this is going to go really well.
You get that now.
Approach Anxiety
In late-stage daygame (when you’ve been doing this for over a decade or more), approach anxiety does not really exist in quite the same way as it did at the beginning.
The reality of your long experience has demonstrated to you incontrovertibly that nothing terrible will happen as a result of your approach.
Yes, it might be mildly embarrassing. Yes, it might be disappointing if you don’t get the number. But it’s not as though the sky will fall in.
It’s not as though your worth as a human being will be diminished.
In a way, this is a bad thing. You see, when the stakes are very high but we act anyway, we tend to put in our best performance, no matter what the endeavour.
When the stakes are diminished—by ennui, by a sense of confidence that has grown and strengthened over the years, by the simple fact of repetition—then maybe you don’t shine quite as much as you did in those early days when to walk up to a strange girl, open your mouth and speak to her was something akin to a religious experience
Maybe because it just means less—because you’ve done it before, because you are older, because the outcome is less important to you than it once was—you are less present, less vital.
And the girl picks up on it.
Be Bold
When you get outside, you see that she has advanced quite a bit down the street towards the fizzy Christmas neons of Carnaby. So you break out into a brief jog so that you pass her, then you turn to face her.
Actually, that’s not entirely true. Actually you half-ass it. This was not an heroic front-stop. This was a decidedly unheroic side-stop. A kind of hedge-your-bets stop. Not emphatic enough to create any useful response, but just enough to get her to pause and look at you.
‘I just noticed you walk by,’ you say. ‘And you’re kinda cute. But there’s also something very suspicious about you.’
She smiles at the compliment, but already she is keen to move on.
A so-so approach leads to a so-so response.
You push on with your next line. You compare her to a spy, something like that.
She smiles—politely.
Politeness is the worst thing. Shock, anger, laughter—any of these are preferable.
Already you know that the game is up.
Nice Rejection
A way that girls will reject you nicely is this: they will thank you sincerely for paying them the compliment of stopping them and saying something pleasant, while at the same time moving out of your vicinity to indicate that the conversation is over.
They will effectively seize the frame, reimagining the scenario as one where you’ve just sauntered up to compliment her and didn’t want anything else. Of course, in reality they are likely aware that you had something more in mind, but they will never show it. Because you have not impressed them sufficiently with your approach, your vibe, your look, to make it attractive for them to do so.
And because you can see the direction of travel, and because you have no desire to prolong the experience, you acquiesce. You smile politely and you leave.
You ‘let her win’.
Put Yourself On The Line
This is not how it should look, but it is how it sometimes will look if you are not intentional enough when you approach.
Yes, even when you are intentional there’s no guarantee you will be successful.
But it will certainly increase your chances.
And look at is this way. If you’re going to take the trouble to approach anyway, then you might as well go all-in.
You might as well really put yourself on the line, risking maximum embarrassment.
Well, why not? A blow-out is a blow-out either way. But a strong approach and a strong frame will have a better chance of success, all things being equal.
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To read more about the modern playboy’s dilemma go here.
