FR First match i was genuinely excited about. Bombed. Ended up stirring up old heartbreak

[Funkus Maximus]

Hi Folks.

This is the a FR post that's part of my "8 week recap" in my newbie journal. I am going thru the dates from online dating of the past 8 weeks to document them, see what I can learn from them, and move on so that I can gain skills in what I aim to be doing more of: day & night game.

People
Me: 5'10" European guy, long brown hair, attractive in the face, skinny, dressed in jeans, and black shirt, navy blue cotton jacket w/hood, plus faux leather jacket over the top, black sneakers, one earring
Her: 5 foot 7. French white woman. Light brown/half-blonde hair. blue eyes, high cheek bones, slim body. Can't remember much of her clothes, probably black jeans and some warm clothes as it was cold.

Context
We matched online. Her online profile said shes looking for "short term fun", and on paper we have a ton in common. Took a about 2 weeks to find a time where she was free. I travel to a city 1 hour away to meet her as she doesn't live in my city. We met at a bar she likes. The logistics were therefore in her hands.. which obviously isn't a great setup. We meet at 8pm on a Friday night.

My Mindset
Guys, this was one of the most promising dates I've had in 9 months! Some of the most hyped since I've been single again.. I'm genuinely attracted to her (for a change), we have a lot in common, and she's open about wanting something light and fun. I really want this to work out ahead of even meeting her.

I had just spent a bunch of time reading GC articles about building tension. So my mind was full of things like "hold the gaze", "leave pauses", "escalation ladder" etc... I really wanted to keep that in mind.

This felt more high stakes for me, and I really wanted something to happen... but at the same time... the logistics were not good because I was in a new city and she was therefore leading the venue changes.

Venues
First spot: Bar with lots of outdoor seating.
Second: corner shop
Third: Cocktail bar with no seating
Fourth: Café/bar

The Date
Friday night. Pouring with rain and cold.
We meet at a bar, it's packed indoors, there's a small table outside. She's already sat down. She gets up, we hug - and I hold onto one of her hands after (finally remembered to pull this little move off). She immediately offers to go in and get us some beers. She asks what I like.. i say "I trust you!".. she insists on more information, she then goes in and gets us drinks.

We are sat opposite each other. We get talking. My headspace is quite full of thoughts about "eye contact", "talk more slowly", "make pauses", "remember kino"...
She is really interested in my career moves and choices, and is asking a lot of questions. This makes me overthink my replies a little, but I try and move attention back to her. I get her to share more by asking "what do you do to relax? to unwind?" .. this opened a nice flow on convo from her.

I eventually start the kino by touching her hand when she shared a surprising summer job she did. I touch her hand, I let it linger..and she grabs my finger. I then pull my hand away.. I remember thinking "should I be leaving my hand on hers right away? Is this an invitation to touch more boldly?".

The whole time I didn't get many obvious reactions from my kino. I grabbed both her shoulders from behind her, as I came back from the WC (when she was looking at her phone). I kept using incidental touch to her hand.

First move
1.5/2 hours have gone by. It was getting very chilly. I offer to move inside. Some people come ahead of me and take the last spaces available..
We look around a few times - we see there's a band playing in the basement soon. She asks if we should see the gig. I kind of asks if she really wants to see a band right now... and she says no. Yeah, we are here to connect so let's find somewhere cosy.

We leave the bar. She's hungry. So we go to a corner shop and she gets a sandwich. She eats some of the sandwich while we walk to a bar she knows.
At this point I'm really trying to think of how I should flirt with her.. I am really in my head about all of this.. but the conversation seems to be flowing fine. I touch her shoulder/arm here and there.
She shared that she's been going thru of a personal crisis, like a quarter life crisis. I didn't pry into it as I didn't want to open a negative topic.. this was the second time she mentions it.. says she's been writing poetry as a way of working through it. I end up making a joke about poetry, but didn't dive more about it.

Searching for a new spot
No room in the spot, just one seat at the bar. We bounce.
We find another spot. Cute place lots of fun decor. We see there's space at the bar. We are in a bar-stool situation, she's got her sandwich, and we are ordering drinks.

Final spot
I'm sitting next to her, our legs are touching. We get into a discussion about psychedelic drugs because it was related to my old job. She shares stories about her experiences, it was an interesting conversation. I was rubbing her arm a few times during the convo. I remember SAC suddenly.. "what about compliance?" so I ask to see her necklace, and she gives me a little story about it. By the end of the interaction I was rubbing my thumb/few fingers on the leg while we spoke. She never really touched me back at any stage... This made me want to pull the move - Grab her hand and place it on me.. on my hand..on my leg...somewhere! But in my mind I was worried it was getting to be too little.. too late?

Of course.. I was thinking about SAC... but what about the DAMN DEEP DIVE? Looking back, I was not doing the best job at connecting that deeply with her.. what are her values? What is her life mission? This crisis of hers.. what's going on?

I was feeling like I wasn't doing a good job of this date. Sure, I was touching her, having some good conversation, but I don't think this was heading to a "want to come over to my place?"... so I suddenly thought "oh I need to set a more sexual frame".. So I brought up the fact she mentioned "ethical non-monogamy" on her online profile. She doesn't seem that interested in talking about it, just that she's not looking for anything too serious. We keep talking about something or other. Hand still caressing her leg.

It's around midnight.

She finishes her drink. She looks at her watch. She says "It's late, and I'm getting tired. I should get going"... I was pretty exhausted at this point after a long week.. "yeah, I'm tired too.".. "want me to accompany you to your bus stop?"..."sure!". She tells me she's going to a big wine festival the next day and is planning on staying up all night partying. OK this girl is up for a good time tomorrow!

The music in the bar suddenly changes to a romantic slow song. A guy suddenly pops out from the nearby hallway. He has a lemon slice in his mouth. He exclaims: "Hey guys! The song! Do a slow dance together!" The guy is pretty drunk, and she is visibly making a face at him and not finding it funny.

We head out for her last cigarette. We both laugh at the situation with the lemon guy. We then head out, she takes me to the bus stop, and right away my bus arrives. I give her a quick hug goodbye and jump on.

The aftermath
As soon as I have her that hug.. I felt it in my body.. I fucked it up. I knew in my bones she was going to ghost me. I'd failed to make things happen, to get a spark going within her. The feeling of humiliation and unworthiness washed over me and I sank into my seat... I went into analysis mode... thinking what I did wrong, what was wrong with me, what should I have done....It sucked. I got home around 2 am, texted her to let her know I got back safe.. and that if she's down we could have date two in my city and show her around....

My intuition proved correct: no reply since then. I don't even know if I should try to re-engage her via text.. or just accept the ghosting (which i find really damn rude).

I didn't even offer to accompany her home or make some excuse to go back to hers. I don't think I did a proper Deep Dive. I think my flirting attemps kinda sucked. The date was not in my first language.. but that's not an excuse.. I felt like the high stakes feeling in my mind made me fumble and overthink the entire thing, and forgot to actually fully connect with this woman. I also think my escalation and sexual framing was poor.

I don't know if she was ever that attracted to me, or if she was...what I did wrong exactly to let things fizzle out.

Triggering old hurts
I've been meditating and pondering this date ever since. I see that going on a date with a women I truly desire sends me straight back to my old pattern.

Pattern i've done twice in my life: Meet girl I'm genuinely excited about -> get into bed with her -> Get super excited and emotionally attached -> she jumps ship fast -> heartbreak.

I thought I had gotten over those heartbreaks a long time ago.. but i've also never been with a woman I was genuinely excited about ever since. I think this was a coping mechanism to protect myself from further harm. This date tripped a switch! It revealed the healing I need to do, I need to heal that old heartbreak so that I can move on with my life.. I am talking about feeling of deep worthlessness, humiliation, rejection, sadness... from a 4 hours date with a girl i just met - clearly this was about something DEEPER.

Pathway to healing
I have been working on healing this heartbreak on and off over the past year, but the past couple of days I've spent time in meditation and some therapy sessions to drill in deep. I've doing EFT therapy as well to really deep dive my own hurt and release the pain trapped in my body. It's really doing wonders already, and I'm going to keep this up until it's healed. I feel much lighter than I did on Friday. That's progress !

How can you go out into the dating world, with a deep pit of sadness, worthlessness, etc.. and expect things to go all fine and dandy when the chance to be with a beautiful woman that matches my values comes up? The inner state, the inner game.. that feels crucial.

If you read the report, you can see how I was running around in my head trying to keep techniques and XYZ in mind while I was with her. This felt like the thoughts and mindset of someone that did not feel worthy of her. I'll never know if I could have pulled her - had I done X or Y.... but I can see plain as day that the rejection blasted my heart right open and the hurts from 10 years ago were fresh again. THAT IS NOT something I can continue walking around with.

Time to heal. Time to reboot. Time to walk with an open heart. I would like to be someone radiating a light airy joyfulness that isn't attached to the outcome. Let's see where this goal takes me.

Next steps
Don't stop putting myself out there of course! I'm not going to "wait until i'm healed"! I just know to do both

 

[Will_V]

Hey @Funkus Maximus, well done on getting out there and building up your experience. I know you're feeling crappy about this but I'm going to be straightforward.

The diagnosis for this one is very simple. You met a girl online looking for 'short term fun'. And then:

4 hours date
+ Very little escalation
+ No pull
= no short term fun

Seems like you were way up in your head on the date. You need to have a rough plan of the sequence that will end up with her in your bed, so that you can progress forward and not end up in a situation where you are waiting for something that never arrives.

My basic formula is:

1. Meet
2. Deep dive (who is she? - deeper interests, times when she's gotten outside her comfort zone, character-defining stories, etc)
3. Build sexual tension (innuendo, escalating touch, eye contact, talk about good sex/bad sex, etc)
4. Pull (any excuse will do - drinks, watch movie, I want to show you X, etc)

Thing is, when you have a plan, it doesn't matter whether you just want to get laid or you are in love with her, you won't end up stalling and going nowhere. You can express whatever you want while still moving things along.

Context
We matched online. Her online profile said shes looking for "short term fun", and on paper we have a ton in common.

So you know she wants short term fun, that means you need to have a bed and some idea of how to get her there. That's the most important part of the equation.

Took a about 2 weeks to find a time where she was free. I travel to a city 1 hour away to meet her as she doesn't live in my city. We met at a bar she likes. The logistics were therefore in her hands.. which obviously isn't a great setup. We meet at 8pm on a Friday night.

What was your plan of how you were going to pull? Her place or yours? Was your pad ready? What would be the plausable deniability? Condoms ready? Uber or bus?

Sounds like you just went out thinking 'logistics not great' and left it at that.

I had just spent a bunch of time reading GC articles about building tension. So my mind was full of things like "hold the gaze", "leave pauses", "escalation ladder" etc... I really wanted to keep that in mind.

Reading articles before a date is a horrible idea imo. When it's time to perform you need a clear head and instincts at the ready. At most have one thing that you have determined to work on specifically, otherwise you'll end up with your head spinning and not making the moves you need to.

This felt more high stakes for me, and I really wanted something to happen... but at the same time... the logistics were not good because I was in a new city and she was therefore leading the venue changes.

At least read up on a few cool venues before going. You can let her lead a bit but always have at least a few suggestions. That way you can get her opinion on XYZ and the alternatives, 'consider' them and make decisions, and stay in the frame of leading with her being your advisor.

The Date
Friday night. Pouring with rain and cold.
We meet at a bar, it's packed indoors, there's a small table outside. She's already sat down. She gets up, we hug - and I hold onto one of her hands after (finally remembered to pull this little move off). She immediately offers to go in and get us some beers. She asks what I like.. i say "I trust you!".. she insists on more information, she then goes in and gets us drinks.

At this early stage you shouldn't leave drinks choice up to her. She has no idea what you like and it comes off as not having a clear idea of your own preferences, and fails to take an opportunity to start building her compliance.

We are sat opposite each other. We get talking. My headspace is quite full of thoughts about "eye contact", "talk more slowly", "make pauses", "remember kino"...
She is really interested in my career moves and choices, and is asking a lot of questions. This makes me overthink my replies a little, but I try and move attention back to her. I get her to share more by asking "what do you do to relax? to unwind?" .. this opened a nice flow on convo from her.

That was a good move at the end, but it's clear from the get go you are in encyclopedia mode and not 'I want to fuck this woman' mode which ultimately messed things up.

I eventually start the kino by touching her hand when she shared a surprising summer job she did. I touch her hand, I let it linger..and she grabs my finger. I then pull my hand away.. I remember thinking "should I be leaving my hand on hers right away? Is this an invitation to touch more boldly?".

She grabbed your finger, why pull away? This is an invitation to escalate - move closer and get more physical, say 'I like the way you grabbed that' with a cheeky smile, etc

The whole time I didn't get many obvious reactions from my kino. I grabbed both her shoulders from behind her, as I came back from the WC (when she was looking at her phone). I kept using incidental touch to her hand.

Were you just doing the same stuff over and over? Needs to escalate.

First move
1.5/2 hours have gone by. It was getting very chilly. I offer to move inside. Some people come ahead of me and take the last spaces available..
We look around a few times - we see there's a band playing in the basement soon. She asks if we should see the gig. I kind of asks if she really wants to see a band right now... and she says no. Yeah, we are here to connect so let's find somewhere cosy.

We leave the bar. She's hungry. So we go to a corner shop and she gets a sandwich. She eats some of the sandwich while we walk to a bar she knows.
At this point I'm really trying to think of how I should flirt with her.. I am really in my head about all of this..

Dude, anything will do! Don't overthink it. Just act like she's already your girlfriend - would you be wondering 'how to flirt' no you'd just do it because she's yours. Even complimenting her butt would have been better than nothing at this point.

but the conversation seems to be flowing fine. I touch her shoulder/arm here and there.
She shared that she's been going thru of a personal crisis, like a quarter life crisis. I didn't pry into it as I didn't want to open a negative topic.. this was the second time she mentions it.. says she's been writing poetry as a way of working through it. I end up making a joke about poetry, but didn't dive more about it.

Failed opportunity. It's not a bad idea to talk about personal crisis as long as you segue into something constructive. Because her emotions are tied to it, and releasing those emotions feels wonderful for her.

Poetry is the first really defining thing about the way she likes to express herself that you discovered, and you didn't talk about it? This was a perfect opportunity to deep dive, start talking about self expression, and transition toward sex.

Searching for a new spot
No room in the spot, just one seat at the bar. We bounce.
We find another spot. Cute place lots of fun decor. We see there's space at the bar. We are in a bar-stool situation, she's got her sandwich, and we are ordering drinks.

Any idea when the pull might happen?

Final spot
I'm sitting next to her, our legs are touching. We get into a discussion about psychedelic drugs because it was related to my old job. She shares stories about her experiences, it was an interesting conversation. I was rubbing her arm a few times during the convo. I remember SAC suddenly.. "what about compliance?" so I ask to see her necklace, and she gives me a little story about it. By the end of the interaction I was rubbing my thumb/few fingers on the leg while we spoke. She never really touched me back at any stage... This made me want to pull the move - Grab her hand and place it on me.. on my hand..on my leg...somewhere! But in my mind I was worried it was getting to be too little.. too late?

She's probably not feeling it at this stage - hours gone, no escalation except lots of little touching, not picking up on opportunities to deep dive and build connection.

I was feeling like I wasn't doing a good job of this date. Sure, I was touching her, having some good conversation, but I don't think this was heading to a "want to come over to my place?"... so I suddenly thought "oh I need to set a more sexual frame".. So I brought up the fact she mentioned "ethical non-monogamy" on her online profile.

Unless you teased her about it, this is not a great path toward sex talk - 'ethical non-monogamy' sounds like something out of an anthropology textbook and already starts framing things as a relationship. How about just bringing up sex - good sex/bad sex, show how much you know about women's experiences of sex, etc.

It's around midnight.

She finishes her drink. She looks at her watch. She says "It's late, and I'm getting tired. I should get going"... I was pretty exhausted at this point after a long week.. "yeah, I'm tired too.".. "want me to accompany you to your bus stop?"..."sure!". She tells me she's going to a big wine festival the next day and is planning on staying up all night partying. OK this girl is up for a good time tomorrow!

OK this is like someone coming up to your ear with a bullhorn and yelling 'pull now or never see her again!'. Do you really think this girl who is looking for 'short term fun' is going to party all night and go to a wine festival the next day without hooking up with some rando? She's looking for fun, and she's about to get her fill of it without you.

As soon as I have her that hug.. I felt it in my body.. I fucked it up.

No, you already knew a long time before that, that's just the first time you faced reality.

I got home around 2 am, texted her to let her know I got back safe.. and that if she's down we could have date two in my city and show her around....

You should have got her to text you that she got home safe, reason being it reduces ghosting and smoothly transitions back into texting.

And going for date two over text immediately - nope. Should have suggested/planned it in person, and followed up sometime afterward. But realistically it's probably toast at this point.

I don't know if she was ever that attracted to me, or if she was...what I did wrong exactly to let things fizzle out.

You didn't pull, that was the problem. Of course she was attracted, otherwise she wouldn't be out there with you for 4 hours waiting for it to happen.

Triggering old hurts
I've been meditating and pondering this date ever since. I see that going on a date with a women I truly desire sends me straight back to my old pattern.

Pattern i've done twice in my life: Meet girl I'm genuinely excited about -> get into bed with her -> Get super excited and emotionally attached -> she jumps ship fast -> heartbreak.

I thought I had gotten over those heartbreaks a long time ago.. but i've also never been with a woman I was genuinely excited about ever since. I think this was a coping mechanism to protect myself from further harm. This date tripped a switch! It revealed the healing I need to do, I need to heal that old heartbreak so that I can move on with my life.. I am talking about feeling of deep worthlessness, humiliation, rejection, sadness... from a 4 hours date with a girl i just met - clearly this was about something DEEPER.

You just feel lost about how to get a new woman (or several) into your life. Anxiety is just an emotion, when it comes up it can get attached to anything. You mess up a date, suddenly shit that never seemed important from 10 years ago starts to feel like a personal crisis. It's not really about the past but the feeling that you don't have the tools to move on and build better experiences. Well you do, because your game is at a 3 when it could be at a 10, and all you need to do is keep working at it.

Pathway to healing
I have been working on healing this heartbreak on and off over the past year, but the past couple of days I've spent time in meditation and some therapy sessions to drill in deep. I've doing EFT therapy as well to really deep dive my own hurt and release the pain trapped in my body. It's really doing wonders already, and I'm going to keep this up until it's healed. I feel much lighter than I did on Friday. That's progress !

How can you go out into the dating world, with a deep pit of sadness, worthlessness, etc.. and expect things to go all fine and dandy when the chance to be with a beautiful woman that matches my values comes up? The inner state, the inner game.. that feels crucial.

If you read the report, you can see how I was running around in my head trying to keep techniques and XYZ in mind while I was with her. This felt like the thoughts and mindset of someone that did not feel worthy of her. I'll never know if I could have pulled her - had I done X or Y.... but I can see plain as day that the rejection blasted my heart right open and the hurts from 10 years ago were fresh again. THAT IS NOT something I can continue walking around with.

Time to heal. Time to reboot. Time to walk with an open heart. I would like to be someone radiating a light airy joyfulness that isn't attached to the outcome. Let's see where this goal takes me.

There's a lot of stuff you can do to improve mentally, but you know what's the best way to heal? Accept that your game needs a ton of work, and get to work.

Next steps
Don't stop putting myself out there of course! I'm not going to "wait until i'm healed"! I just know to do both

Yes.

Here is an article for you.

 

[Funkus Maximus]

Hi there @Will_V

I just wanna say a big THANK YOU for taking the time to break down the FR and give your clear and straightforward advice. I think you nailed it..

I wanted to convey how much I was "in my head" on this date.. and how shaky was game is at this early stage. You came in with some great advice for me to work on and put into practice. A mantra for me.. thou shall escalate faster. The green flags were there, I just needed to do it.

I also appreciate your insight about anxiety. I've been doing a ton of work on myself past couple years due to fairly debilitating health issues I am overcoming, and I feel like going back out into the world again after a long break is a journey in conquering that next facet of anxiety. And exposing myself to social situations and building my experience will do wonders for that I'm sure.

Really glad I've been taking the time to write out these reports, it's led to some great input from you guys already.. I can see how important this process is in making solid improvements in game over time.

Take care!

 

[slashrfnr]

@Will_V advice is exactly right here, but just wanted to add a couple of thoughts, some which have helped me.

It may not be that applicable here, but Chase's advice to always invite a girl home is golden. Obviously adding plausible deniability improves your chances, but you will be shocked how much success you can get from just trying. I'm in a relationship now, but I made it a point that if I found the girl at all attractive, I would invite her home at the end of the date unless it was going terribly. It wasn't always successful, but it never really hurt me - whats the worst that happens? She thinks 'god, does this guy not realise that I'm not attracted to him'? Doesn't matter, if that's what she thought, she wasnt going to see you again anyway. A hail mary may only work 1 in 50 times, but nothing to lose from doing it.

Secondly, I completely understand the rush/excitement you get when you actually match with someone on a app that you are really interested in/find them very attractive, and you can then get in your head about trying to make the date perfect. But as Will says, you need to focus on your process so it becomes second nature, and find out what works for you. And to do that, you may need to lower your standards a bit and just get more dating experience under your belt.

It can be hard to psych yourself up for those things, so approach it with the mindset of 'i'm just going to enjoy myself tonight, and learn something new about a new person'. I found this really useful when I was in my 'trying to find someone to settle down with phase' - this meant that on some dates, I screened early and hard and realised they weren't long term potential. But I just had the mindset of 'I'm here now, this person is nice enough, so I might as well enjoy myself and have fun, and learn about someone else and their world view/build new reference points' (obviously, don't do this if you really don't like the girl). I actually ended up hooking up from a fair amount of these dates as well - I was no longer tied to a specific outcome, and probably was a bit more bold as well.

 

[Funkus Maximus]

Hey @slashrfnr ! Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts and advice.

I am definitely going to do my best to take this advice on board - both of you have made total sense and I can put things into practice. Need to make some approaches as my "pipeline" is dry.

I have definitely benefited from lowering my standards this past year, otherwise this might have been my 2nd date of the entire year - how sad would that have been to miss out on all the good sex I had just by getting practice and going for a wider selection of girl.

I currently have two women in my rotation that aren't who I would usually go for.. but... I am an ass man, and these girls deliver! It gives me the confidence to know I can still get laid and please women. They won't be in the country for very long, so that gives me some time pressure to keep working on approaches and meeting new people.

Will keep posting reports to track my progress