Opening

[Estate]

Hi guys, I know "Opening" should probably go in the beginners section but I'm not talking about general opener lines, I want to discuss something else...

So I've been interested in reading PUA material since way back with the GAME and MM.
All the advice then and now seems to come back to the same things for me... an IDEAL world:
- Look for the girl sitting alone at the bar looking for a handsome gentleman to come sweep her away.
- Look for the girl who leaves herself "open" in a group, she's making it easy for guys to open her.
- Look for the girl making obvious eye contact, she WANTS you to open.

But the world is not ideal is it:
- Girls don't go to bars alone 99% of the time. The girl sitting alone is waiting for her friend or BF to come back from the bathroom/smoke/etc...
- Few girls actually leave themselves open in groups, they don't want to give off that vibe, they engage in their group.
- Girls make fleeting eye contact and don't like to make it obvious, is she REALLY trying to draw your attention, is she looking at the guy next to you, are you both just looking about the room and happen to lock eyes? Which one is it and how do we know?

I'm drawing on last night for example. I was at a pretty low key place around 11pm. I see a stunning brunette, I know she has noticed me, she is leaning against the bar looking out towards me. But she is completely surrounded at the bar by her social group, about 8 people in a semi circle. Now I *think* she would have welcomed an approach but there is really no other way than literally forcing my way through the entire group, drawing all of their attention while I try to deliver some opener. It doesn't feel at all natural, it doesn't feel at all smooth and doesn't feel anything but deliberate.
If we were still in the days of MM, we'd go further to break through the group, pivot, look over our shoulder, as her an opinion (like we couldn't have asked the other 12 people we trampled to get to her), then tell her I have to run back to my friends who are 6 feet away anyway... who's fooling who here?

The next is eye contact. Girls rarely actually lock eye contact or offer repeat contact. Sometimes we are looking at a girl and as she looks up, we catch her eye. Was she checking us out? Or are we just looking long enough to HOPE we see what we want to see?

Next is girls sitting alone. I saw 2 guys repeatedly WAITING for girls to be left alone by their friends for any moment, then swooping in. As soon as their friends returned, these guys were flustered and ran off again.
To me this just comes off creepy. Waiting for a girl to be alone and needing TWO of you? Also, there is no way to casually open, they were going across the room direct then offering bland conversation.
But in reality, girls are rarely actually alone by themselves looking for that handsome stranger... it's not the movies.

So where I'm coming at from all this is... when I read "opening" advice, it all sounds well and good but is more like a movie or an ideal world but nothing like the real world, which I think throws a lot of guys off... they read all the opening advice, feel they can do it, but the ACTUAL opportunity never comes along.
Are there any resources on REAL opening situations? How to navigate difficult situations or at least situations where it's not just smoothly turn to her and say Hi. You have to actually work yourself into a position where there is little to no room.

 

[Chase]

Estate-

Biggest recommendation here is get your peripheral vision down. You should be able to tell a girl is checking you out without ever looking in her direction. The instant you look, she'll look away, unless she's SUPER confident / direct / horny (very rare). You'll also be picking up on which girls are even somewhat open to meeting you all over the place, without looking around much. You want to be at the point when you can walk into a place, stare at the ceiling, and know 3 or 4 girls right off the bat you can go talk to whenever you want and probably get a warm reception... peripheral vision takes care of 70% of what you're talking about in this post; the other 30% is experience.

As in:

I see a stunning brunette, I know she has noticed me, she is leaning against the bar looking out towards me. But she is completely surrounded at the bar by her social group, about 8 people in a semi circle. Now I *think* she would have welcomed an approach but there is really no other way than literally forcing my way through the entire group, drawing all of their attention while I try to deliver some opener. It doesn't feel at all natural, it doesn't feel at all smooth and doesn't feel anything but deliberate.
If we were still in the days of MM, we'd go further to break through the group, pivot, look over our shoulder, as her an opinion (like we couldn't have asked the other 12 people we trampled to get to her), then tell her I have to run back to my friends who are 6 feet away anyway... who's fooling who here?

This is one of the few situations (big group, girls locked inside of it, she's already been staring at you out by yourself / has seen you looking at her) where I'd tell you your best bet is working the group. Not entertainer-style you-guys-believe-in-magic? stuff, but rather slide up next to whoever's on the outside and looking a little bored, strike up some chill conversation, get included, get the guy to buy you a drink, roll off onto the girl pretty quickly.

The most delicate thing here is rolling off of the guy who originally brought you in to the girl. If you do this wrong, it's weird, because it feels like you were just using him to get to her. It can inspire some resentment on his part. Sometimes there's no way around the guy being a sacrificial lamb and he's just got to suck it up, but when that happens the girl will usually (unless she's incredibly into you) try to appease him by not going too far with you.

You're also unlikely to pull her, at least earlier in the night, when she's surrounded by a large group, so unless you want to go gangbusters and pull out all the stops it's better to talk to someone on the outside, get the girl's interest and talk to her, then trade phone numbers with both of them with plans to meet up with each of them later on, and get out.

The next is eye contact. Girls rarely actually lock eye contact or offer repeat contact. Sometimes we are looking at a girl and as she looks up, we catch her eye. Was she checking us out? Or are we just looking long enough to HOPE we see what we want to see?

Peripheral vision. If you're looking at her and she looks, that doesn't tell you much. People look at people who are looking at them. If you're NOT looking at her, and you catch her looking at you via your peripheral vision, you can pay attention to the frequency and intensity of those glimpses she's stealing of you.

This works both ways though; women also have excellent peripheral vision, and they know if you look at them. Do not look at her until you're ready to approach, and if you DO look at her, you must then approach, or accept that she's lost. Attraction drops fast if you look then do nothing - combination of auto-rejection (you saw her, didn't do anything, must not be interested; her ego can't accept this, she writes you off as too scared to come talk to her) and actual dismissal (looking at her without coming to talk to her = creepy; what do you want, and why aren't you talking to her?).

Next is girls sitting alone. I saw 2 guys repeatedly WAITING for girls to be left alone by their friends for any moment, then swooping in. As soon as their friends returned, these guys were flustered and ran off again.
To me this just comes off creepy. Waiting for a girl to be alone and needing TWO of you? Also, there is no way to casually open, they were going across the room direct then offering bland conversation.
But in reality, girls are rarely actually alone by themselves looking for that handsome stranger... it's not the movies.

Sure, that's creepy.

If you're going to take a wingman, always have one guy approach first - point #2 in this article: 10 Surprising Rules on How to Be a Wingman.

Are there any resources on REAL opening situations? How to navigate difficult situations or at least situations where it's not just smoothly turn to her and say Hi. You have to actually work yourself into a position where there is little to no room.

Well... that's a little like saying, "I've done all these martial arts exercises on throwing elbows, and that's great and all, but aren't there any REAL exercises, on what happens if you're throwing an elbow and you slip? Or what if you mean to catch the guy in the mouth, and you hit his ear instead? Or what if he throws a punch just as you're throwing the elbow? It's never going to be as clean in real life as it is in training."

And that's true... but, the way to get real life experience is by doing it in real life. There's no substitute. What training is for is giving you a rough mental model of how things will go and need to go... but you've got to get out there and take the bumps and bruises to fill in all the gaps of experience.

When I used to train guys in-field, sometimes with beginners I'd get these guys with MILLIONS of detail questions. I'll point to a girl talking to her friend and say, "That girl wants to meet someone. Go say hi," and the guy would say, "Well, how can you tell she wants to meet anyone? She looks pretty engrossed in conversation to me," and I'd say, "No she isn't. They're standing there sipping their drinks and looking at each other and hardly talking. They're going crazy waiting for guys to come approach them," and he'd say, "Well what do I say? There's two of them there. I can't just talk to one girl and ignore the friend," and I'd say, "Go talk to your girl, say 'hi' to the other girl and be nice and polite, but focus 90% on your girl," and he'd say, "Won't that be awkward though? What if the other friend is just standing there?" and I'd say, "You know what? If we talk here any longer, they're going to see us standing here looking like a couple of douchebags speculating and won't want to talk to you when you walk up to them anymore. The window is closing; you've got about 15 seconds. No more questions until after you go talk to them," and he'd go, "But what if-" and I'd say, "No. Shut Up. Sorry. Just - go talk to them. Now - go! They want to talk to you - go!"

There are a billion different variations on how women can be positioned when talking to people. If you want to read about these, the field reports section has one after another after another of live experiences of guys talking about what they saw and what they did and how the details went. But you don't need to... you need EXPERIENCE.

Combine that with your peripheral vision, and you won't need to ask so many detail questions. Just go do it, and sort the details out later.

That said, if you have specific situations you're seeing repeatedly, let me know what those are - if there are enough of them and they're distinct enough, I can do a write up on messy opening situations.

Again though, once you just start approaching tons, you'll start developing an intuition for which women will receive you warmly and which women will not (forged by hundreds / thousands of good and bad approaches and all the tiny signs your brain has learned to attune you to without you even noticing it), and in concert with a well-honed peripheral vision, you'll be picking out girls to approach very easily and be able to pull the right approach from your memory banks of past successful approaches and go do it.

Chase

 

[Estate]

Thanks Chase,
Wow that was a heck of a reply for just a forum question Thanks so much.

This topic sounds so dumb because it's like one of the most basic things, infact it's obviously the FIRST thing you do, duh!
But I obviously didn't want to put it in beginners simply because I'm not talking about Approach Anxiety, or "What to say"... its more like this...
Once upon a time I needed to bounce around the bar, open as many girls as possible, get the experience, fail, succeed, laugh, cry, whatever...

Right now thought I'm obviously trying to up the game, I've cooled down the volume of approaches lately and instead tried to look for the "right" target and make it count. I'm quite content to chill out for a little until the right girls makes her appearance rather than just spamming the entire bar.... is that a good thing? I don't know, but I'm trying this for now.

Absolutely, peripherals is a big one. And it's something I admittedly forget even if it's a fundamental. While scanning the room I obviously want to avoid any creeper vibe but sometimes as you said yourself, if you look at someone, they will naturally look back? IOI? Maybe, maybe not... it's not a good reference point. So peripherals is probably key to what you are saying. I'll try keep this first and foremost next weekend.

I think your description of "messy" opening situations rather than what I called "real" is probably true.
Like I said, in an ideal world, we'd have those perfect moments where a girl is sitting by herself looking for the handsome stranger, girls would always be social adept enough to break off from a circle a little if they want to be approached, they would linger their eye contact so you KNOW they are interested... but it's not a perfect world.

Of course the only advice is "Just do it", but I figured I'd ask if guys here had experience of individual situations where you can swing things around a little easier.

Some situations I come across:
- Girl in circle of friends (as described above), she's cut off from a direct approach without moving her friends or engaging them. I guess the only answer, like you say is to simply engage them and work the group. Not to be lazy here but it feels like you are exerting a lot more time and effort here when potential for reward is probably smaller since you are essentially competing for her attention and taking time to navigate the group who will naturally be protective (especially if her group include guys clearly into her as above). Working your way through the group no matter how smooth, I don't think anyone is fooled by it.
- Girls who are too "flighty"... the social butterfly perhaps but she is just bouncing around from place to place, bar, dancefloor, upstairs, downstairs... getting her attention, calming her down to allow her to be isolated for any length of time.
- Girls who give off all the "IOI"s. For example a cute Brazilian girl I met Friday, she kept hovering around me, looking at me, brushing off and bumping into me, even "unknowingly" dancing up against me even though there was plenty space.... yet when I open, she acts almost un-interested... this girl actually bored me as I expected her to be somewhat chatty or friendly and I moved on, only to have her return to do the same!?!?
- Girls who isolate themselves in groups to a corner, a booth, a table... perhaps these girls just don't want to be approached thus move out of the limelight. I guess just plowing through and engaging the group would be the only answer here.
- Language barriers... lots of foreign students in this town. (Even if I'm foreign myself, haha).
- It's literally too loud to actually converse, even pulling her to another area is just too loud (I know, switch venues, but we all have those nights where you hit the club with friends and there is just this one girl we have to meet). Changes the game up, I like the "low key" relaxed, chill, sexy guy approach personally. Probably just need to switch venue or go high energy here.

 

[Flames]

Theres lots a good info in this post

I'm not so sure about the comment about 'girls rarely locking eye contact' as I seem to get that all the time TBH, although its always when we're making conversation, not really sure what to make of that. The peripheral thing is slightly strange I'm not even aware of it most of the time now, until I actually notice something on my radar. I've seen quite a few girls looking at me and on occasion following me round the room. When I see this I really do wonder if it's deliberate or there's something else going on.

 

[Chase]

Estate-

Just got this article up for you based on your last post:

Meeting Girls in Messy Situations / Friends Around

Hope it's useful / gives you a clearer idea on these.

Chase

 

[Estate]

Chase,
I don't even know what to say but the greatest Thank you.

I replied before heading to sleep last night and I wake up to not just a reply but a whole article! Wow, incredible.
I read through it all, definitely gives me points to look at. I'm going to review some of the linked articles in there too this evening, I don't think I've actually seen 1 or 2 of them before.

Lots to work on.

I'm going to try gather all my thoughts up. I think sometimes I'm guilty of working on something specific and then when I move on to nail another area I get lax again in the last... maybe a little all over the place.


But thank you, excellent!

 

[trashKENNUT]

This is kinda related to DarkKnight post. I hope this helps. Nervous girls are something else. Nervous girls with social circle can be an ass.

Anyway, I am looking into something that might help but forget because it's so many years ago.

z@c+

 

[DarkKnight]

This is kinda related to DarkKnight post. I hope this helps. Nervous girls are something else. Nervous girls with social circle can be an ass.

Anyway, I am looking into something that might help but forget because it's so many years ago.

z@c+

Im gonna read chases article thanks for the heads up