Lessons From Another I-Date

Read a previous post of this nature here.

I was out on Wednesday and really wanted to push for a SDL; I just had this notion in my head and I wanted to satisfy it. It was a bad idea.

It was my third set of the evening (I was Daygaming after work) and I gave chase to a small girl with very long blonde hair and a cute, cherub like face. It turns out that she was here with her aunt for four days and that she was 18 years old. On the i-date, I actually made a point of checking this. I assumed the answer would have been fine otherwise she wouldn’t have been walking alone at 8:30 at night but I just wanted to make sure.

Anyway, during the Daygame set she reacted well and so, because I wanted to go for the SDL, I went for the i-date. It was a mistake because I didn’t read the signals properly: as I encroached on her space she stepped back a little. In hindsight I can see that it was classic timewaster territory: verbal encouragement but non-verbal discouragement. I think I was also confused because she accepted my kino, but she didn’t accept my proximity; the kino was noise, not signal. Perhaps she doesn’t understand that kino precipitates sex and so allowed it, in the same way that virgins give eerily green signals to all of your physical escalation.

I suggested a drink, it seemed the right thing to do considering the time of day, but as we walked to a pub she said she asked if we could keep on walking. She seemed reticent to drink alcohol and I thought it was a bit inconsiderate to pull her out of her evening to watch me drink a beer. Instead we went into Leon on Tottenham Court Road and had a coffee together. That’s the second signal: she didn’t want to drink.

We sat down with our coffees and I went through my verbal escalation, which she took, and through my physical escalation, which she also took. She was biting on the rim of her coffee cup, was giggling, and gave amber signals to my physical escalation, but importantly, she refused the kiss. Maybe it was too much to ask, given it was only about 30 minutes into knowing each other but it was three signals in a row that this wasn’t going to be a SDL. I think in Mastery, in the section on SDLs, there’s a line referring just this phenomena in that SDLs tend to go off without hitches because you’ve caught her just at the right time. I clearly didn’t remember my training and took her to a pub, where I did indeed make her watch me drink a beer; she didn’t have a drink.

We played the Questions Game and she said she’d slept with one guy, and that she thought other girls from Lithuania were sluts, which gave me all the information I needed. The key thought in my head was she’s thinking about sex. Still didn’t let me kiss her though. I thought that maybe it was just isolation that she needed, so after I finished my drink I walked her around the block and went for the kiss again: no dice.

She brought her profile up on Facebook so we could organise something for the following day and I added her (she said she didn’t have WhatsApp… hmmm) but she never accepted the request. Her showreel photos were of her giving the camera sultry looks while posing in various parks.

There are some clear practical lessons here:

• Does she accept proximity? Yes, go for the i-date.
• Does she drink alcohol on the i-date (given it’s late enough in the day)? Yes, push forward.
• Does she accept the kiss? Yes, push forward.

I think I actually did the right thing here up until bouncing to the pub. The three signals I received (proximity, not drinking, not kissing) were more than enough and so I wasted the 30+ minutes taking her to the pub and the emotional charge of taking her FB then checking to see if she accepted my request. I could have opened another two girls in that time span.

Yours unfaithfully,

Thomas Crown