A Collection of Near-Misses

I’m looking at my statistics for this year and at the data I collected from my dates: 37 dates, 24 kisses, 18 bouncebacks and 14 lays. I can remember each girl from the last two categories and today I’ll be looking at what went wrong with those four girls who came back to my place, but never ended up earning their own lay report. Can you believe it? Even I can fail…

Finnish Student

I met Nelli in February but then we didn’t have our first date until a couple of weeks later because I was away. Note to self: if a girl meets you after more than a week then she’s of sufficient interest that you can risk leaving it to the second date. As you may be able to guess, I didn’t leave it. I was too impatient with my escalation and got a reluctant peck on the lips in the first venue. I got more of a make out during the walk from the first to the second venue, but there were red lights for the bounce back in the second, in particular she wouldn’t come into extreme proximity with me for very long. Then when she was back at mine she repeatedly said “this is more of a second date thing.” She responded to my messages after the date but ghosted on the second date request.

Correct course of action: I should have taken her to the train station after the second venue and bid her adieu or at least have stopped trying the first time she said the “second date” thing. Given that she had met me two weeks after the initial Daygame set there was a good chance that she would come out another time and that I didn’t need momentum to get the lay.

Chinese/German Virgin

I met Anni while winging with Victor sometime in the Spring. She was highly compliant and I kissed her within 30 minutes in the first venue. That was the first sign: virgins are oddly compliant and accidentally give strong green lights probably because they aren’t familiar with the X leads to Y leads to sex series of events. Then she shied away from answering the “when’s the last time you had sex” question. Now, I had these two pieces of information before I suggested the bounce to my house and in all honesty I would have put money on her being a virgin. But I bounced back anyway because I was impatient and wanted to risk it. There was a chance I was just playing on White Man God Mode and that she would go through with it. Even after finding out she was a virgin (at mine she sheepishly admitted it) I continued to try and bust the LMR and think it drove her further towards the “no” camp. In addition, during the second venue the atmosphere and my actions had lead her to saying that she felt as if she was “melting.” I didn’t carry the same vibe back to my place and should have continued with the same entrancing music. That’s not to say it would have made the lay but it might have. She responded to my ping the next day with The Message (the long message where a girl explains how she isn’t ready/we aren’t compatible/yadda yadda yadda).

Correct course of action: it’s tough to say on this one. I could suggest I should have called it a date after the first drink but I don’t think I could pass up on those green lights. I think I should have probed more in the second venue to find out for sure whether she was a virgin. And then back at mine… I’ve found that a girl who wants to have sex will stay in a place where sex is possible. Anni extricated herself once she knew where we were going and wouldn’t “sleep over.” Apart from the music, I imagine I could have pushed the escalation slower back at mine, after all it would take a lot of pent up sexual desire in her to take her over the finishing line.

Silly Spaniard (is that a tautology?)

I met Jessica by Whole Foods while winging with S around August and was then ambushed by her crazy friend halfway through the set. I took Jessica’s number and met her about a week and a half later for a drink. It took time because of her work schedule. We met at 11pm, it was a two venue date model in one venue (upstairs and downstairs) and we made out during our second drink. I walked her to another bar which was closed (Google Maps lied!) and then suggested the bounce to mine. She ribbed me, saying that “this was your plan the whole time!”, but came in anyway. We never got further than the make out and she would stop me when I tried to escalate further. Eventually I just agreed with her when she said she should go. She responded to my messages after the first date but her own logistics disrupted the second. I let her fall off and forgot about her.

Correct course of action: run for the hills when she says she’s Spanish! They’re not worth the mental energy and they can be very annoying. My childhood image of a sultry flamenco dancer is certainly not the reality. They go on about romance and genuinely appear to believe their own bullshit. They don’t seem to understand correct polarity either.

Anyway… I guess I could have worked her more on texting after the first date. She had said she wanted to go dancing and I was loathe to do that, which turned me off messaging her more and encouraged me to go for the bounce back that evening. I don’t think I’d actually do anything differently here, it was just on of those times where things didn’t go my way. She was 27 so perhaps five years previously she would have been a +1.

American Hairdresser

I met Jessie while winging with J in September and it looked as if she was a strong Yes girl. Unfortunately, she went back and forth out of London and so our date wasn’t for two weeks. I went in with the knowledge gleaned from Nelli, but I had to counterbalance that with the fact that she was American. I knew I had to meet her soon because the clock was ticking before she permanently moved out of London so I met her at midday and we had a couple of drinks. She accepted all of my escalation except for the kiss, but told me she just didn’t like PDA. I took that to mean that I could proceed in isolation, so when she said she was hungry I suggested the bounce back to mine and we could buy snacks along the way. She agreed straight away. It all sounds good, but when we got back to mine it fell apart. I kissed her and she went kind of distant, and it wasn’t the kind of distant amber light where she just wants you to take all responsibility for sex. I gathered that she had broken up from a four year relationship and I don’t think she was ready for sex with another person again. I had encountered an odd phenomena: her forebrain wanted sex but her hindbrain didn’t . As in, her social conditioning was telling her that sex was a good thing and that she should have a rebound, but her hindbrain was probably making her feel guilty for doing it. She probably still felt loyalty to her ex-boyfriend. Eventually she left and then ghosted on texting after the next date request.

Correct course of action: again I don’t think I did anything wrong here because of her nationality and the short timeframe I had before she left London permanently. When I get girls back to mine I normally put music on and escalate to that, rather than a film. Maybe she would have been better off with the film so that I could boil the frog.

Yours unfaithfully,

Thomas Crown