The Anatomy of a First Venue: Part Three (Aims, Body Language, Conversation and Escalation)

Venue One Proper

If you had to reduce the first venue down to the bare bones it would be this: the first venue is simply a conversation where you’re going to attempt to achieve three things:

1. Pull her into your frame, and if so:
2. Qualify her. Using this information you can:
3. Decide on your next course of action

Each point is linked to each other because a girl won’t qualify to you if she doesn’t perceive your SMV as being higher than hers. Having higher perceived SMV is a necessary but insufficient condition to pull a girl into your frame (you need the rails of conversation and subcommunication and logistics as well). Once you’ve judged whether she’s falling into your frame or not, combined with placing her on the r/K spectrum and considering her actions so far, you can then make an informed decision as to what to do next.

We start with the question of ‘how do I pull a girl into my frame?’ and first look at body language.

 

Body Language

There’s a full list of cues in Daygame Mastery which I’ll recreate here:

1. Eye Wandering
2. Faint Praise
3. Quizzical Looks
4. Light Challenge
5. Distance

I won’t go into detail on each one as I assume most of you will have it to hand anyway plus I’ve tried not to encroach on what’s been written before on this topic too much. But I must say that that section in Mastery might be the most influential section of the book for me. The one point I’d pay the most attention to is putting her on your 10 o’clock / 2 o’clock and having a wandering gaze. Remember that the physical aspects of communication are always the most important.

When I am giving her direct eye contact, which is 90% of the time, I’ll look at her as if I’m sizing her up. Get it into your head that you are making a decision about her by weighing up all the information she’s given you so far. It’s not the false signal which says ‘I like the way you look but I’ve not decided whether you’re cool yet’ because let’s be fair: you’d still want to fuck her even if she was a horrible person. It’s the true signal that you have a lot of cogs turning in your head right now, and they all concern her, but she just doesn’t know what the cogs are throwing up, whether they’re positive or negative. On some level she should feel like a witness under interrogation by the secret police.

Don’t be fazed if she begins the date by giving you intermittent eye contact because as her interest in you increases i.e. she is falling into your frame, her eye contact will become more direct and sustained. Don’t be lead on by the notion of an ‘IOD for an IOD’ at this point because that causes a vicious spiral where the date will bomb. Accept the fact that as the man you have to front load the investment and give her positive body language. It’s also congruent to give sustained eye contact because you’re looking at what you want. Most girls will see through your aloofness if you try it.

For beginners, sitting in a relaxed manner will feed into your actual feelings in the same way that maniacally smiling makes you happier. Once you become an intermediate, though, and you build reference experiences then sitting in a relaxed way is congruent; you’ve been in this situation so many times before, why should it bother you? It’s not as much the ‘power of body language’ that’s important, it’s the fact that everything about you lines up. You feel relaxed so you act in a relaxed manner. It’s congruent with the energy you’ve used so far as well: everything lines up from the moment you met her.

Being unfazed by the girl’s beauty and the situation is a massive signal that you’re higher value. But let’s be more specific, and hopefully this will help you from an Inner Game perspective: she’s selecting for the highest SMV man available to her, not a particular rating out of 10. Thinking she’s a seven so I need to be an eight is detrimental. By acting as per the above you are already above 80% of men who have ever lived and she is picking her best suitor from a relative standpoint. Remember that to run away from a hungry bear, you don’t need to be faster than the bear. It helps, but it’s not sufficient: you just have to be faster than your friend.

As an aside, I mentioned congruence a lot because women want to be able to accurately assess your value. Men do as well: we all want to be able to weed out evolutionary beneficial mimicry. It’s why a girl with too much makeup, or a man with bravado rather than confidence, is unattractive; we can see the faked signals and it makes us distrust the person. The method that this post lays out could also be described as one which mainly displays the value you already have. That’s attractive in and of itself because animals value authentic evolutionary signals. By showing your true value you benefit from a little added bonus of being genuine.

The other benefit is that it builds comfort because the girl knows what she’s getting into. It’s rare to find an activity that builds both value and comfort at the same time and your body language is doing this on auto-pilot. One of the few verbal methods to do so is storytelling, and we will achieve this through mini-monologues.

 

Mini-Monologues

This ties into what I said earlier about expressing preference. Allow the conversation to begin naturally; you’ll probably talk about your jobs or where you’re from or where you’d like to go or where you’ve been. Don’t specifically jump into a conversation topic which has a romantic or sexual nature because most of that is done by the subcommunications which will push the frame into being man/woman.

Whenever you see a jumping point go off into a 30 second mini-monologue where you talk about yourself and your story and how you came to the decision you made. People have often said about me that I think in a way unlike anyone they’ve ever met, but that I always have a well thought out reason for doing so. It’s a facet which makes me mature beyond my age. It’s also good to hint that you have an ‘iceberg personality’ where she knows there’s a lot of depth.

The girl will probably come back with her own input so let her say her piece, weigh it up, and then respond. Remember that you’re not allowing her to talk merely to let her talk or to let her invest, the content of what she says is very important when you’re trying to place a girl on the r/K spectrum.

Approach objections from more of a ‘how come’ stance rather than an interrogative ‘why?’ You want the conversation to flow nicely and ‘why?’ is too harsh a qualification. If you feel as if the disagreement is going too far then you can always cut the conversation thread by agreeing to disagree, and then moving on. Being right is less important than showing you have your own views and that you don’t mind if they differ.

Over time you can flip into qualification through your mini-monologues: identify the value which your little speech espouses and then positively include her in it. If she accepts the value you’ve tried to espouse then she’s qualifying to you. Here’s an example:

“I genuinely think London is the greatest city in the world. It’s got everything: culture, history, things to do, things to see, people to meet. It’s like this massive stew. But one of my favourite parts of London are how the streets are all higgledy piggledy. Do you have that phrase in [other country]? You can get lost and you can have your own little adventure and other people won’t bother you. I guess you must have some kind of adventurous side just because you moved here from [other country]. What’s your favourite part of London?”

That little speech espoused values such as adventure and anonymity (and is also completely true). See how I also assumed that she agreed with what I was saying before I asked a question of her. Now in order to un-qualify herself she’s going to have to break social etiquette and go back to a part of my little speech, which is making her invest anyway.

Once you’re halfway through the first drink, perhaps 20 minutes in (girls can drink slowly!), move into some escalation.

 

Escalation

We want to continue qualifying the girl. We’ve been doing it so far but using whatever topic came to light. In the early section of the date you’re applying slight pressure to her frame; bringing up certain things and then letting her come up and out of the box by having a ‘live and let live’ approach to conversation. Now we want to move the conversation to a deeper topic and another one which has a clear man to woman intention.

This is one of the second venue escalation topics in Mastery but I like to bring it into the first venue: ‘what’s the dream?’

On the surface it’s an innocuous question that you might get asked at an interview. The truth is that most girls don’t really know what they want in life; at least not specifically. They have a rough idea of what they want but normally it doesn’t go beyond ‘get promoted at work and hopefully find a boyfriend.’ You’ll either get that or the super specific answers where she has an exact job she wants to do or place she wants to live. Either way is good for us and it’s such an easy question to slap down during a conversation about work. It gets the girl to open up about her life and what’s important to her, even if she’s speaking in rough terms.

In all likelihood she’ll ask you the same thing in return so be prepared. Yet again, do some thinking and actually work out what you’re going to do in the next five years. It’s also good to have an r and K version ready to answer with. Don’t lie about what you’re going to do, instead just focus more on risk taking, freedom and adventure for the r-selected version and conscientiousness for the K-selected version.

In fact it’s an important point to make: at no point on the date are you lying. At most it’s a lie of omission: there are many facets to your personality and you are showing the ones that are most conducive to fucking the girl. Everyone does this for their own ends. Just imagine the most uptight person you know and then ask yourself if you think that at one point in their life have they ever acted out of character. Perhaps they were younger or perhaps they were drunk. We all have it in us be every kind of character, it’s just that we have a main one that we return to. The best results in Game come from making this main character one who is very attractive to women.

Here’s an example of the same plan but split:

• R-selected: “I’m going to quit my job and travel the world. I don’t think I want to work for anyone else any more. I want to be in control of my time. Wake up any time I like. I want the freedom to do whatever I want with my life.”
• K-selected: “I feel like I’ve mastered what I do at work now so I want to see the world. I didn’t take a gap year and I don’t want to miss out on things in life before I commit to one thing.”

Notice you can make yourself seem more r-selected by speaking in short sentences, and more K-selected by using longer words and sentences.

The next escalation topic to bring up is ‘what’s your type?’ Unfortunately bringing this question straight out of the bag will probably cause her to close up because in western culture girls are supposed to keep what they really find attractive under wraps (a dominant man). You want to build into this question. I do it like this:

• What do you think of English people?
• What are English people like compared to your country?
• What are Englishmen like compared to the men in your country?
• What type of men do you like? / What are you attracted to? / What’s your type?

Note: if you feel the urge to ask me what to say if you’re not English then you’re clearly an imbecile.

Some girls might try and weasel out of this question by saying ‘it’s only personality that matters’ and so give her some false answers like ‘okay so if a guy was obese and 90 years old but with a great personality you’d be into him?’ She’ll disagree with that of course and so give her a few starting points like ‘do you prefer business guys or artsy guys?’ and ‘do you prefer serious guys or fun guys?’ Once she’s picked from a couple of your dichotomies then simply say “come on then what else?” and she should open up.

Again, she’ll come back to you and ask what you like in women (actually she’ll often say ‘how about you?’ and I’ll reply with ‘What do I like in men? No I’m not into that’ hardy hah…). Personally I like to say something like this:

“Well of course I like girls who are feminine and pretty. But one thing I really do appreciate is a girl who’s like a cat. Let me explain: you know how when a cat is walking around on a sunny day? And it spots a patch of sunlight coming through the window so it goes over and stretches out it’s paws? Well I guess I’m quite an intense person so I like it when girls can take my energy. When they enjoy it. Does that make sense?”

As I’m saying that I’ll mime out a cat stretching itself to give the story more colour. That answer qualifies the girl in two ways: 1), I take femininity and good looks for granted, and 2), girls love to be seen as being like cats and so she’ll probably try to aline herself with that image. Just remember: what I said isn’t a lie, I’ve just used clever imagery and finished with a question which shows that I’m trying to be understood. I am an intense person and girls can sense that through my eye contact and conviction in what I say. If you say those exact lines and they’re not true for you then the girl will see through you and everything you’ve built so far will fall apart.

The last piece of escalation I like to do in the first venue is to have a look at their hands or rings and see her reaction. This kind of “long range kino” is very safe to do and can be done over the length of a table. Simply say “let me see that ring” or “can I have a look at that tattoo?” or “how big are your hands?” and gesture for her to offer her hand. Stiffness of hand is a red light and floppiness is a green light. If she offers a floppy hand I’ll probably take my sweet time having a look and probably throw in a short monologue as I hold her hand and give strong eye contact. Then simply let go; the compliance test is complete. This is also a good opportunity to ask her where she got her rings from because if it was a gift from a family member you gain information for placing her on r/K, and even the opportunity to find out whether she grew up with her father.

Before moving on, remember that any of the above topics/moves can be revisited. If you sat down and immediately talked about your jobs or where you’re from, it doesn’t mean that you can’t simply say “oh I forgot to ask earlier” and then go back to the topic.

Part four out tomorrow

Yours unfaithfully,

Thomas Crown