“When I’m doing a set I always think “21… 22” and it makes me slow down.”
Kaiser
That was some advice given to me recently by a German Daygamer – let’s call him Kaiser, for now – on how to slow down in-set. I asked him why “21… 22” and he said that in German it’s “einundzwanzig… zweiundzwanzig” and so it’s naturally long (that’s what she said). Of course it begs the question: “which are the optimal numbers to count in your head,” but I’ll leave that up to bigger and brighter minds than me to answer.
I started putting his advice into play and it worked instantly. In the past few days, as I circle around each girl and make eye contact, I’ll be saying my usual “excuse me, stop, you, yes, stop, stop there,” and once she comes to a halt I’ll think to myself “21… 22.” It’s allowed me to start each set at the correct pace.
Now, of course, some girls hate it; like a lot of Game it drives a girl towards making a “yes” or a “no” decision. Just imagine if you were talking to someone who just went on and on, and you’re trying to leave, and they don’t pick up on your signals to end the conversation or go somewhere else. Oddly enough both of my landlords in London have had this trait and I think it gets worse with age. Similarly, imagine if a homeless person starts talking to you in the street or someone tries to sign you up for something.
That’s why it’s important, then, to recognise if the girl is stepping away, maintaining a purely platonic distance, is not giving herself to the conversation, and/or is motioning to leave, to bring the set to an artificial close. Usually I’ll go for her number expecting her to say “no” – in one way or another – as it provides me with a way to end the set without appearing weird. I personally think it would be odd to approach a girl just to compliment her and to then walk off and so offering the number close seems more natural to me. On the other hand, some girls will like the fact that you started speaking slowly, and it begins the bubble. That feeling that people are busily walking past you but you’re in the eye of the storm.
This brings me onto what I really want to talk about today: the pace of seduction. In a perfect world we’d meet a girl and she’d be enthusiastic during the set. She’d respond promptly and with enthusiasm to our messages. She’d turn up on the date and be compliant. From there you’d covertly agree to first or second date sex. It would all be one exponential curve of enthusiasm from meeting her to the lay.
If we want to create this curve then we need to appreciate that humans see things relatively, rather than absolutely. If you gave someone a glass of water and told them to tell you what they thought its temperature was, they would be quite inaccurate. However, if you gave them two glasses, and simply said “which is warmer?” then they would be able to pick easily. So when it comes to the pace of seduction, we want things to get progressively faster, more invested and more enthusiastic, so that each stage stands out from the previous one.
If you start your set with too high an energy, then you have nowhere else to go but up, which you might not be able to do or maintain. Over texting you can easily come across too strong by responding too quickly and with too many emoticons. Then if you’re on date what happens if you go to the fancy cocktail bar first? Where do you go from there?
Instead we can start our sets off with lower energy knowing that we can expand into something higher if we feel like it. We can text less frequently to begin with but then increase the frequency later on to show that we’re more approving of her. And on a date, if you go for a coffee first then to a pub, or when you go from a brightly lit pub to a darker bar, you’re intensifying the atmosphere and upping the isolation.
The overarching theme, as I mentioned, is that your approval of her grows over time and you progressively show more interest. This is qualification, essentially. But don’t take me for saying you should start off as an aloof arsehole. It’s moreso that you start with 80% neutral signals and 20% positive and eventually switch into 20% neutral signals and 80% positive.
Just try and think about what it’s like to be a girl for a second: being approached all the time by guys giving her that 80% positive signal. By moderating your interest you can catch her attention and then start building that exponential curve of enthusiasm. And with those obvious Yes girls you can simply move into that 80% positive signal paradigm quicker.
All of that can begin with simply counting “21… 22” in your head as you begin talking.
Yours unfaithfully,
Thomas Crown
Thomas Crown PUA 
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