I had a Skype consultation recently where we talked a bit about how to deal with the ups and downs of failed dates. It segued perfectly into my recent experience: I’m getting a regular amount of numbers, then a good amount of those are converting to dates, but only one lay since I’ve returned to Daygame from lockdown. I’ve feel as if I’ve got a backlog of results coming but that I’m being thwarted at the final step. The way I said to get over this problem – psychologically – is to focus on the fact that you’re applying the correct technique, which is what I’m going to talk about today.
Me and the student actually have the same problem, we’re over-pullers, and quite eager to solve the problem. It’s particularly annoying to turn a girl off when she would have been ready on the second or third date. So to begin with, he followed my advice to apply a blanket “don’t pull on the first date” rule for a month. That allowed him to get an idea of which girls would come and see him on a second date, but that he would have previously over-escalated on. Using that information I then gave him some strategies he could use – ways of probing for information – so that he could see which girls were in fact ready to be pulled on the first date.
I also advised him to try out a particular visualisation technique. Now, I’m not a fan of using this all the time – you hardly need to visualise going to buy some milk, for instance, nor any particular Daygame session – but it does help with dates since they are much less frequent. A lot of advice on this technique includes talking about all the sensations (touch, smell, feelings, etc.) but that’s not what I recommend, or do myself, because I find that to be too touchy-feely. Instead, take a pen and paper (physically writing it down is very important), and write about the date, as if it had already happened. I’m re-reading The Charisma Myth by Olivia Cabane which is where I got this idea from. The visualisation should describe what you did, some baseline feelings (e.g. “I felt confident”) and how you reacted to her. This allows you to pre-commit to the correct technique, and avoid giving into the impatience which leads to over-escalating. Obviously you could use this if you’re on the other side of the spectrum and could write about how you applied your chosen escalation ladder.
Don’t go overboard, four or five lines is enough, but that small exercise seems to lock the correct behaviours in your head, and you can finish each date knowing that you followed the correct technique. And this is how to get over “bad” dates: if you know that you followed all of the correct techniques, then you’ve got nothing to worry about. Applying the correct technique means playing the percentages means the best results in the long run.
I often return to something an old friend of mine once told me: “Your problem is that you’re always trying to score a 40 yard screamer. Sometimes you just have to be a fox in the box.” Those “screamers” are still going to be there, and you always have the fast-escalation method in your back pocket for when you see the opportunity, but it’s those poacher’s goals which end with you winning the golden boot. The best strikers use their movement to get in the right position for a tap in, and when they have the ball in the box, you just know that they’ll score.
Yours unfaithfully,
Thomas Crown
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