Q&A: Age

I recently went out to all of my previous students for questions for a series of Q&A posts which I’ll be releasing over the next few months. After all, who would be better to come up with content ideas. The first question comes from Ben and is to do with age:

Recently at least 4 girls that turned out to be 18 years old have said to me that they think they are too young for me. Even the ones that liked my approach and crossed their legs and settled down, smiled, and held intense eye contact. They seem to be looking for an excuse. One even said that she was shocked by how direct I was (not with my words because I barely said anything). I’m 37 and when I asked them to guess my age they usually say 23-26. I think this is a shit test, in some cases. How to best respond to this objection?

First you might ask, how am I qualified to speak about the age question? Well, I’ve been Daygaming since I was 23 and so offer a (somewhat) unique perspective on the topic – given that for my first few years there would often be girls who were older than me – and recently I’ve started getting the “you’re too old for me” objection from some girls (I’m 29 now). This topic also ties nicely to a debate on authenticity, which we’ll get to at the end.

You can find yourself in two camps: either you’re the right age or the wrong age for the girl (truly innovative stuff today, am I right?!). This depends on the age of the girl in question, her culture and her particular tastes. In general the further east you go the larger the age gap which is preferred (to an extent) whereas western girls prefer “age appropriate dating:” maybe for you to be two to five years older than her. In any case, girls normally always want the guy to be older than her. There are some edge cases where you can play yourself off as a cheeky young chap and still win the day – and if you think she’s older than you then you should play this up because she won’t believe that you’re older than her if you lie about it, believe me I’ve tried – but those are edge cases.

So when faced with the question of “how old are you?” you should first try to work out if it’s a shit test or not. To be honest you may be walking on thin ice because it sounds as if the girl is looking for a way to reject you. She may also be looking to see if you back down when faced with a large age gap. Nonetheless, it’s time to work out what to say. Obviously if you think you’re just about the right age for her based on her culture, your perception of her age and her tastes in men then tell her your real age immediately and then ask for hers.

I’ve had some second thoughts recently about asking the girl to guess my age because it could seem that you’re trying to trick her and are uncomfortable. Normally if I do end up encouraging a girl to guess my age then I’ll dress it up with some jokes such as “my mother told me it was a faux pas to ask someone’s age” or “go on, guess, I won’t be offended… Look, here’s my profile” (and then I’ll turn my head sideways), just to show her I don’t take the guessing game seriously andam just looking to make her squirm slightly in guessing. The problem with guessing is that it’s only a partially good estimator of what age the girl is interested in: it’s a combination of how old they want you to be, how old they think you look and an age which they hope won’t offend you (given that women are conflict avoidant they don’t want to guess higher than your real age and imagine you would feel exactly how they would if they guessed higher than your real age).

If I choose to eschew the guessing game then I have two alternative ages in my back pocket ready to use at any time: three years younger than I am now and three years older. These are to be used in case of emergency if I think she’ll reject me for being too old, or if I possibly want to get more age dominance over her or I think she wants a guy to be a particular age. To use this tactic you should know the years that you would have been born in like the back of your hand, just in case it comes up. As I said, though, this is in case of emergency: my preference is to use my real age and to be honest I am currently at or around the optimal age for Daygame.

Here are some alternative tactics to use (and a couple appeals to authority):

• I remember Krauser telling me he tells girls he’s 36 whereas in reality he’s 46 because he noticed the light leaving some girl’s eyes when he told them his real age
• I remember Roy Walker telling me he tells girls he’s 30 if she’s still a teenager or early 20s

Lastly if you think that lying about your age is inauthentic and should never be done then feel free to always say your real age. Just remember that it’s a filter: some girls will love it and some girls will automatically rule you out for it. In fact, it’s just like anything else that polarises, whether that be ginger hair, being black, being Asian, or a combination. The key is to remember that you need a girl to be, let’s say, 8/10 interested in you for her to want to sleep with you. That means it doesn’t matter how many girls are 7/10 interested. I’d rather have 39 girls be 2/10 interested and one to be 8/9/10 out of 10 interested then to face a sea of decent, but insufficient, interest. However, age is such an arbitrary reason for a girl to rule you out and I’m sure we’ve all heard stories from friends who lied about their age but then came clean later on (after sex) and there was no issue. Okay, maybe she wouldn’t have cared about your real age in the first place, but maybe she would have. We’ll never know. To cut a long story short: why give her a reason to rule you out? My thinking is, if she’s attempting to rule us out on something we can counteract then don’t let her do it, and after all, age is just a number anyway.

Yours unfaithfully,

Thomas Crown

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