How To Approach A Girl

If you’re wondering how to approach a girl, you’ve come to the right place! I’m going to go over exactly what to do to meet and attract women, and ultimately get their numbers to set up a date with them. Follow this guide and get more dates today!

I do not have a system. I don’t have a specific A-B-C formula for success. I don’t always do the same exact thing. I don’t always go direct, or always go indirect. I like to switch things up from time to time, implementing a vast array of techniques, depending on the day and my particular mood. If I told you exactly what to say, and exactly what to do, it would not behoove you. Everybody is different, and nobody has the exact same preferences.

It’s not just this, but if I tried to give you a precise guide about how to meet women everywhere, it wouldn’t be accurate. For instance, meeting a woman in a nightclub, and meeting her at a coffee shop, are two completely different arenas. Having the same approach for both instances would just be naïve. Instead, I like to give different circumstances the benefit of offering different options to use. So in a sense, you can be more of a jack-of-all-trades kind of guy, rather than a one-dimensional creature. Maybe it’s not the easiest way, because you’ll need to use a lot of your own creativity, and a lot of genuine game, but I truly believe it’s the best way.

It’s best to learn from all of the masters. Why fix something if it’s not broken right? Guys who have gone out and done this thing for years and years, who have literally dedicated their lives to this art—those are the guys to follow. And so I did. I listened to all of the great coaches, and the masters of approaching, and took a little bit from every single one. I took what they presented, tried it, tested it for myself, and came up with new and authentic techniques beyond what I’d learned.

I have my own style, not exactly a system, but a style to what I do.

I’ve taken all I’ve learned from others, and from my own experience, and developed what I know works and feels right. And that ultimately varies, from time to time and from scenario to scenario.

Sometimes I’ll be loud, sometimes I’ll be quiet. Sometimes I’m direct, sometimes unassuming. Depending on my precise mood, that’s how I am. I never try to be someone I’m not, and I always try to stay within the realm of my own reality. Pretending to be some way, when you’re not really feeling like being that way, will never yield positive results. So instead of trying to switch myself (my mood), I just approach in a manner that’s aligned with how I feel.

Too many coaches suggest that you need to be super-high, over-the-top, and oozing with energy. They say women are attracted to this persona. I disagree. I say if you are feeling on top of the world, and brimming with energy like this, then that’s awesome. You should probably be very direct, and you will most likely have great success with this approach.

However, if you aren’t feeling like this, and you listen to some coaches, and then try to mimic that energy, you’ll probably fail. Trying to pretend to have this incredibly high amount of energy, and going very direct, when you don’t actually have it, is a recipe for disaster. You really can’t fake something like that. Instead, be more congruent with how you truly feel, and act more genuine within this manner. In this circumstance, going indirect and being more relaxed would definitely suit you better.

Many Ways To Do The Same Thing?

At the end of the day, there are many examples of how to approach a girl. Instead of thinking only one way is correct, I tend to think that they’re all correct. When I used to do personal training at the gym, there were all sorts of different trainers, each with his own style of coaching. There were a lot of arguments and debates in the back room where we hung out between sessions, about what to do with different clients that we had.

One guy thought heavy lifting was always the best way for anyone to lose weight, because the weights stressed the muscles in ways which encouraged fat burning, even hours after the training session was over. He thought that by doing slow, controlled, lower repetitions, with very heavy loads, he produced the best results for all of his clients.

Another trainer emphatically disagreed with this assessment. He cited various studies demonstrating the risks of using heavy weights, and even the ineffectiveness of such a strategy when it came to fat burning. “Heavy weights are for power-lifters and idiots” he’d often say. He used lighter weights, and did faster, less controlled movements, with very high numbers of repetitions.

What each of these two trainers failed to realize, or just didn’t want to admit, was that both of their styles were correct.

The trainers like me, although fairly new, and far less educated in the field, had something they both lacked: open-mindedness. I was able to see quite early on that both of these trainers each had some clients who showed great results. Although their styles were completely opposite, they both produced exceptional results. They could argue all day long about why each other was right or wrong, but at the end of the day, they just couldn’t see the bigger picture.

Instead of being as narrow-minded in my work as they were, I was very open to new ideas. I tried all sorts of things, and eventually found a system, that ironically enough, incorporated both of their positions. I would train people in ways that were always changing. One day I’d go really heavy, exhausting the muscles to complete failure, the next I’d drop the weights down and go at a faster cadence with the lighter weights, working on the fast-twitch muscle fibers. What I realized was, by switching things up and not being afraid to try different things, my clients saw the best results of all!

I was using something called “muscle confusion,” and by doing so I was able to fully exhaust the muscles of my clients, and consistently challenge them. What happens when you do the same thing over and over again is your body gets used to what you’re doing and stops progressing as quickly. By frequently changing things up and using all sorts of great techniques for training the muscles, I was constantly exposing my clients’ bodies to new stimuli. Their muscles were never quite able to adapt to my routines (which is precisely what you want). By confusing their muscles, their progress never plateaued, but instead they continually got into better shape.

Approaching girls works the same way.

When you’re thinking of how to approach a girl, you never want to do the same thing over and over again (especially if it’s not working). You always want to push yourself, and try different things, or at the very least switch up into other things you know and have done before, rather than repeating the same tired moves and lines. Even if it is working, just simply tweaking things a bit here or there can yield you much more success.

Even though both of those aforementioned trainers got great results with their clients, they didn’t exhibit the results my clients had, who always seemed to outperform theirs. It wasn’t because I was smarter than them in any way, or because I was a better trainer. In fact, they were both smarter and better at what they did than I was, but I was the only one who seemed to be ready to switch things up. I was the only one who realized that all of the training techniques worked great, not just one of them.

The same concept can be applied to game and specifically to approaching. All of the techniques, from all of the coaches (if they elicit student success) are great. They all work, and none is particularly better than the other. There really is no wrong way to approach a girl. They’re all right!

Guys who get bogged down with thinking that what they teach or what they practice is superior to what others coach or implement are misguided. They are missing the bigger picture. If they observed others, rather than ignorantly dismissing them, they might actually benefit from them.

Even if you don’t intend on using different approaches, it’s still good to learn what others have had success in doing. Maybe you won’t click using their style of talking to a woman, but you might learn something about how they handle rejection, create attraction, or build rapport. There are so many little things that can be learned from watching others. Instead of having a closed-off mind, and promulgating ignorance to all, keep your eyes and ears open; perhaps you could learn a thing or two. Maybe, just maybe, you might create a new idea, and build on what you already have.

How To Approach A Girl: What I do!

No system? How can I possibly be a dating coach without having a system for approaching women? Well, that’s an easy one. Like I said in the last section, I don’t like labeling what I do as a system. I like to think of it more as series of different things that I could potentially and actually do. For every situation is unique, and trying to fit an exact formula into every equation will not solve many problems. It’s good to adapt.

By now you know that I like to use both the direct and indirect forms of approaching, not to mention observational openers, which are a specific form of indirect opener. But for the purposes of this article, I want to focus specifically on being direct when you go up to a girl.

Let’s jump right into how to do a Direct Approach correctly!

When opening directly, there are a few major and critical steps to consider. These are: stopping her, smiling, making eye contact, delivering your opener, introducing yourself/shaking hands, transitioning away from your opener, and (of course) getting her number. Not all of these have to be perfect, but the more you stick to this formula, the higher your chance is of having success. Also, the more adept you are at going through the steps, the easier it will be to get her number when the time comes to ask for it.

Stopping her is obviously very important. Most women walking on the street have things to do and places to be. If you try talking to a woman when she’s walking by and you don’t get her to stop, she’s going to completely blow you off.

A lot of guys have this problem at first. However, it’s actually not too hard to get a woman to stop, once you know how to do it. The much harder thing, in my opinion, is to keep a woman interested after you have stopped her.

To stop a woman on the street who’s walking, either toward or away from you, you must first enter her line of sight. If she’s coming toward you, simply put your hands up and motion for her to stop, just as if you were a crossing-guard. She’ll immediately notice you and maybe think, “What the hell is this guy doing?” But this won’t matter to you at all, since you’ll immediately proceed into your opener.

If she’s walking away from you, or is down the street and walking in a completely different direction, it’s important that you catch up to her, then enter her line of sight just as you get close enough. You don’t want to yell out at her, or sneak up from behind, as both of these moves will most likely backfire on you: she’ll either be turned off by the catcall,  or be creeped out by the catlike pounce of your rear approach. It’s very important to come upon her, either directly in front of her where she can see you, or from the side, which is non-threatening yet still within her line of sight.

Delivering The Opener

When she notices you, you can either deliver your opener right off the bat or put your hands up and motion for her to stop, just as you would if she were walking toward you. I will usually stop her first and then deliver the opener (definitely the best option), but sometimes I just can’t help myself, and I let loose with what I want to tell her.

If you choose to let loose, again, it’s very important that you stop her right away after. Deliver the line and then immediately stop moving. You want her to stop too, which is the point here. If you continue moving, or even walking with her as some guys do, you send the wrong kind of message here. By ceasing all activity and focusing on her, she’ll tend to do the same and focus on you.

If she isn’t receptive, you could say something like, “Come on, come on, give me one second,” right after you stop moving and have delivered your direct opener. Say something like this with a smile and a sort of sarcastic tone. (More importantly, develop this type of sarcastic and confident way of speaking to women.) A simple line like this will usually work for buying yourself some time if she’s not quite feeling you right off the bat, or if she keeps walking away from you after you’ve delivered your opening line.

Game, and approaching specifically, is in a way, the ultimate form of sales.

You literally have seconds to present yourself in the best possible light to a stranger (a random beautiful woman). You do it, not to be fake, or to pretend to be someone you are not, but to give yourself, and her, the opportunity to create potential magic together. By magic I mean the best possible form there is: love.

You can think of yourself as the best salesperson there is, someone who can sell anything to anyone. And the best part is, you get to sell a product that you really, utterly stand by: yourself. The salesmen who do the best in their fields are the guys who truly believe that what they offer is beneficial to their potential buyer. They can make statement after statement about how great their product is, because they completely believe in it. And now that can be you too.

You can make bold statements about yourself and switch your attitude and interactions around with women with that same mindset. Start creating and doing things that you thought of before, but never really could push yourself to do. Become that salesman who reaps the benefits of being confident, outgoing, bold, funny, and charismatic. It’s not as hard as you think to become all of these things, it just takes practice.

Dealing With Negative Energy Or Resistance

In the aforementioned example, where you react sarcastically and confidently to her inauspicious initial attitude, it’s clear that you’re “not taking no for an answer.” But instead of getting upset or serious about her rejecting you, like most guys would, you make light of the situation.

Normally, guys get upset and let her walk away, chalking it up as another loss; others might get serious and try to defend themselves to her. But this is the wrong approach; it just feeds into the negative attitude already present (from her response or non-response to your direct opener). It adds more negativity to the situation and actually allows her to control the frame of what’s going on. Instead, by bringing your own frame into the situation (in this case by making light of things) you actually take control of the whole dynamic of what’s happening.

This is a very powerful shift in the way you react and deal with rejection. It’s a way of actually not accepting the rejection, but instead transforming it into something else, something infinitely more satisfying!

However, if you do stop her, and then try being playful and joking, but she still keeps walking away . . . let her walk! She’s not worthy of any more aggravation. That’s the risk in going direct right off the bat. On one hand, it’s the beauty of it, because you don’t waste your time with someone who probably isn’t all that interested in you anyway. On the other hand, it would still be nice to keep trying. But you have to cut your losses at some point, and if she is just not into you, then she’s just not into you (at least not at that moment). Get over it. Such is life: you win some and you lose some.

Meanwhile, continuing on with the critical steps of how to approach a girl, after stopping her, you want to smile!

At first, this will be hard to really get down, as it’s tough to create a smile that looks natural, especially if you’re nervous as hell and just starting out with all of this. However, it gets easier and easier, the more confident you get with approaching.

A confident guy can naturally walk up to a woman with a huge smile on his face, because he knows he’s a quality catch for any woman. He feels that combination of excitement and anxiety, and embraces it, rather than runs from it. He realizes that he’s approaching a woman and that the woman has a great opportunity before her, just as he does. It is this sense of esteem that allows him to smile and enjoy himself.

Until you have this feeling about yourself, deep inside, it’s okay to fake it. Fake this feeling of confidence, because it allows you to smile more easily. Even if you’re down in the dumps, seeing yourself as a complete reject for whatever reason, learn to feign confidence in yourself when approaching women. Like I said, you only have a few seconds to put your best foot forward. Pretend you’re the most confident seducer in the world, and when you approach her, smile.

It will be much easier to smile and be more loose if you feel good about yourself. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with pretending to be confident, even when you aren’t. By acting confident and really embracing this role of self-assuredness, you’ll soon gain real confidence in yourself. You will become so used to feeling that emotion of confidence that it will actually become your true emotion. It’s hard to grasp at first, but it works. Your subconscious mind has an intuitive way of allowing positive change to take over when needed. By presenting yourself with this constant stimulus of being in charge (even if it’s acting), your mind actually becomes adept at feeling this emotion and soon makes it a real emotion.

Making sure you have great body language when you approach is also key.

You want to keep your head up, shoulders back (not slouched), chest out, and eyes ahead. This demonstrates a confident personality, and speaks volumes before any word is even uttered. In fact, great body language alone can easily attract a woman and be the deciding factor for a successful approach. It’s imperative that you do not exhibit weak body language. Even if you feel like a complete loser, and at your very worst, try your best to keep good posture. After all, this sub-communication is a great majority of your overall presentation.

Eye contact goes hand-in-hand with body language.

After you stop her and lock eyes on her, you want to keep a good, solid, steady gaze. Looking away when she stares at you shows a lot of weakness on your part, so don’t do it. By staring back at her consistently, right into her eyes, you tell her unconsciously that you are a powerful man. You tell her you can take control of situations, and that you stand by what you are saying (and doing). If you say something and then look away right after saying it (perhaps it was something edgy you wanted to try telling her), you clearly demonstrate that you don’t stand by your words.

It’s like an obvious poker bluff, where you boldly push all your chips into the center in an attempt to display a strong hand, but then look down and guard your cards very closely the second your fingers let go of those chips. You protect those cards, fearing that someone might accidentally see the truth behind your play: that dud hand you’ve so brashly bet all your money on.

The same thing goes here. By looking away from the woman, you fear that she might actually look right through you, even to your soul, and see the fake confidence that you’ve displayed to her. Then she might see the truth and realize that you’re not really this cool, confident guy you pretend to be.

Just by keeping your eyes on hers, looking right at her and not away when you say something, you demonstrate a tremendous amount of confidence and value. Again, even if you’re not feeling spectacular, and you want to look away, do your best not to. It pays off to suck it up and stay in there.

By having good eye contact, I do mean to keep a good eye gaze on her.

However, don’t take this to mean your eyes must be locked on hers, throughout every word of your conversation. If you do this, she will run!

Do however look at her eyes for a few seconds while either you or she speaks, look away for a second or two, and then come back to her. Having this natural break in eye contact is good. Two people, even if madly in love, do not stare into one another’s eyes for their entire discussions. Trying to do something like this just makes you look awkward as shit!

Instead, a good rule of thumb is a few seconds on, maybe 3-to-8, and then a second or two off. Sticking to this rough guideline should serve you well at first while you’re trying to get the timing down for when to look away and break eye contact.

Okay, so you’ve gone up to her, stopped her, and made eye contact with her; now you want to deliver the infamous opening line. If you’re going direct, this should obviously be something that states your intentions pretty clearly. It doesn’t have to be off-the-wall bold, like “You are the sexiest woman I have ever seen!” It can be something subtle and not so daring, something like, “Hey, I saw you over here and I just wanted to come over and introduce myself.” Something like this is direct (no games or trickery here) and honest. You’re simply telling a woman that you’ve seen her and wanted to meet her. Which is exactly the truth.

Once you’ve delivered your line, whether direct or indirect, you’ll naturally want to transition away from it. After all, who wants the whole conversation to be about the opener? Openers are just that, openings for other things to talk about. After you finish with your opener, you want to begin talking about something else. You can either introduce yourself (that’s already a different topic) or ask her a question to find out a little more about her.

Perhaps you could go with something like “What are you doing in Boston today?” That will do just fine. From there she can answer and give you more information to work with. (Obviously, if you’re not in Boston, you wouldn’t say that; in fact, you can substitute anything for Boston here:  “this coffee shop,” “the park,” “this bar,” etc.)

Introduce yourself!

 

The next thing you want to make sure you do when it comes to mastering the art of how to approach a girl, is if you haven’t done it yet, reach out to shake her hand and introduce yourself. Doing this shows her you’re being friendly, and also subconsciously empowers her. (By offering your hand up for her to shake, you are giving her the power to turn you down and reject you. This may not seem like a good thing, but to a woman who’s just been approached by a strange man, it’s a very helpful measure to take in relaxing her.) She feels slightly safer when you put yourself out on the line like this. You also get to touch her, which is literally the first step of physical escalation. Just by taking this tiny step, you open the door for further escalation, and gradual moves, albeit baby steps, into more intimate contact.

When you introduce yourself, you can just keep it simple. You don’t need to come up with anything fancy or funny or over-the-top, in an attempt to be extraordinary. Just simply say, “Oh, by the way, my name is Justin; what’s yours?” extending your hand as you speak. That’s it. She will most likely return with her hand, and reciprocate the introduction. (Please don’t make the mistake of trying to be Mr. Suave when you introduce yourself, because of some lame PUA video on YouTube that you may have seen. This doesn’t work. Just be a gentleman here and introduce yourself like one.)

After this, you want to build rapport with her, a bond between two human beings.

To build rapport with a woman you want to make her comfortable. You make her comfortable by being genuine and showing her your confidence in what you’re doing. By being relaxed and showing her that you yourself are comfortable, even in that typically stressful moment of approaching a woman, you make her comfortable in return. You also make her comfortable by smiling at her, having good body language, and keeping steady eye contact. All of these things work synergistically to relax her.

Another great technique you can try using is called “mirroring.” It’s an NLP technique whereby you subtly mimic her body language and movements, which makes her see more of herself in you. The science behind this procedure is that we as humans tend to feel most comfortable around things that look, act, or feel like ourselves. So by imitating her actions, we allow her to feel like she’s looking at someone similar to herself, which in turn makes her more comfortable.

Some things you can do to mirror her could be crossing your arms if she has her arms crossed, leaning back if she’s leaning back, slowing your speech down to her speed if she talks slower than you, or even holding something in your hand if she has something in hers. Basically, you want to try your best to be her “mirror image.”

To build rapport with a woman, you want to do your best to find things between the two of you that are similar. Again this goes right along with mirroring and feeling comfortable. Human beings like others with whom they have something in common. It’s true that opposites attract in some cases, but for the most part, it’s been scientifically proven that most people are attracted to others who are similar to them. By finding commonalities between you and a woman, you actually increase your attractiveness to her, as well as your bond.

Finding things you share in common with a woman can be really easy once you’re in conversation.

Women love to talk and they will give you all sorts of information to work with. Even the quiet woman you’ve just met will still usually give you enough to build a bond around if there’s something there. You just take notice of little things about what a woman is talking about, and then relate them back to your own experience, or (if you can’t relate to what she’s saying) you ask her more questions, so you can get a better understanding about a subject; from there, you can relate it back to your own awareness.

For example, if you ask, “Where are you from?” and she says “California,” but you’ve never been there before in your life, should this be the end of the conversation? Should you just walk away, flustered, because she doesn’t live in Boston, like you? Of course not! Work with what she gives you, and, believe it or not, she’s actually given you a ton of material with which to work.

The possibilities for a response to something like this are quite literally endless. You could respond with, “California, huh? That’s the opposite end of the country. What brings you all the way out here?” Or perhaps, “California! I’ve always wanted to go there. What’s it really like?” Or even this: “Ya’ know, I sometimes wish I lived there. It’s so warm there all year round, isn’t it? Unlike here, where it’s freezing half of the year!” Or how about this? “Wow, it’s nice to finally meet someone who doesn’t have my New England accent!”

As you can see, there are many different ways you could continue the conversation from here. If you get stuck in the beginning and run out of things to say, just ask her where she’s from, what she likes to do for fun, and what she’s doing that day. These are some of the easier topics to liven up a conversation. Asking her these things will usually work to keep building rapport and a connection between the two of you.

After you build a connection with her you want to go for the number close.

This could be one minute after the opener, or an hour later, depending on how much of a connection you want to build and how much time you actually surmise you have with her. However, getting her number is quite honestly the easiest part of the entire approach. If you have built any type of connection with the woman at all, she will have no aversion to handing over her digits.

If you’ve been talking to her for a while, and have built up a good connection, most likely you’ve touched upon some of the things you both like to do. If this is the case, you can bring one of those things back up, and suggest you two should get together and share that activity. Say for instance you were talking about how much you like to ice-skate; you could say “Hey, I have to get going soon, I’m running a little behind schedule now. It was great to meet you, though; we definitely have to go ice-skating together soon. What’s your number, so we can set this up?” With a set-up like this, she will almost certainly give you her number.

If you weren’t necessarily talking about any activity, and you don’t really have anything to bring back into the conversation that you could both do, fall back on something simpler: going to the bar with her for a drink, or simply planning to meeting up soon to “hang out.” Say something like, “I have to get running, but it was really great to meet you, Rachel. We should definitely grab a drink together soon. Do you have a number?” Or “I have to get running now. It was really nice meeting you, Ashley. We definitely need to hangout soon! What’s your number, so we can plan something out?” With either of these, she’ll surely give you her number.

After that, you can text to set up your date to hang out together. And that’s really all there is to it!

If you have any other questions or comments about the intricacies of how to approach a girl please share them below!