I always struggled with escalation. It wasn’t even funny the number of girls I got on dates, just talked all evening to and then went home sad because “it hadn’t happened”. Then I discovered that it doesn’t “just happen” and you actually have to make it happen, you have to escalate. This was news to me. Like most beta chodes my experiences had been the same: I’d had various dates in my life and on some of those dates we just “hit it off” and hooked up. Unknown to me what was happening in those situations was that the girl was chosing me and she was making it happen, which does happen to betas when they meet a girl that likes them. Actually deciding yourself that you want a girl then you making it happen is a whole different ball game. It’s like mastering subbuteo then trying your hand at premier league football.
Escalation was a mystery. It was like watching a magic show. How on earth was it done? What tricks were guys using to take a simple bar, a table, a few drinks and a lovely assistant then… poof! hey presto! be snogging her an hour later. I was utterly clueless.
Thankfully I was friends with some accomplished players and both Jimmy Jambone and Krauser tried to help by giving me primitive ‘escalation models’ to work with. Jimmy’s was deliberately simple, crafted for aspergic players like me. He’d stripped out everything extraneous and crafted a very simple step by step system to follow. What you’d do is just be normal and chat normal comfort stuff with a girl, then at timed intervals say a series of pre-prepared statements to her, to gradually escalate the sexual tension, then after the last one you’d simply make a move and try and kiss her. There were contingency plans for rebuffed kiss-close attempts and for retries. It was retarded and naturals would find it offensive. A series of pre-prepared statements? Please! But for the clueless with women… it was gold-dust. At that point dates weren’t pleasant, they were uncomfortable, confusing affairs where I’d sit in front of a hot girl and chunter on, clueless as to why the whole thing felt more and more unpleasant as the night wore on (clue: because she realized I wasn’t taking it anywhere). The first time I used it it was like witchcraft. I was burbling on with the same boring chit-chat then I dropped my first statement on time and just saw this change in the girl’s demenaour. I felt a change in tension in the air. The second statement had the same effect. Unbelievable!
After this Krauser taught me how to run The Questions Game and use that as a framework for escalation. I loved it. It gave me a structure to work through, and it worked. It was a very guided, very precise way to deliberately re-route the conversation from digital to analogue, create some tension then release it with a kiss. The Questions Game is brilliant. It’s a structure in which the amateur can flail around, but with his energy being guided in a certain way, and gradually learn the underlying concepts which elude him. It’s like the way Daniel-san thought “why is that old bastard getting me to wax his car for weeks on end… I want to learn Karate!”.
From then on the way I’d run dates would be quite rigid. I’d take girls to a venue one, somewhere non-threatening, like a tea shop. I’d then “run comfort” and be normal. I’d then bounce them to venue two and begin my Questions Game, the goal being to kiss them at the end of the game, in venue two. Never mind venue three and SNL’s, that was beyond me at that point!
I started to resolve my escalation problem and I started to kiss-close girls on dates, something I’d rarely done before. However, my dates were less than optimal. I’d be quite tense, and I’d be anticipating venue two when I’d meet the girl. I’d just chunter through my ‘comfort’ phase, waiting till I’d feel I’d chatted enough and been normal enough for long enough to bounce and start my escalation. I was constantly looking ahead and just waiting for the moment till I could get on with the escalation. I started to relax much more during dates and the fear started to leave me. After all I didn’t have to make a move during venue one, I could just be normal and chat: easy. And in venue two, I just walked through the well-trodden path of my questions game, got to the end, took a deep breath and Made my Move, with a firm contingency plan in action. These are really the things that reduced fear and anxiety on dates for me:
- Realizing I didn’t have to make a move on Venue One
- Having a set system to escalate with
- Realizing I HAD to put my balls on the line at some point and make a move
- Preparing a contingency mindset for dealing with rebuffs
‘Fear on a date’? you ask. Yes. Fear. I was intimidated by dates and they were not fun. Let’s not be a dick here; if you’re a guy who’s great with girls and doesn’t need game then why are you reading this blog? This is for guys who aren’t great with girls, who were never naturals and who struggled. Guys like that don’t like dates at the start and advice like this is for the likes of them.
It was thanks to the date model in Nick’s book, and the discussions around it, that I realized that I was not acting in an optimal fashion. I was in essence wasting my venue one. I was seeing the comfort as something to proceed through and deliver until the gateway to the escalation phase was ready. I just ran comfort for an hour or so, bounced then began escalation. I crucially failed to realize that during this first phase you have a golden opportunity to create attraction in the girl in a kind of ‘drive by’ way. I wasn’t doing this: I was wasting venue one.
Venue One is both the most powerful and the easiest part of the date. In venue one you know you aren’t going to try to make a move so the scary bit is far away, allowing you to relax. This relaxation gives you a priceless opportunity to just sit back and display your masculine value without any pressure; your confidence, intelligence, wit, charm, etc. You also have an invaluable opportunity to display non-neediness. By what you don’t do you can build great attraction. You don’t give her too much attention. You don’t agree with her too much. You don’t try and impress her. You don’t boast or plant ridiculous DHVs.
Finally I realized that venue one was the money shot. It was like a rubber band. The more work I did in venue one then the more this value was built and the more this potential momentum was created, like stretching a piece of elastic. Without having to give any lines or reach over and try and kiss a girl, by just sitting there and being myself and talking I could build such momentum that the kiss close started to even manifest itself before I’d gotten near the questions game.
Recently my dates have entered a new phase, a phase beyond this model. I’ve started to be so relaxed and so… correct… during venue one that I’m starting to close girls before I even get to venue two. The last couple of dates I’ve had I ran venue one so well that without even needing any kind of ‘escalation model’ I’d escalated enough, without trying, in venue one that I knew before even reaching venue two that the girl wanted to kiss me. I just walked them through a park, pulled them into me, said a few words and kissed them. Easy. It felt so natural. And it was all from that elastic tension, that value, that potential momentum having been built up. Escalation is no longer a thing that gets done at a certain point, it is something which happens on a continuum from the moment I meet the girl.
I suppose I’m saying this: that I started out having no escalation at all. To learn it I had to have a little system and a ‘phase’ to do my escalation. Then I realised that the tension for this escalation was built much earlier than I realised. Now I realise I don’t even need an escalation system at all. Naturals start out, age eighteen, around where I am now. Lucky them.
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