I started recording audio of my sets last month. I use the Olympus VP-10, it cost $80 but was worth it. The quality is good, the battery life is long, and it is USB so it’s easy to transfer to my computer. I use quicktime to trim audio files down to my approaches. It’s a little cringe sometimes to hear the mistakes you make in set, but it gives you more feedback which speeds up the learning process. I should have done it sooner.
Anyway, as I was listening to my sets, and a few instadates, sometimes sharing them with wings for their feedback (and roasting), a number of both tiny and glaring nice guy behaviors started to appear as patterns, reminding me of one of the fundamental mantras of game:
Patterns emerge over time.
Mystery
Nice guy behaviors can be more articulately defined as polite yet undeserved pedestalization taught by society – parents who mean well, hollywood, bad advice from girls, etc.
The opposite of nice guy behavior is push-pull behavior. You’re not flat and boring, you’re shifting sands, keeping her on her toes. This gets her attention. She notices. She may start to feel attraction.
I’m just going to rattle off my list that I’ve been compiling for a few weeks now.
- Saying “sorry” upon stopping her or anything that implies her time is worth something, e.g. Mr. V’s “really quickly” also has this problem
- Saying “wow” instead of “ok” or “fair enough” when she tells you something. You don’t have to be so easily impressed. Or so reactive. You stopped her, remember?
- Not teasing properly, and just complimenting her. You have to take back the compliment or you are subtly putting her on a pedestal.
- Stacking with subsequent compliments is bad. If she doesn’t take the compliment well or corrects you, you must throw it back at her with a push (credit to @Mr.V Daygame) “I’m not French” “Darn, I wanted you to join my pantomime club.”
- Letting a conversation drone on. “She will let you be as boring as you can accidentally make it.” –@Mr.V Daygame
- Not setting a sexual enough frame, more bluntly stated as “hiding your dick” and you can spike and compliment her legs, her eyes, her hair, etc.
- Testing the sexualization by stepping in when the opportunity presents itself. If she unconsciously steps back, that tells you it’s more friendly or she has a bf or isn’t comfortable yet. If she takes it, that’s almost universally a good sign.
- Not challenging her. No is a good thing to say, but challenging her makes you stand out. The main point is to show you don’t take her too seriously. Taking her at face value – she’s used to that, she expects it. When you challenge her, she notices it because you’re different. It also conveys subtly that you might be equal or higher status which gets her attention.
- Accepting her frame. I recently lost a frame by talking about fur on a girls coat. “It’s fake fur” was her response. I talked about fake leather in her shoes and accused her of being a vegan. Not bad, but I fell into her frame. She was a Brazilian model I stopped on a cold day, and while she enjoyed my stop and teasing, after I lost the frame, she was suddenly cold enough to have to go on her way.
- Asking too many questions in a row. Usually girls “have to go” after you start interviewing them. Similarly, if you stack 2-3 times, and she corrects you each time but doesn’t really hook, continuing to try is just cringe.
- Being too thirsty. Being too eager is often the opposite of hiding your dick. There is a balance. I don’t really have this problem during approaches, but I have been that guy over text, pushing too hard or too soon for a meetup, bending over backwards to schedule something, double texting, texting more lines of text than she does.
- Accepting bad behavior. Continuing to provide attention after a girl mistreats you (doesn’t agree to date requests for a week or two – no one is that busy, doesn’t show up – explanation or not), etc.
- Apologizing. Most of the time you don’t need to. Err on the side of not apologizing. “I feel bad for you…” is more effective. On a related note, I find myself correcting girls who over apologize – “you don’t need to apologize for that” (Mr.V, after reading this, said it’s better to say “You gotta stop apologizing” and I agree that is more direct and probably better) and it usually feels like the right thing to do, probably because I get annoyed with people (men and women) who apologize too much.
Overexplaining
Overexplaining was one of the biggest things I was doing wrong. That’s why it gets its own list. I was going into too much depth about my vivid experiences, clever reasoning and imaginative ideas. Being clever and imaginative are great qualities but they need to be streamlined for seduction. You get some points for having it, but too much of anything and she will get bored. @jimmy_jambone in his interview with Rivelino said something like “When on a date the game is 10% and the rest is just being normal.”
- Explaining your logical and reasoning too much, instead just describe decisions and accomplishments/achievements. Another way of describing this is informative communication vs direct communication. She feels your leadership and success and feels safe when you make decisions and stick to them and communicate it directly (a testament to the strength of your frame). Explaining too much signals investment in converting her, which implies you are not as secure in your frame. It is also informative communication and more simply, she will just get bored. Boring is bad.
- Overdoing achievements and status and job success can also fall into the trap mentioned immediately above. Girls hate it when a guy won’t shut up about how successful he is. I actually downplay some of my success, and I’m experimenting to figure out the right amount to present so she recognizes I’m successful, but it doesn’t come across as overexplaining to prove it to her.
- Passion sharing is good. Overexplaining is bad. There is a balance between them. It’s unlikely that a girl is likely to truly share your passion, and if she does, that’s great, but it’s not that valuable in the grand scheme of seduction (often it is conversational quicksand); you should seduce her first and then talk more about that shared passion after consummation. She more than likely wants to know that you have one, and that you’re authentic and not full of shit. Talk about a passion of yours enough, but not so much that it seems like you’re trying to convert her to your pokemon religion, as going too deep into a passion might even come across as autism.
- Explaining yourself at all. Instead of “I just had to come talk to you” or “I was just curious about you”, I liked it is the only explanation you need. She doesn’t care much for your explanation – she will ask for it if she wants it – usually the only explanation I need to provide comes in the form of “wait, where did you see me”, “back there” *point*.
- One common overexplanation I would use in set is when I run out of things to say sometimes, I try to buy some more time with an explanation “that’s all I got” which would sometimes create the vacuum and get her talking. Stronger is “that’s all the attention I can give you” or just using silence without calling it out (riskier in a street stop as her momentum might flare up again).
There is a chance that trimming away all of these nice guy behaviors makes you too smooth, or too brutish. That’s probably a good problem to have, I’m not there yet.
By fixing these things and becoming unconsciously competent in them, you are also much less likely to slide back into being a beta if you do get into a relationship. Holding your frame, keeping her on her toes, prevents her from getting bored and keeps the spice going in the relationship and keeps the sexy times rolling.
One other thing that happened as I went through this process of trimming out nice guy behaviors is I became much less tolerable to girls I had been “friends” with. I’ve been friends with a few girls for something like 10 years, they’re too old for me to be interested in dating them. I don’t ask them for advice or even talk much about my life because they get triggered when I talk about dating a girl much younger than them, and if I do anything wrong with regards to seducing a girl and ask for advice (like when I escalated too quickly without pumping the breaks on a nice German girl in July and she promptly left of my apartment) they take the girls side over mine. One of them literally said “you’re an asshole that was just trying to fuck [the German girl]” whereas I had genuinely liked that German girl. Haven’t spoken to that “friend” since. I don’t need that kind of energy in my life. I actually wonder if being friends with girls is just being accepting and tolerant of their bad behavior (most of the time – I am sure there are exceptions, I don’t care to explain further). When I started recognizing it in daygame, I started recognizing it in other areas of my life.
Daygame taught and continues to reinforce all this. Nightgame and online game didn’t. Do daygame. Or don’t. I don’t actually care what you do. No one is coming to save you (my favorite mantra whenever I feel approach anxiety).