Shaft writes:
I’d like your thoughts on a recent date I had.
We were introduced through family. [Ed: Never a good idea if you play the short game.] We went on one date and it went well. Started 10 PM and didn’t end until 530AM.
Conversation was free and easy and I escalated slowly throughout the evening, although I didn’t push hard enough. When I needed to demonstrate value I did. When I told her to follow she obeyed. I dropped some good negs. I had problems with my ATM card but she had no problem paying until I straightened them out (we visited 4-5 venues) without a fuss. We said our goodbyes.
The second date is the one I’d like you to comment on. It was the next day and I called her and invited her out for drinks. She told me she’d call me after dinner and kept her word. She sounded surprised to hear from me so soon but didn’t hem or haw and we met within a half hour. This time we found a pool hall and I displayed my superiority while gently negging her.
HER: Am I really the worst pool player you’ve ever seen?
ME: It’s kind of tough to call. I knew this blind guy who liked to play…
She liked that one.
We moved to a lounge which had couches and single chairs. I guided her to a loveseat and she didn’t protest.
I spread out alpha style and put my arm up on the back, almost around her. We chatted for a while, light touching, teasing. She went to the bathroom and this is when the shit test started. I hadn’t had a real one so far that night or on the first date.
I noticed that after she returned from the bathroom another button on her shirt was undone and her hair was a little more tousled than before. She began by complementing my overall physique, but she then started to ask why I wore my clothes a little more loosely than usual. I told her it was for comfort. She told me she couldn’t tell whether or not I was in shape. As I was wearing a polo and an undershirt she said she could better judge if I removed the polo.
Let me say that a year ago I might have complied to a request like this without hesitating, but after some game research and restoring my manly dignity, I do not perform for women, nor do I give something for nothing. Nor would I be embarassed about what she would see. I don’t have a six pack but I’m tall, lean, with wide shoulders and v-shaped back.
I decided to see if she would put her money where her mouth was and told her if she wanted it she would have to kiss me. She said no. Right then I knew it was about control. If she had wanted an excuse to escalate she had it. I reframed by teasing her she didn’t impress me with her sales skills (she’s in sales). That bought me time to pay
and walk her out of the bar and home. It was about a forty minute walk. We had a good convo pretending to bargain over the price to see me without the outershirt.Halfway to her place I asked her if she could do me a favor. I took off my jacket and tossed it to her. “Can you hold this for me? I’m warm.” The smile on her face was priceless. She thought she was about to get what she wanted. A few minutes later when handing me back the jacket, she made an attempt to lift up my shirt. I gently stopped her hands and feigned disappointment that she would resort to trickery. The rest of the walk home I kept about half a step ahead.
As we reached her door I slowed but didn’t stop and said my goodbyes as I turned to continue home. She looked stunned that I didn’t hug her or peck her on the cheek. It was cordial but minimal with no contact.
As I walked away I was proud of myself for not selling out to desperation. My gut told me following an order for her would have spelled doom, but I know I missed an opportunity somewhere. Would she say yes to another date?
Appreciated,
Shaft
Even though this question from the reader is about his second date, the title of the post is about moving in for the kiss on the first date, since it is the first date when you should get physical with a girl. The majority of kiss-less first dates lead nowhere. It is also a bad idea to schedule a second date the very next day following the first date. This reader was one of the fortunate few to dodge some self-inflicted seduction-killing obstacles. The rest of his game — such as the handling of her shit tests — was good, and probably accounted for her continued interest.
Her are some basic rules about kissing on the first date:
- Do not kiss her when you meet her at the start of the first date. You are not as debonair or as European as you think you are, and neither is she. A kiss upon meeting is going to feel awkward for her and for you. This goes even in those first date cases where you previously had a sloppy make-out with her in the bar on the night when you scored her digits. Actually, it goes doubly for those instances. (Previous sloppy bar make-outs reveal your hand, so your job should be to temporarily disqualify yourself so she doesn’t think you are too easy.)
- Do not kiss her at the end of the first date unless there was significant physical contact during the date. Multiply the awkwardness of the initial meeting kiss by ten and you will know the feeling of planting a night-ending wet one on a girl at the end of a date that was woefully free of any physical connection.
- Do not attempt to force a nonexistent rapport by kissing the girl. This rule applies for any date, but its disregard is most evident on the first date. Many men will try to light a fuse in their dates by moving in for the kiss sans any physical groundwork, incorrectly thinking that their shared sterling, intellectual conversation was proof enough that she was ready for kissing. They are then flummoxed when she delivers the cheek turn, the “whoa, not so fast” rejoinder, or, worse, the “what do you think you’re doing?” lawyerspeak shut-down. Instead of the smooth move these men imagined in their heads it would be, they end up lurching clumsily from chit chat at a four foot distance to a lips-probing kiss flying in at the speed of light. Kissing is an emergent property of successfully executed game; it is not a standalone game maneuver that you can run in any context. If you haven’t escalated physical touching with a girl during a date, don’t think that a kiss after three hours of arms-crossed shop talk will advance the seduction.
- Do not go for the first date kiss in a crowded room. Venue bounce, drink, venue bounce again, settle into a sofa at a lounge, make out. Most girls lie to themselves that they are “not that kind of girl”; why give a girl an excuse to test her self-delusions by moving in for the kiss where a huge crowd can analyze the depravity of her sluttiness?
- The ideal first date kiss should happen sometime in the middle of the date. Kino escalation, growing intimacy, then kissing, followed by a cooling off push-away, more light banter, reinitiated kino, etc… if you can physically peak in the middle to last third of the date, you will leave her wanting more while simultaneously avoiding the dreaded last minute kiss of desperation that poisons so many dates. Mid-date physical peaking also prevents ASD (anti-slut defense).
So to sum up, don’t kiss at the very beginning or the desperate end of a first date, don’t force a kiss if she isn’t giving indicators of interest, escalate physical contact until you ideally begin kissing her in the middle to last third of a date, and wait to kiss her when you’re settled into an intimate location (this includes a back alley if the weather is warm).
Caveat: If you are going for a bust-or-bail first date same night lay, kiss her whenever the fuck you feel like it. An end-of-official-date kiss is simply a prelude to a beginning-of-unofficial-date night of fornication.
The ideal kiss window should open effortlessly if your game is tight. Girls who are being seduced properly *want* to be kissed. Always check for dilating pupils, hair twisting, leg opening, lip licking, heel dangling, head cocking, bar stool swiveling, drink swilling, incidental thigh touching, and hand on chin head propping.
To the reader: it’s hard to know if she’ll agree to a third date based on how you described the second date ending. It looks like you fell into the trap of overgaming to compensate for some fuck-ups you may have done on the first date, and to reestablish hand after she denied you the kiss when you playfully challenged her to one. In your zeal to demonstrate non-neediness, you forgot that you have to make a physical move on a girl to get the ball rolling toward sex. There is a fine line between slyly camouflaging your intentions and showing no intention at all. Two dates have now gone by without any kissing or intimate touching, from what you have written. This is a recipe for a seduction about to fizzle.
What you did by nonchalantly walking off was probably better than ending the date on an awkward goodnight cheek kiss where she held all the cards, but you shouldn’t have put yourself in that situation to begin with. Had you prepped the courtship by kissing her earlier in the evening (let’s say during drinks at the lounge), the date-ending goodbye would not have been a test of wills pitting your aloofness against her coyness. Sure, by unexpectedly denying her the long-awaited goodbye kiss of prostration you may have won the battle, but you lost the war well before your tepid final flanking maneuver.
In the future, push for kissing by the middle of the first date, but don’t overdo it. Making out with a girl for too long and too hard on the first date — again, unless you are gunning for a SNL — will gradually lower your value and, hence, raise her buyer’s remorse, leading to flaking on subsequent dates. The perfect seduction moves two steps forward, one step back. No kissing = celibate LJBF. Too much kissing = flaking. Ideal kissing = mid-date, in measured doses. You want to break the lip barrier without making a spectacle of your horniness.
Always remember that the alpha male demonstrates by his actions complete mastery over his sexual desire, and knows when and how to parcel it. A man with simmering, feral arousal that he can control is intoxicating to women. This is why make-outs followed abruptly by takeaways or teasing push-offs is so attractive to women — they love that they can’t figure out how much you really want to fuck them.
When you kiss on the first date, stop before she does, lean back to talk some more, and chastise her lightly for moving too fast. Repeat a couple times during the night, then hold her hand as you walk her home. Kiss her *before* you get to her door, then drop her off about twenty feet from her place (to reduce the impression of formality that surrounds a door-step departure), giving her a hug if you wish. Then tell her you had a great time AND LEAVE. Do not tell her you’ll call her, or try to set up a second date. Just leave, and she’ll thank you later, in the best way women know, for blessing her happily restless sleep that night with the inscrutability of your actions.
[crypto-donation-box]
