Great job on providing so much detail. Some points of dialogue you thought were important tipping points would be helpful too. Next time, consider just writing it in the FR section and posting a link here if you'd like feedback - that way it will be easier for other people to find it!
Also, congrats on landing a date with a HB9 - that's fantastic.
My mindset was that "hopefully I can run some game and get her to become interested in me" rather than "I know she's already interested in me--this date is 100% going to end in a lay". I knew my mindset was wrong but I was having difficulty changing it.
Expecting sex isn't necessarily a good mindset either. It's great to be confident in your abilities, vibe, and character, but I think it was Hector that said "the day you expect sex is the day you no longer receive sex". You can be confident that you have the ability to seduce her, but her being interested =/= her being seduced.
I would argue the best mindset to go into a date to is, "I'm about to have fun with a new girl, let's see if I can lead her to bed". This way it's about enjoying yourself, with your radar on her signals to take escalation / sexual windows that you can jump through to get her in bed.
I am still nervous (shit) so I find myself being a little hyperaware of the vibe that I am putting off (trying to be mysterious and tell her as little about myself as possible). However, I'm getting her to laugh a lot and I'm deep diving pretty comfortably.
Unfortunately, being hyperaware can create rigidness and over-gaming, which she'll pick up on.
That's all good that your nervous with a beautiful girl since you're not quite used to it yet. Meditation & cold showers are two great ways to practice calming yourself and building up more resistance to stimuli that make you react in this way. Exposure though, is by far the best way to get over this.
Also, I am looking at her with serious eye contact that's probably screaming "fuck me, fuck me, fuck me" and her eyes seem to be darting all over the place as if she's not comfortable holding eye contact for very long. It's like she knows that if we hold it for long I'm going to make a move and she's not comfortable with that yet.
Overall, I'm getting the impression that this girl is comfortable talking to me and getting to know me, but her body language is closed off as if she's saying that she doesn't want to escalate physically yet. We had a couple of instances where the eye contact was solid and I could've grabbed her head for the kiss, but it just didn't seem right to do that with someone who has their arms folded and doesn't really seem comfortable with kino yet.
If she can't sustain ANY eye contact when you're giving her fuck me eyes then consider toning it down a bit. You might have created too much tension.
Being able to create tension is a great skill to have, but is used best when you ease the tension down to make her feel comfortable. Then doing this multiple times gets her more aroused and invested in you.
Two ways to break tension is by making a sexual joke, or making her laugh and touching her hand with a smile.
Laughter can be thought of as the release of tension.
If you felt the vibe during those moments where eye contact was good, maybe you should have gone for a kiss to open her up more - I've seen this work. It
can break barriers.
But, since she was closed off, more often than not she isn't ready. Again I'd guess you built too much tension without releasing it.
After about 45 minutes of this, we finish our wine and I tell her I know another bar down the road and we should get another drink there. She agrees to it but at this point I have it in my head that she's not really interested in me, so what's the point. The rest of our conversation at this second bar is awkwardly superficial because I'm not really interested anymore and she's getting that same vibe.
Ahh, then you got in your head and what good vibes you had going dissolved. Sucks man, it happens.
Anyway, I ask her if she wants to get out of here and she says she has to meet a friend. So I tell her "that's fine" and she leaves and I go take a piss. Went home and passed out.
At least you shot your shot. Though with this as your closing point I'd say you probably just overthought some things and became too technically minded - asking a girl to come home with you when there's no vibe left almost never works.
Any tips on studying game hard and then going into interactions with a clear mind, trusting that the game is present in your subconscious? I find this to be especially difficult. However, I run my best game when I simply act like myself and then when a situation arises, a game technique will just pop up into my conscious mind and it is the right one. This is when I feel like I am "on my game".
Yo, when I started learning game I was the EXACT same way. I wanted to know everything right, this, second. I drown myself in GC articles and studied a million ways to do things and would go out on dates and try to synthesize them all together.
I remember hearing a great analogy about learning the aspects of game one thing at a time. Franco's podcast, I believe. You're building a ladder that you can use to climb up. To do that, you need to make each rung of the ladder really strong. So, it's important to take it one rung at a time, make it strong, and then keep building them as you go up the ladder. By the time you're at the top, you now have a super sturdy ladder that in most situations isn't gonna break on you.
Learning a shit ton of different ideas and techniques at once
can work (I know because I've done it), but long term it really is better to go out, do your shit, and then come back with a FR to analyze what went wrong. Then you find a solution for that problem, and go back out to fix it.. until you run into your next problem. Rinse and repeat. Otherwise, you'll be spending time randomly building rungs in your ladder, when your bottom or middle section might not even support your weight. And as you may find, some of the rungs higher up the ladder may
already be strong without you knowing it.
So - by keeping one thing in mind at a time when you go out and calming yourself with things like meditation and cold showers, you achieve more success in that one thing and don't cloud your head with all these conflicting technical skills / dogmas.
Any tips for getting this girl to feel more comfortable with physical touch and eye contact? I was thinking maybe there was some game we could play where we hold hands or stare into each other's eyes or something to make it less stressful for her. Our conversation made it seem like she was really interested in me, but her closed-off body language was preventing me from escalating physically.
Yea, like I said simply using humor and creating laughter along side touch and eye contact can ease her into being comfortable.
If you want a specific technique, try having a staring contest, and slowly start smiling once you're into it. She'll start smiling back, and then you can hit her with a full on >=) and she'll more than likely laugh and look away or bury her head in her hands. It's a simple & fun game I've seen go quite well.
After this FU and not feeling like I was on my game yesterday I am feeling kind of demoralized today and not really wanting to study/approach. Any tips on staying persistent with game even when things haven't been going your way for a little while?
I've found simply just going back out will eventually land you with minor success.
Then this turns into minor success --> momentum --> good vibe --> major success.
As far as a mindset, believe me I know how easy it is to be hard on yourself. Just recognize the fact that this is all part of the process, you're learning from your mistakes, and they benefit you abundantly. It's good you had that experience. Laugh at yourself for silly mistakes, grow from them, and carry on. Don't take yourself
too seriously.
You're learning how to play a game. Like most games, you can't expect you'll always win (;
Keep it up champ.
Hue