09/6/09Filed under: Pickup

Quote:

Dating Coach Braddock on Opening Mixed Sets

What’s the Situation?

If you watch for a minute or two, you can quickly tell if they are dating or not. You can usually tell if they are dating just by watching how they interact with one another. If I can tell they are dating, I move on. There are to many girls to try to mess with that and it’s a quick way to get in a fight.  You don’t get any bonus points for taking a girl from her boyfriend or some guy she likes.

• If they are holding hands or overly comfortable with simple touching you can usually tell and they have likely been dating for a while.
• If they are overly physical and can’t get there hands off of each other, but neither seems nervous or overly excited, they are probably newly dating and still in that puppy love stage.
• If she looks really excited and kind of cautious as he escalates physically, then it is probably a guy hitting on a girl….(and he’s doing a pretty good job)
• If it’s a guy playfully escalating physically, but she only plays along for a second and then pushes him away or he stops and starts talking to someone else, the are probably just friends.
• If she looks like a deer in the headlights as he tries to escalate, then it’s likely that it’s a creepy guy trying to escalate, but she isn’t interested.

When approaching mixed sets you have a couple of options.

1. You’re Getting Approach Invitations:

An approach invitation is defined as, “The girl is giving you signals she is interested in you before you have  spoken to her.”

If you are getting DEFINITE approach invitations, then I would just go direct on the girl and the guys will usually melt away.

As Tim from RSD would say, “You turn everyone around her into spectators.”
It’s pretty awesome when you can make this hit. It’s pretty risky and you better make sure the guys around her aren’t her boyfriends and aren’t the kind of guys who would fight you if you guessed wrong.

I’ve done this a bunch of times and I’ve seen Mr. M, Dahunter, and Helicase do this a bunch of times and I’ve never had/seen an altercation.  However, I never do it on a girl who is definitely dating one of the guys.

This doesn’t have to be some overly bold move and it doesn’t have to be rude to the guys.  I usually just tap her on the shoulder or gently turn her by the arm, so she has to turn away from the group and say something like,

“Listen, I was over there with my friends and I would kick myself if I didn’t come say hi, I’m Braddock.”

Or..

“Hi, you are really cute, why haven’t we met yet?  I’m Braddock.”  If the approach invitations were over the top from her I would go even more bold….. “Excuse me, are you dating any of these guys? Because, if not you should come with me.  Let’s grab a drink.”

When you open like this, you will be able to tell real fast where you stand.  If her jaw drops and she smiles or says something that shows she loves it, then you have basically hit a homerun.  Nothing the guys say from this point will mess you up unless you let it.

If one of the guys says something out of frustration, just be polite and say, “I’m sorry man, is this your girlfriend?” and before he can answer, turn to her and say, “I apologize, I didn’t know you guys were dating.” If the girl is interested she will almost always quickly say, “We aren’t dating.”  At that point, don’t laugh or be a dick, the other guy is in an awkwardly huge hole at this point.  Simply look back at him and squint like you are confused and say, “Oh,” like you are confused.   Leave an awkward silence as he squirms and then go right back to talking to the girl.

Usually it won’t come to that.  When guys see that the girl is into you, they will usually fade out.  Guys usually only act like dicks to guys who they think they can mess with.  However, it does happen.  If you do get resistance from a guy and you use the above, as soon as you shut him down and the girl is still interested…MOVE HER!

You don’t want to stand there jousting with that dipshit for 30 minutes.  Shut him down once, get back to the girl, then move her as soon as it’s reasonably possible.

2. If you don’t have approach invitations:

If I was confused about the guy girl dynamic going on in the group I would NOT go super direct and I would rarely go direct at all.

I would break into the group in a much more neutral way, get to know the group dynamics and see if the juice was worth the squeeze or even squeezable at all.

Option 1:  Open The Girl

Open the girl and introduce yourself to the guys if /when the guys tried to come in. Do not try to be rude and do not act like you just got caught doing something wrong.  If you act like you are doing something wrong then the guy will smell the fear and blow you out. He’ll act like a dick and try to dismiss you and the woman will start to act more dismissive to you as well.

Just treat him like he is a random acquaintance of yours that just walked up. Do not start kissing his ass.  Just be polite and try to build some rapport.  Mirror his level of investment.  If you ask him a few question and he gives you half ass answers or smart ass answers, stop talking to him.  Only acknowledge him if you have to.

If on the other hand he is warm and friendly….be warm and friendly back.  The ideal situation would be to get the girl attracted to you and make a few new friends.  The ideal worse case scenario is that the girl isn’t interested, but you make a few new friends.

Be warm to him just long enough to get his respect and make him feel comfortable, and then slowly start shifting your attention back to the girl.   Don’t make it feel transparent.  I mean, don’t be cool until the girl is cool and then start being rude or dismissive to the guy if was being cool.  Just wean him off slowly and eventually isolate her.  It doesn’t need to be at his expense or make him feel like you are some sneaky guy who tricked him.  Ideally he would be fine with it.

Now, the key question that everyone knows you must ask if you don’t know is:

“So, how do you guys know each other?”

That one little question has saved me a million awkward situations where I almost made a move, but found out that it was a guys fiancé or sister.  It will also expose a poser guy who “wishes” it was his girlfriend.

You will be able to tell what the score is quickly after asking this question. I won’t ask this until I think the girl is somewhat attracted to me or if I can tell the guy is getting mad.

If she is actually his girlfriend then do not just run off, that looks weird.  Once again, do not act like you did something wrong. You are just a chatty guy who happened to start a conversation with a guy and his girlfriend, no big deal.

You technically haven’t done anything wrong. Put his mind at ease by talking to him and getting to know him a little bit. Meet the rest of his group if he is a warm guy. If he’s not, find a natural place to excuse yourself and move on.

Option 2:  Open The Guy

In a situation where you have ZERO approach invitations I actually find opening the guy(s) to be a much sounder option.  Most people in the community dismiss the art of “guy game,” and focus on ways to “blow the other guy out.”  This is lame for many reasons, mainly because it’s not very effective if they guy is already in her social circle.  This strategy only really works consistently on new guys trying to approach a girl you are already talking to or orbiter guys in her social circle who really annoy her.

The idea of “guy game” may sound silly, but it is actually one of the most important skills you can learn.  It is useful on multiple levels.  It is great at getting you out of potentially dangerous situations and powerful for quickly making friends and getting introductions to really hot girls.

One of our newest instructors, Calabrese, has the best “guy game” I have seen. Calabrese will regularly opens guys and almost always ends up meeting one his girl buddies.  More importantly, Calabrese always ends up walking out of any bar he goes into with 5 or 6 new good friends.  Guys love him and as a result, the girls that are with that guy love Calabrese.

Calabrese says that breaking into the group through the guys is much easier than opening the really hot girls.  You get much less resistance from them if you do it right and by simply knowing them, the girls of the group are twice as likely to be friendly to you when you do finally meet them.

Guy game is easier to learn too.  You’ve been practicing this your whole life.  Calabrese says getting rapport with guys is easy.  All you need to do is dance around 3 topics to get rapport almost instantly: Sports, girls, beer. That’s it.

I personally would never open guys with a traditional opener.  If a guy did that to me I would laugh in his face and quickly dismiss him.  It is to transparent.

I usually just ask them if X local sports team won tonight. Or I make a statement about how hot the girls are in here.

I might playfully make a statement about how he better quit staring at my girlfriend as I point to the fattest oldest woman in the place, just to get him laughing. Then I might follow that with, “Did you graduate from Oklahoma? You look really familiar?”

Or….

“Are you friends with Brian Hawkins? I swear I met you at one of his parties.”

I would then have a 2 to 3 minute conversation about random stuff and then say, “You guys celebrating something tonight or what?” He’ll say…bla bla bla…”

Then I’ll say, “That girl right there is really cute, is that your girlfriend?”

Or….

I might say, “These girls are really cute, are you dating one of them?”

(Assuming you built a decent rapport) he will most likely break down the entire group dynamics for you and often times introduce you to the girls.

“I’m kinda talking to that Sara girl and that blond over there is dating my cousin, but that blond right there is single and she is a slut. Let me introduce you.”

I’ll be in New York doing a bootcamp with Calabrese.  If you guys are interested I’ll get him to break down guy game in greater detail.

That’s all the time we have for tonight.  Until next time remember, no fat chicks.

-Braddock

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