What comes next though is that one thing that's troubled so many men throughout history: once you've found one that you like, how do you get to know a girl?
In this post, I'm going to take a look with you at the old concept of "screening and qualifying," at how men usually get to know girls – and the mistakes they make – and at deep diving once again.
Best of all, I'm going to introduce you to a very different way of thinking about getting to know women from the traditional screening and qualifying mindset that's so pervasive out there right now, that's guaranteed to help you fit the pieces together in a much more streamlined way.
Let's dive in.
Mistakes Men Make Trying to Get to Know a Girl
When most men meet a girl they like, they make a valiant effort to get to know her – and usually end up doing it all wrong. Common things guys do include:- Talking about themselves a lot
- Trying to be impressive
- Trying to carry much of the weight of the conversation
- Actively seeking to keep things moving smoothly constantly
- Being clumsy or obvious in things like screening and qualifying
- Acting overly interested in uninteresting topics
- Venturing onto uninteresting topics themselves
Why do guys do this? It mostly comes from lack of understanding. Lack of understanding of some basic core social dynamics that influence how we become intrigued by and attracted to others.
For instance, most men take the "be overwhelmingly impressive" approach to attempting to woo women. The thought behind it is, "If I can communicate to her just how amazing I am, she won't have any choice but to become insanely attracted to me!"
Except, attraction doesn't quite work that way.
Women are hardwired to not take men's words at face value. The easiest way to present yourself falsely is through the words you speak; because of this, his spoken word is the least reliable indicator of a man's value as a potential boyfriend or lover. And women know this, both intuitively and (quite often) consciously.
The man who's a skilled conversationalist realizes this. This is why he seeks not to impress, but to understate and use humbleness to remove some of the glare from his presentation with others. A woman isn't going to feel comfortable opening herself up to you when she feels like you're positioned 3,000 feet above her as vastly more accomplished and ridiculously superior. Instead, she'll close off.
And this is what happens with most men's efforts to get to know women: they cause women to close off, either by being too impressive, or by trying too hard to force rapport.
All those mistakes we listed above either end up making a man seem like too much, or like he's working too hard to come across a certain way or achieve a certain objective. He isn't using the effortlessness of sprezzatura and he isn't minding the Law of Least Effort. He's seeming too high and mighty, or too artificial and needy.
What the Seducer Knows about Getting to Know Women
A man who's a seducer doesn't make those mistakes mentioned above. Part of that is his mindset – he doesn't view getting to know a girl to be as much of a life-or-death kind of deal as an average man does, and so doesn't place inordinate amounts of pressure on himself to perform – but a larger part of it is his simply knowing what women want, like, and enjoy in a man they've met, and his knowing how to genuinely connect with a woman and get to know her. The seducer knows that most women aren't pop stars or supermodels or CEOs. He knows he doesn't have to be the most impressive man of her life to catch her attention – and that, in fact, positioning himself as such is likely to put him out of her league. And he knows that women don't want to meet a man who wants to tell them all about himself – they want to meet a man who wants to know all about them.
But not just any man. They want a man who's charming and attractive – a man they're going to want to open up to.
Women want to open themselves up to a man they're attracted to off the bat.
That takes working on your fundamentals – on things like how to be a sexy man and on things like understanding why girls like bad boys and how you can use that knowledge to make yourself into a more attractive man.
But even if you haven't yet started working on your core fundamentals, there are still women who like you and want to open themselves up to you. You cross paths with these women all the time – the girl in line at the coffee place whose gaze lingered on you a little too long; the woman you met at happy hour the other day who couldn't seem to get enough of talking to you. All you need to do is find these women – and get to know them.
And it's not about being impressive. Nor is it about putting the weight of the conversation on your back and carrying it forward. Nor is it about struggling, tooth-and-clawing it, fighting to make an interaction work.
If a girl likes you, you shouldn't have to fight her to get to know her. It should be easy... right?
Screening, Qualifying, and Connection-Building
The first thing you normally learn about within the circles of men training for success with women is a concept known as "screening and qualifying." It's an old standby that's been a fixture in the industry for a long time because, quite frankly, it works.Screening is the term for the practice of (usually) asking women questions about themselves to get to know them better. Statements can also be used to encourage women to self-screen, but for beginners the easiest things to start off with typically are screening questions.
A few very basic examples so you know what I’m talking about:
- "Do you cook?"
- "What sort of creative stuff do you do?"
- "Do you travel at all?"
Screening is great, wonderful, and absolutely essential. BUT, one of the things you're often told about it is completely wrong.
A lot of the guys in the seduction industry recommend "screening hard" to "show women you have standards." They're coming from that same mindset that you need to "display higher value" in order to "impress" women, basically. In this instance, by screening you "impress women with your standards."
Actually, for a while I thought about screening this way myself. It's a pervasive mindset. But there was something about it that never quite clicked for me mentally...
But we'll come back to that in a second.
There's a second part to screening, and it's known as "qualifying." Your screens won't get far without qualifying statements, which are, simply put, how you show a woman your approval of her answers. At least, again, that's the thought behind it in mainstream seduction circles.
So, an exchange with a screen like the following occurs:
Guy: Can you cook? Girl: I sure can! I've been cooking since I was ten.And in response, the guy qualifies the girl to reinforce his approval of her passing his screen:
Guy: Oh, that's great! I love girls who can cook.And as far as building connections and boosting attraction goes, screening does its job really well. Screening works, hands down.
But the explanations for why it works always seemed a little clunky to me.
"Screen a girl to show her you have standards. Then, qualify her to show you approve of her and get her viewing you as higher value and an authority figure."
That felt a little... misunderstood to me.
Once I started putting together the framework of connection building that became deep diving though, things started to click better and make more sense.
I realized that people became comfortable with other people and let their guards down the more connected to someone else they felt. And as they became comfortable and as their guards went down, they allowed themselves to become attracted.
Actually, that last part's a concept I owe to my old business partner, MNX. He first introduced me to the idea that a lot of women are controlling themselves and preventing themselves from feeling attraction.
They're putting the dampener on their feelings for men.
And as I learned more and more about connection building, I began to realize why:
It's because most men don't make women feel comfortable, connected, and understood.And people don't open themselves up to people they don't feel comfortable, connected, and understood with. They keep their defenses up, raise the bridge over the moat, and plop archers into their towers. They stay at the ready to defend against attacks.
But when you build a connection with them – when you make them feel comfortable and understood – those defenses come down. The bridge gets lowered and the archers head to the cantina for a pint of ale.
So, building connections helps people to lower their defenses and really feel around you.
And what's one of the key tenets of building solid connections with people? Helping them to feel like you know them better. By finding out more and deeper and broader things about women, you enable them to connect to you more thoroughly.
And by enabling women to connect to you more thoroughly, you enable them to allow themselves to feel attraction.
What I realized was that screening worked not because it "shows women you have standards," but because it helps women to CONNECT to you! It helps them to help you know more and more about them, and thus they begin to feel increasingly comfortable, connected, and understood – and, thus, they put their guards down and allow themselves to let their mounting attraction for you run free.
This is also why women you don't screen properly go into auto-rejection and leave; they start feeling like you aren't getting to know them and don't care to, and eventually the conversation feels to uncomfortable for them to remain in and they make their exits.
Screening works because it helps women feel connected, which frees them to feel attracted.
What about qualifying then? Is it still about showing women you approve and getting them to view you as a leader?
Well, the current thinking on qualifying I think is a little closer to the mark than the current thinking on screening... but, it's still off the mark, nevertheless.
Let's look at qualifying from the same perspective as screening. Screening works because it helps you build better connections with women by encouraging them to share things about themselves with you and you get to know them better. How does qualifying advance a connection?
Simple: see if you can feel the difference between these two interactions:
You: Actually, it's something of a hobby of mine. Girl: How long have you been doing that?and
You: Almost four years. I've gotten pretty good.
Girl: ...
You: So... do you have any hobbies?
Girl: Not really. I'm too busy for hobbies.
You: Actually, it's something of a hobby of mine. Girl: How long have you been doing that?Huge difference, right? What's the main difference?
You: Almost four years. I've gotten pretty good.
Girl: Oh, so cool! I really admire that you stuck with it that long and developed your skill... most people never do that, they give up way too early! What made you keep at it?
You: Well, I...
The girl in the second conversation qualifies you for what you've shared with her. The girl in the first example does not.
Why's it matter? Is it because Girl #2 is showing approval over you and you're accepting her as a leader?
No. It's because you feel like Girl #2 gets you and wants to build a connection with you. She appreciates you. So, you lower your defenses, you allow yourself to feel more connected to her and feel more attracted, and you start viewing her as someone who's on your side; she's "one of us" instead of "one of them."
That's why qualifying works. Because, like screening, it helps you build connections with women, which allows women to feel attracted to you.
How to REALLY Get to Know a Girl
Ready to step your connecting game up and take it to the next level?Good. Because if you've made it this far in this post, I've got something special for you. It's new, cutting-edge stuff I've been using for a little while but have only recently broken down well enough that I feel comfortable putting pen to paper about it.
And that is the concept of how you can integrate screening and qualifying seamlessly with deep diving.
Deep diving is all about forming fast, rapid connections with women. Screening and qualifying is all about finding out the things you want to know from women.
If you want to get to know a girl fast and well, you must combine these two things.
To do so, there's something you must understand first about qualifying: the reason it works is not because you are verbally saying "I approve."
Nope, that's not why qualifying works at all.
The reason why qualifying works is because you express INTEREST in another person.
Look back over those last two examples above about the girl who qualifies you and the girl who doesn't. What's the deepest emotion you feel about what those women are conveying?
The first girl doesn't care about your hobby. The second girl DOES.
So, rather than look at qualifying as necessarily something in which you must explicitly convey approval for what a woman shares with you, instead you can look at it through the far more flexible view of seeing it as expressing interest in her and what she's sharing as she seeks to connect with you.
Here's how we combine all three elements (screening, qualifying, and deep diving):
You: When you're not crunching numbers or saving small animals, how do you spend your time? Her: Well, actually I sculpt.Notice how we use screening questions ("How do you spend your time?" "Sculpt what?" "How long have you been doing that?" "That makes you a prodigy, right?") both to find out more about this topic in particular and to advance the deep dive overall, and we use interest and excitement and further screening questions (which convey further interest) to serve as our qualifiers.
You: Really? No way! Sculpt what?
Her: Mostly 12 inch or smaller sculptures, though I've done a few human-size pieces.
You: Hmm! That's wild. I never would've taken you for the eccentric artist-with-a-hammer-and-chisel type. How long have you been doing that?
Her: Since I was 5 years old. My father taught me.
You: That makes you something of a prodigy then, right?
Her: Well... maybe if I'd kept at it. I slacked off majorly in high school though.
You: Ah, so maybe you could've been Raphael... but you got too interested in skipping class and chasing boys, huh?
Her: Haha, well, maybe... do you do anything in the arts?
And right away, you have a very smooth, natural, intuitive way of getting to know a girl. You find out more about her, show her that you're genuinely interested in what she has to say and encourage her to share more, and help her to grow her connectedness to you, get comfortable with you, and allow herself to feel attraction for you.
By rolling screening and qualifying into your deep dives, you enable yourself to do away with the rather clumsy way most folks advocate using screening and qualifying – as stand-alone screens with an accompanying qualifier – and integrate them into your overall conversations, and then use them to explore deeper aspects of a woman's life, self, and history.
Once you get this down, it is easy to get to know a girl. Stuff's only hard when you're doing it in a disjointed, unnatural way. Start plugging it all together, and you'll find your interactions hit a lot fewer snags along the way, and feel a lot cleaner and more fluid, both to you and to that new girl you're getting to know.
If you want to know more about deep diving and connection-building, keep your eyes out for my upcoming video program, Spellbinding: Enchanting Conversation to Get Her Talking. In it, I go in-depth into how to transform yourself into an elite conversationalist that women find completely captivating. More information will be available in June 2011 in the program catalog. (update: you can get Spellbinding now right here: Spellbinding: Get Her Talking)
Meantime, use the signup form at the bottom of this page to join the newsletter and stay informed of all the latest announcements, and to find out when Spellbinding is coming out as well. Until then, here's to many exciting and connection-filled conversations between you and a great many beautiful young women.
Always,
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