first things first
A few conversations I've had lately have revolved around me discussing with guys how simple things are with women. You just talk to them, and then... boom! They chase after you. You don't even have to do any work; girls take care of all that themselves.
Because that's how it's been for me lately. But I keep getting pulled back down to reality; guys confess it doesn't work that way for them. And then I stop and think, and for a long time it didn't work that way for me, either.
What changed it for me? Well, one of the biggest factors was figuring out what to say to girls. All you've got to do is get that figured out, and you're set.
But that's tough, you say. Why? Well, because you're not a girl. And if you're like a lot of guys out there, you have, starting out, no idea what it is women want to hear, what they like to hear, or what they need to hear, whatsoever.
Here's how it goes for most guys: they start out talking to women too literally, and the women get bored out of their skulls and leave. So then a guy tries a few witty pick up lines, or he tries busting on girls to be a challenge, only to have them start snapping at him and shutting down. Eventually he comes full circle again and decides to try to be a lot nicer than he was, only to find that, once again, the challenge has disappeared and the interest women showed at least some of the time when he was being a jerk has disappeared.
That's the point a guy realizes that, despite all the time he might've spent trying to get better with women, he still has no real idea about what to say to girls.
Argh.
Fortunately, all's not lost, and you can figure it out. In fact, that's why I made this post -- it's something of a guide on the wild, woolly world of talking to girls. In other words, herein lies the machete you'll need to hack a path through the conversational jungle and emerge on the other side with that beautiful, smiling girl you've had your eye on.
Regular Guy Talk: Boring, Insulting, or Both
Guy: So how long have you lived here?
Girl: All my life.
Guy: So you really like it then?
Girl: It's okay.
Guy: Yeah, I've lived here a pretty long time too.
If you're like most guys, the above conversation snippet probably sounds painfully familiar to you. "Ouch," you might think, "pains me to admit it, but yeah."
Have you ever stopped and thought about why conversations like that feel painful?
And how you could, say, do them differently -- do them better?
Most guys don't. They just keep on saying the same things again and again, and getting the same mediocre results -- it's like they're trying to get through a brick wall by punching their way through, and even though it hurts and even though it isn't really getting them anywhere, they never take the time to stop and look around for a set of power tools. The just keep on sluggin'.
Guy: What do you do for fun?
Girl: Um... nothing, really. My life is pretty boring.
Guy: That's cool. Sounds like a pretty stress-free life.
The thing about most regular guys' conversation is, it's boring. It's the same damn stuff a woman's heard a million times already from every other man on the planet. The first guy who tells you about his job as a store manager, maybe it's a little impressive. The tenth guy, it's prosaic and dull.
And the thing is, when a guy makes himself sound like every other guy a woman's met, she's going to assume he's like every other guy she's met, too. That's just how people work.
A man can go wrong trying to build a connection when there's nothing to build it on. It makes him look like he's trying to make something out of nothing, and that turns women off. He can go wrong circling the drain with lifeless topics that he doesn't know how to navigate off of, and he can go wrong failing to connect and get past small talk.
Showing too much approval for non-responses ("Oh, you don't do anything for fun? That's cool") or pressing too hard to get factual information about boring non-personal topics ("What do you do all day at work?" "What classes do you have?") are some other big, "Oh God, this guy's boring," things that men say to girls.
Guy: So what are you going to school for?
Girl: I want to be a photographer.
Guy: Really?
Girl: Uh, yeah.
Guy: How are you going to make any money doing that?
Girl: ... I have to go find my friends.
Worse still, many guys get into the habit of making inadvertently critical or awkward or downright insulting comments to women. They think they're teasing a girl, but instead they're scaring her off.
There are comments out there that are absolutely dynamite... when said with the right tone of voice. But most guys, starting out, don't know what the right tone of voice is, and they say things in such a way as to convey a message very different from what they were seeking to convey.
What ends up happening is these guys' attempts to tease women or make conversation come off as critical -- the guy asking a girl, "What were you thinking?" as a joke but not having it come out quite right, for example, or the guy telling a girl, "Yeah, that's never going to work," about something she wants to do.
Critical remarks make people feel bad, and people will pull out the stops to try and get away from other people who make them feel bad -- especially if those people are strangers they have no social ties or obligations to. For the people in their social circle doing that stuff to them, they just suck it up and try to minimize their exposure to those people.
I can't stress enough how important it is to avoid regular guy conversation: it's an attraction killer, no two ways about it.
But what to say to girls instead?
