Hi there,

this is my first post here, and to be honest I could probably spend some time looking around at FAQs and other people's posts, but I want to dive right in, and sort through it all later...

I'm really just starting out with pick-up, have been reading a lot and built up quite a mental list of how to start. I feel like most of the typical beginners issues are dealt with. Approach anxiety, not much. Confident body language, coming along nicely. Grooming and looks, no problem there. Openings, fine.

My problem is I can't seem to move reliably from opening to... building attraction. Even when I think I'm getting IOIs from a girl, I feel like it's just luck that she finds me attractive, rather than something I can control, and I freeze up about moving things forward.

I have no problem at all talking with women. I'm surrounded by intelligent professional women, and I've spent years talking to them about a wide range of topics. But that means I keep treating them as friends rather than potential sexual partners, and so I am putting myself into the friend zone.

To give an example - I'm writing this directly after an evening out at a local club. I spotted a cute girl dancing just behind where I was standing, dressed in a retro-but-sexy 80s number (black minidress, wide belt, pink tights). "Great" I thought, "I'm in front of her, looking over my shoulder, nicely non-threatening position from which to open her." So I leaned around and complimented her on her tights, and asked where she got them. She said Toronto. She asked where my accent is from (Australia. She guessed Britain). No anxiety, no trouble coming up with something to say, I was feeling pretty good. We got chatting about how many Aussies she's met travelling. I asked her a bit about where she lives, where she's travelled, and so on. But it basically all petered out.. Thinking about it afterwards, I realised she didn't ask me any questions (maybe that's just the kind of person she is). She wandered away a bit, I wandered off to look around other parts of the club (not wanting to hang around one spot and look needy, as if I was waiting for her to come back). We crossed paths again a couple of times. But it felt like I should have been doing something to turn it into a pick-up, with the obvious spark of potential sex, rather than just a friendly chat between two people who happened to meet in a nightclub. Eventually I just found her, shook hands, excused myself and went home after I'd had enough of the club.

Needless to say I know I was doing something badly wrong, but I just don't know what tactics/exercises/routines whatever I should be using to get out of this damn habit of slipping into a platonic conversation with every woman I meet. What do I do when the opening has served its purpose and it's time to move on to the next stage?

Any help greatly appreciated, and a sorry I let this post get a bit long.

Welcome to the forum!

Let me help you out. What you were doing wrong is that you weren't using any pick up! Don't worry, you're just starting out. Stories like that are found everywhere.
Did you read and of Mystery's material? In the Mystery method there are three stages- Attraction, comfort and seduction. The mistake most guys make is that they go for comfort first (as you did) and then for attraction, problem is once at the comfort stage it is hard to spark attraction, as you found out for yourself. So the secret is to go for attraction first and then build comfort.
How do you build attraction? Find out what works best for you. Try out cocky/funny, DHV, stories and routines. There are so many ways that it might take you some time to find what works best for you.
But the important thing is- Keep practicing!
Have fun kid.

_________________
http://www.solomonseagal.com

Anyone can walk into a bar and pick up a random girl.
The trick is to make the experience unforgettable to her.
A real PUA will make every women he encounters feel like she experience something once in a lifetime.

Thank you!
Clear and succinct. I couldn't ask for more. Thank you, again.

I haven't read any of Mystery's material directly, just second-hand via The Game and a few other sources, so when you said the sequence is Attraction, Comfort, Seduction I went "Yes, I knew that! D'uh!" but just hadn't internalised it yet. Silly of me. That's the benefit of having a more experienced person to looking at what you're doing! In that vein, can you recommend good starting points (stuff to read) for cocky/funny, DHV, etcetera, or exercises (like the things in the StyleLife challenge) for developing those skills? Also, when should I be pushing into the attraction phase (after x seconds/minutes? After recieving a certain type of IOI? As-soon-as-possible?)

Once again, thanks very much for your help.