An FR in two parts.

Part 1: Cold approaching in the supermarket

My goal this week is just to initiate conversation with women I see at the grocery store. Attractive ones if possible.

Last night I hit Whole Foods with a goal of 7 approaches. It was tough. I'm new at this. The biggest excuse: I didn't have a good opener. "I have no good reason to talk to this girl; I'd just be wasting her time."

But I stuck at it, mostly with variations on "pardon me, which of these food products is superior?". I kept thinking about the 3-second rule, and on the last two I managed to just do it: see her, approach her, speak to her.

I had no idea what to say, so I had to just blurt out something -- and it worked great. "God, remember when there was only 3 of everything and you didn't have to spend forever choosing between 15 kinds of chocolate chips?" (To a woman my age or older.) "Hey, wow I didn't know they had fresh herbs here, this is awesome, did you know that? ramble ramble ramble". Both of these led to the woman genuinely contributing in an intelligent conversation. That's the goal here, so this is great.

I was so psyched to see this happening, I opened two more on my way out. "[laughing] Oh, those shorts are fantastic. [laughing] Where the heck did you find those?" (To a very fashionable woman in shorts with a ridiculous peacock print.) And, "Hi. Do you know if there's a Starbucks around here?"

The lesson for me: the opener is neither magic nor very important. Making the opening is important, and the subsequent conversation is what counts.

On the way home, I listened to RooshV's podcast on the 9 immutable laws of pick-up, which happened to include rule #4, "The opener is the least impactful part of the pick up."

Part 2: Banging my wife

Came home late, spent 5 minutes listening to the wife and then got ready for sleep. So did she.

When I came to the bed she was already curled up to sleep but I saw her face looked pretty stressed. Not my problem, could be from anything. But what the hell, I've got some energy to be kind and give her a quick back rub. What follows is night and day different from my recent failed attempt at hot bath, oil massage, and sex.

I told her to lay out flat and then rubbed her back. I decided in my mind that this was not a contract for sex, it was my gift to her.

Along the way I decided I would make love to this woman, slowly but by my choice. I also decided that if I reached a hard no, I could let that go with dignity, "Okay, your loss." This is a gift to her, which I expect to enjoy greatly; but it's not her gift to me, nor payment for anything I've done.

I anticipated her most common cockblocker, "This isn't working," and prepared my response, "It's working fine for me," but it never came up. I rolled her over face-up, without asking as I normally would in a massage, and made a point of moving her physically into different positions as part of the massage.

I exacerbated things she normally doesn't like, because I wanted those things: she usually likes it dark; I made a point of turning on a small light. She protested having her panties removed because there was still a pad there (shark week ended yesterday); I removed them and made a point of not replying to her protest.

Aiming for some extra tension, I put a towel over her eyes and said nothing to her protest, and kept it there until she was clearly aroused.

I made a point not to smile at her all this time.

After sex, I intentionally teased her, smirking but not smiling, about things she often has teased me about. "Gee, what a mess you've made," and such. Then we lay there talking some and I told a couple of funny stories (funny to me, anyway, I had a laugh blast telling them).

As we dozed off to sleep, I rolled over and touched her hand with mine, and she squeezed it gently. It occurred to me, that hasn't happened in a long time.

Caveats:

  • This is not a how-to manual for making love to my wife. Boring nice guys keeps notes on "what worked last time".
  • This looks to me like "sprinkling Alpha" and "fake it till you make it" and "applying a few techniques." I acknowledge I have much work ahead in internalizing an abundant mindset.

Lessons:

  • OI frees me to be myself.
  • Abundance mindset is a good foundation for OI.
  • On the way to real OI and abundance mindset, confidence has specific outward manifestations that can be learned through study, observation, and practice.
  • Hitting my cold-approach goals may just have given me a confidence boost that I didn't even notice.