I can’t count how many times I’ve seen an attractive girl and had an internal dialogue that went something like, “Should I just say hi? No, she’ll wonder why I’m talking to her. What can I talk about that’s situational, the music? No, that’s stupid. I could compliment her… But what if she doesn’t take the compliment well? Eh, honestly, she’s not really my type, she looks too stuck up. I’ll wait to find a girl who’s more my type.”

 

Sound familiar? The first mistake guys make with opening is over-dramatizing the importance of the content of your opening line. We’re all anxious about having an awkward interaction, and that’s totally natural.

 

The approach feels like a big moment, and that’s what will make it awkward. There’s nothing you can say that will avoid this. Secretly, the reason pickup lines are so appealing, is because we feel like they’ll help us to avoid an awkward rejection, with the right line, the girl will respond positively to us and validate us.

 

That might be hard to admit, and you might disagree with me on a gut level, but that’s what I’ve realized from doing thousands of approaches (and hesitating on many thousands more), and watching dozens of guys hesitate to approach night after night.

 

The mindset of having a ‘right’ opener is totally missing the point. It’s focusing on the wrong outcome. The best outcome you can get from an open is that you get a little less uncomfortable about approaching women, because your openers will be smooth when you’re comfortable with them. The content of your opener can make a difference, but it’s secondary to how confident you feel when you approach a girl.

 

If you’re 100% confident with approaching women and never hesitate, then even a ‘bad’ opening line can work, and I know this, because I’ve tested it relentlessly (I’ll show you the, “You’re hideous opener” soon).

 

Girls can tell that you feel uncomfortable approaching them, they can tell your nervous, and it may very well make them a bit uncomfortable too. No matter how ‘advanced’ you are, sometimes, this is going to happen. Sometimes, you’re going to creep a girl out a bit.

 

But that possibility is a horrible excuse to avoid approaching, you can’t get good reactions without also getting bad reactions. And, on any given day/night out you’re most likely going to have to deal with some mildly awkward interactions. The more you approach on a given gaming session, the better your opens will get, and the more you approach overall, the better your opens will get (on average).

 

And because you, as a human being, are anxious towards rejection and the possibility of humiliation, this is hard to stomach. Most of you won’t do it, most of you won’t get the results you want, because you’re going to get enough satisfaction from being a pickup keyboard warrior who rarely if ever approaches women.

 

Look, approaching is hard, especially at first, you’re going to have awkward interactions, and at many points, you’re going to want to quit. There’s no solution to the opening problem, there’s no trick, there’s no pickup line that’s going to make it easier.

 

The only way out, is through. Embrace the suck. If you don’t approach, you lose. If you do, you’ll make some girls a bit uncomfortable. Deal with it, seriously, it’s part of the process, and it’s not going to really affect her for more than 30 seconds, it’s okay to be a bit awkward. The people who get the most results in dating advice are also the people who’ve gone through the most failures.

 

I’ve never regretted doing an approach, even the most awkward once, one woman literally told me, “You have the body of a twelve-year-old and a woman will never love you.” Yeah, that stung. But I’m glad I did it, it made me more grounded, it made me care a little less what other people think, it made me stronger.

 

I’ve approached a girl at my local campus who was so uncomfortable she said, “Why are you talking to me? I’m leaving.” Did I like getting the reaction? No. But that pain gave me a lot more value than the thousands of hesitations in which I didn’t approach. That’s what I regret, all the times when I wasn’t willing to be awkward, in which I listened to my bullshit excuses, and valued my negative emotions over my long-term results.

 

The awkwardness of approaching is a lot less painful than all the anxiety you’ll cause yourself by hesitating. Every moment you don’t approach, you’re inviting more excuses in, and you’re making yourself more and more vulnerable to your own bullshit. But, do those first few awkward approaches, and your fourth approach might go really well, the girl might ask you for your number, you might even sleep with her.

 

Results aren’t for everyone, they’re only for those who can embrace pain and therefore move past their rationalizations and petty negative emotions. And if you’re honest with yourself, you probably won’t have to look that far back to find a situation in which you listened to your own bullshit when you knew you should have just taken the risk and faced the awkward moment. Even if your pickup line was shitty.

 

As soon as the possibility of approaching a girl has entered your mind, approach. Obviously, you won’t always do this, and sometimes there’s valid excuses, but in general, this is the mindset to take. Because if you consider approaching, and you don’t, you just gave yourself another reference in which you hesitated. If you consider approaching, you don’t want to do, but you do anyway, you’ve built a reference in which you stepped the fuck up and faced your fears.

 

Every time you want to approach a girl, but don’t, you’re reinforcing an identity as a guy who doesn’t act on his real intentions. This isn’t black and white, don’t expect to be perfect, but the more you approach when you don’t want to, the more you will build your self-esteem, groundedness, and confidence (as a side effect, this will make you more attractive beyond the approach). A lot of the time you won’t approach, a lot of the time, I don’t. But I do a lot more than most guys, I embrace the suck often enough that I get the results I want.

 

It’s good to have something to say on standby, because otherwise you can make the excuse that you don’t know what to say. For me I have a few, “I thought you looked interesting and I had to say hi.” Or “Hi, I liked your style and I had to introduce myself.” Or, “Is it hot in here, or is that the holy spirit burning inside of you?” (I just use this to warm up and be a little ridiculous, it’s by no means a good line, use at your own risk.) Or, “Hi, I’m Avery, nice to meet you.” (Probably use your name instead of mine.)

 

It barely matters at all what you start your conversations with, it’s far more valuable to understand the mindset to why you should approach I’ve just outlined and to approach despite the fact that it might be awkward and that you don’t have the perfect situational excuse to talk to her.

 

This is part one, part two will go over fixing habitual mistakes in your opens (too meek, too aggressive, etc)

 

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