🧙📖 Total's First Date Manifesto (manifesto just sounds cooler than guide, right?)

The most common sticking point after the initial sticking point of approach anxiety is converting on a date. Guys will get over approach anxiety, approach consistently, be able to reliably generate dates, but then be unable to actually hook up with girls from those dates. And from what I’ve seen, the main reason most guys aren’t converting is not because they aren’t being sexual enough, or don't have good enough conversational skills, or aren't enough of a Chad. It’s because they aren’t escalating and taking the specific objective actions required to actually facilitate a hook-up.

So in this post I’m going to go over the actions you should be taking on EVERY. SINGLE. DATE. Yes, every single fucking one. Not 90%, not 99.999999%. Not only when it “feels” right or when you think there’s enough of a “vibe”. EVERY. SINGLE. GOD. DAMN. TIME. Ok, is it clear enough yet that you are supposed to do these EVERY SINGLE TIME? Probably not, but I’ll continue anyway.

1. Have all dates as close to your place as possible. Preferably within walking distance of your place. Or if not walking distance, 10 minutes drive max. Anything more creates exponentially more friction and uncertainty with each minute that passes. I’m not saying that you absolutely can’t pull if you’re farther away than that, I’m just saying the chance decreases. If it comes down to a “fun super exciting” place that’s 20 minutes away and a “normal/boring” bar/coffee shop that’s 5 minutes away, choose the one that’s 5 minutes away.

2. Piggy-backing off the last one, ALWAYS HAVE THE GIRL COME TO YOU! Literally never meet a girl by her place. There’s 2 reasons for this. The first is that it’s harder to pull. You’re farther away from your place which decreases the chance of a pull, and trying to pull to HER place also has a much lower chance of working. Again, not saying it’s impossible, it’s just a drastically reduced chance.

The second reason is that it forces the girl to invest just a little bit. It’s a filter for girls who have a higher chance of having genuine interest/higher chance of converting. If you meet a girl by where she is, it’s zero inconvenience for her to just walk a couple blocks to the spot, get the free drinks, and go back to her place. A girl coming to you filters out girls who are only going on the date out of convenience or boredom. Also, if you suggest a date location and the girl tries to change it and will only go on the date if you guys go to that place, cancel the date. She’s just using you to go to a place she likes. If she wanted to get to know YOU, she would be fine with whatever place you took her to. I have canceled several dates just because the girl didn’t want to drive to me or because the girl wanted to pick the location and wouldn’t back down. That’s how important it is. I’ve been on probably 700+ dates and one of the patterns I picked up on, without even trying to keep track of it, is how reduced the chances of a pull are if I meet the girl by her place, or even just halfway.

Girls naturally have more abundance/power/leverage when it comes to dating, so they are naturally going to be less invested on average. Having her come to you is a way to level the playing field and show that she is actually interested and you’re not just another random option she has.

1. Absolutely no dinner dates. Eating too much (or even just a little) food kills a sexual mood and the slight bit of discomfort that comes from eating make a girl feel unsexy/fat/bloated. Plus it’s just way too formal and you waste a lot of money. If you’re going to do a date at night, just get drinks. You’ll actually be doing the girl a favor as well. A lot of girls actually have anxiety so they like having a drink or two to loosen up on the date and to make it easier to hook up if that’s what they want to do. Any girl who will only go on the date under the condition that there’s dinner is a girl who is either using you for free food, or has a level of entitlement so high that you don’t want to deal with it anyway. Again (because I know some idiot will bring up some random time they had a dinner date and got a hookup from it), I’m not saying it’s impossible, it’s just such a reduced likelihood of success that it’s not worth it.

2. Break the touch barrier immediately. As soon as you meet her for the date, go in for a hug. Don’t do a handshake. It’s not that JUST doing a handshake will make or break the date, it’s that a guy who goes for a handshake and not a hug is usually the type of guy who is too timid and scared to do any type of escalation at all and plays it too safe. The handshake is an indication that the guy is a play-it-safe beta nice guy non-binary cuck. Yes, that is what a handshake on a date implies universally across all cultures everywhere, I checked.

3. No dates over 1 hour. Attraction and sexual tension has a certain amount of momentum. The longer the date is, the more the momentum slows down and fizzles out. A girl could literally have gone into a date saying “I’m definitely going to have sex with this guy”, and then the whole date just takes so long and the conversation is so drawn out that she just gets bored. You spend so much time “building comfort/rapport” that you literally make her uninterested.

And it doesn’t just kill momentum. It’s not just the long wait time. It’s the fact that a guy who takes too long to go for the pull gives off “I’m too scared to move things forward” vibe and then she sees you as a huge pussy and that’s when her sexual attraction craters. Trust me, don’t have any dates go more than 1 hour before attempting a pull. Which leads to my next point.

1. Go for the pull on every single date. On every single date you should be asking the girl back to your place. The girl isn’t going to do it for you. The only way to have a girl in your bed is to actually get her back to your bed in the first place. It doesn’t matter how much rapport or comfort you think there is or isn’t or how much you think it’s completely random and out of left field. Go for the pull EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

Additionally, if the first pull attempt is unsuccessful, wait 10-15 minutes and then go for the pull again. If she doesn’t go the second time, end the date in whatever manner you want. And then right before you guys part ways, go for the pull one more time. It’s a low chance, but sometimes that third pull attempt actually works. I’ve had plenty of hookups where a girl didn’t agree until the second or third attempt. I’m not exactly sure the reasoning for it (I know I know, expecting reasoning from girl, crazy, am I right fellas? 🥁🥁📀...🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗), but it just works sometimes.

1. When she’s back at your place, wait no longer than 15 minutes before you start physically escalating. Go ahead and put on some music, or some movie/show, pour some drinks, have some decent mood lighting, whatever you want to do. As long as you at least start within 15 minutes. It doesn’t have to escalate to sex immediately from there, but bare minimum go in for a kiss. Sometimes it will escalate immediately from there to sex, sometimes it’s kind of more of a slow burn where you slowly ramp it up in between drinks and a little bit of talking, but definitely don’t wait any longer than 15 minutes to start. And then from the time you start, take no longer than another 15 minutes before you actually start escalating all the way to sex.

Again, 15 minutes is the MAXIMUM amount of time. Don’t use it as a timer where you’re all nervous and debating until 15 minutes hits and then you finally do it. Ideally it should be 5-10 minutes after getting to your place. Same logic applies here as on dates. There’s a certain momentum that needs to be maintained. Take too long and it’s downhill from there.

Ok so that’s it for the actionable steps you can take, now I’m going to go over a couple general mindset things to remember on dates.

1. You will always lose more girls by moving too slow than by moving too fast. If you move too fast, at least you can calibrate backwards and wait a little bit before going forward again. If you move too slow, you can’t calibrate backwards and now go fast. She already sees you as unconfident and timid, very hard to come back from that. I call this making an “alpha mistake” instead of a “beta mistake”. Here’s a basic summary of the concept.

There’s never going to be a time where you are absolutely perfectly calibrated. Every action and every point in the process of pickup has an acceptable range or margin of error and as long as you’re within that range, you’re fine. If the middle of the spectrum is “perfect”, and you will always land on one side or the other to varying degrees. When you are first starting out, how far away from perfect you are varies widely until you have enough experience to consistently be within the margin of error.

So basically you are going to “make a mistake” every time you do something (aka you will never actually be right in the middle, but at least slightly to the left or right). So if you are going to make a mistake anyway, it’s always better to make an alpha mistake instead of a beta mistake. It’s better to err on the side of doing something too soon or be a little too sexual or too aggressive, because at least then she can be like “damn this guy goes for what he wants” or “this guy is super confident” or “this guy is an animal, I have to contain him” and she will forgive you and give you another chance.

So if over the course of the date, you are thinking of escalating in some way and you think it might be too soon, just think about that. If you are starting out and really don’t know if something is too soon or if you should wait, just do it too soon. At least you’ll get another chance and she’ll know you’re not a pussy instead of waiting too long and not even getting a chance at all.

Ok, next mindset.

1. If a girl is on a date with you, you meet her looks threshold and her vibe/personality threshold. A girl will pretty much never go on a date with a guy who she’s not at least somewhat attracted to. There’s 2 caveats to this. One is if you break any of the first 3 rules at the beginning of this post. Then there’s a chance she’s using you. Second is if you come across as SUCH a non-threatening beta nice-guy that she borderline thinks you’re gay and is just talking to you cuz she’s bored and basically sees you as another girl. The second one is very rare. You have to be extremely effeminate for that to happen. I’m just putting it there because it does happen to some guys. The first caveat is much more likely.

Ok so next thing is the “personality threshold” (I’m going to try to think of a better term for this). Basically it’s if you meet the requirements of that girl thinking you have a good personality/good vibe etc. Just like girls won’t go on dates with guys they are not physically attracted to, girls also will almost never go on a date with a guy who they don’t like on a personality level or vibe with to at least some small degree. Meaning that if a girl is on a date with you, you don’t need to “prove” any extra value to her. You just have to maintain what you portrayed on the approach.

Thinking they need to live up to some crazy external standard or they need to do all this proving is a big reason why guys get a lot of anxiety on dates and start acting weird or unconfident. They think that they proved they are good enough for a date and now they have to prove they are good enough to sleep with. That’s not how it works. The only standard you have to live up to is YOURSELF ON THE APPROACH.

She already decided she’s physically attracted to you, otherwise she wouldn’t have come on the date. She already decided she likes you, otherwise she wouldn’t have come on the date. She’s not really looking for a bunch of additional value. She’s mainly looking to see if you are what you portrayed yourself as. She’s looking for congruence. If you can just be you, just like how you were on the approach, for an extended period of time, then you “passed the test”.

The main thing girls are looking for on dates is confidence and congruence. So if you approached her in as congruent a way as possible (aka that’s as close to “you” as you can be), and you just continue to be you on the date, you will show high congruence and high confidence. Confidence and congruence means trust and safety to a girl. It means the value you showed is your ACTUAL value so she can be assured that your genes are actually good (caveman brain stuff) and it means she can be safe around you because you’re not hiding anything.

Ok that’s it. If you just hold on to those 2 mindsets and implement all 7 of those actions on EVERY SINGLE DATE, it’s pretty much impossible to not drastically increase your date-to-lay ratio, or just START getting laid if you’ve had no success up to this point.

Kay bai lub lub