Last night I went out to a bar in downtown DC to meet up with a friend who’s in town. She lives on the West Coast and we’d met at a conference in Dallas earlier this year. We had a minor dalliance at the conference, but it didn’t go anywhere, and she has a boyfriend now, so I wasn’t expecting to hook up with her.

But, she has a cute friend who I start talking to, and we hit it off. We had a lot in common (we go to the same school, different programs) and a lot to talk about, but I wasn’t able to tell if she was into me, or was just enjoying the conversation. So, here’s the move I used:

I have to pee, so I tell her “I’ll be right back” and as I’m walking away (I have to go behind and around her to get to the bathroom) I just touch her on the shoulder briefly. There’s nothing sexy or complicated about the contact, almost the same touch you might give a buddy of yours before saying “Hey, I’m going to the bar, you want a beer?”

While not being a highly sophisticated move, it does something very important. It punches through the physical barrier. When you meet a new person, you’re establishing rapport, what’s basically the rules of the relationship. This is often thought of just in verbal terms, things like inside jokes, but physical rapport is just as important. Once rules are established they’re very hard to break.

Touching her on the back as I left declared “This is the new rule!” When I got back I started receiving more direct IOIs from her, she’d stand closer to me, high five, etc, and it escalated from there pretty quick.

This is a pretty simple FR, but there’s two good takeaways:

(1) Break that physical barrier quickly! The longer you wait, the more awkward the first contact becomes.

(2) Non-verbal communication is huge. I couldn’t gauge her level of interest verbally, and it’s possible she couldn’t tell mine either. Breaking the physical barrier meant we had more options for non-verbal communication.

Also, I should add the evening de-escalated pretty quick as well. After a bit of kino and kissing, she sat on my lap on a barstool at a hightop table. We continued making out, more kino, etc, and then the situation became unbalanced and I fell to the ground hard. I scraped skin off my knee through my pants, my thumb is severely bruised, and my shoulder has pretty much no mobility now (I don’t think it’s dislocated, but it sure does hurt like hell). She was fine, we kept making out, and then we got some McDonald’s.