May not be a proper field report but still feel I learnt a lot from it so thought I’d stick it here.

Preparation

Rehearsed some offbeat/silly questions to ask rather than the usual boring “What do you do” or “where are you from?” nonsense. While I was waiting for the taxi I did a couple of NLP exercises to try and pump myself up and increase my confidence. These helped a good bit.

Rocked into the bar, focused on smiling, having positive body language and posture. Had a drink or two while I waited for the event to start. Spoke to one other guy who was participating, he seemed more nervous and shy that myself.

Format

The event was pretty standard. All the girls took a seat and each chat lasted 4 minutes. After the 4 minutes the guys got up and moved to the next girl. You then ticked Ditch, Date or Friends for each girl, they did the same. You then get an e-mail with your matches:

  • Date/Date = match
  • Friends/Friends = friends match
  • Date/Ditch = no match
  • Friends/Date = no match

It would have been interesting to see who put me down for Date but I guess it makes sense doing it their way.

Speed Dating

First girl I spoke to was a little bit awkward at the start however I soon got into the swing of things. I was able to hold conversation well and made most of the girls laugh. After the event was over I stayed behind and talked to a few groups. There was one girl in particular, an HB8 so seemed quite responsive – touching my arm, playing with her hair etc which was encouraging.

After

I ended up putting down 3 matches and one friend match. I got the results the next day and 2 of the girls put me down as a date match as well (yay!). One of them was the HB8 and the other was the first girl I spoke to.

The weird thing is I e-mailed them the night I got the matches (not straight away but after 8/10 hours) but neither of them got back to me (this was 6 days ago).

Overall I felt this was a positive experience. I would recommend this to anyone in the early stages of learning the game. It is good to try out and practice some of the early fundamentals (eye contact, body language etc) Also, there is loads of time after the event to work on things further

Lessons Learnt:

  • Being a bit off beat and asking silly questions helped massively. Most of the girls seem interested and holding conversation was easy

  • Eye contact is key. You can feel attraction building by holding good soft eye contact.

  • This was a pretty good way to improve confidence. My approach anxiety is terrible. Doing this helped me to realise there are so many girls out there that want to talk to guys and want to be hit on

  • Plenty of opportunity to chat/sarge after, the ice is broken and most girls are willing to chat afterwards for a bit longer

  • Pumping up your state and getting psyched up beforehand helps. The NLP techniques from a book I have boosted my confidence before heading out.

Questions:

  • I have e-mailed these two girls once to try and arrange a date but no response. Why would they put me down as matches and then not want to meet up?

  • Should I try e-mailing them one more time for a date? What should I say?