FR Dealing With Dominant People

[Laowai]

FR: DEALING WITH DOMINANT PEOPLE

I was out the other night with Christian, a non-gamer friend of mine, for the massive multiple-day Copenhagen Distortion street party. We hadn’t seen each other for a few months and I was eager to catch up and hang out, and one of his friends would join us later.

As Christian and I are talking his friend comes, dragging two female foreign exchange students along. I wait for my friend to introduce me to his friends, and when I do, I give each a firm handshake, while smiling with closed lips, and inquiring for their names while looking them straight in the eye and holding strong eye contact for a few seconds. I find that this often generates some easy attraction.

I start to game the group saying stuff with a clear, firm voice and slow motions like I usually do when I meet new people, but am quickly confronted with an old and strong sticking point from my AFC days, one that I never really got a hold on in all my days of studying pick-up and socialising: Christian starts to speak to the group, he’s a natural talker and throws jokes around, and the girls fix strong attention on him and can’t get their eyes away from him. Christian vibes well with his friend and the girls, and everybody is laughing… But me. I was always the more quiet type and always held back in front of dominant people.

I suddenly find myself super self-aware and reacting because I don’t feel in control of the interaction, because I can’t think of anything funny to say to catch on to the vibe, because I’m STILL intimidated by guys who are socially more dominant than me. There I’m standing, getting caught in my own headspace and don’t say a word, while Christian and his friend are making the girls laugh and taking the attention. In that moment I start to think about my AFC days where it was exactly this kind of situations where I would feel intimidated and where I would be acutely self-awareness that I wasn’t vibing or participating in the conversation, that bombed my self-esteem, my self-image and my confidence to smithereens. This sticking point is substantial and can carry over in other social situations like chatting with colleagues at work, etc. The only guy who is not vibing or laughing in a group where people are vibing and laughing will instantly loose social value.

Danish girls are quite masculine and dominant, and being able to be on or remain unaffected in these social situations is key for success in the social arts and for pick-up. I have come far since I started out in PU, but I got most of my notches and experience from gaming Asian girls who are way more feminine/less dominant than Danish/Western girls, and where the guys also tend to be less dominant than Western guys.

I am confronted with this sticking point again and again. A few months ago I was with BlueMystery (a former PU coach) and my talented wing, Orion, in Hong Kong. Two absolute stunners entered the Starbucks where we were hanging out, and BlueM went over to open them. Orion and I played rocks-scissors-paper about who should wing him, and I won. I was always the more quiet type, so when I was talking to my girl (easily a HB 9) our attention was constantly drawn to BlueM and his fantastic game, and I felt intimidated because I didn’t feel that I could live up to THAT. In comparison I felt that my game was somewhat boring and a bit try-hard, and I became very self-aware again.

Furtunately, after all my experiences with pick-up and self-improvement, I can approach this sticking point from a rational perspective, and I know that there are people out there who can address it. It gets down to this:

Discomfort of meeting a new dominant male or discomfort of being in a group with one or more dominant males -> my state drops and I freeze up -> AFC thoughts / self-awareness / confidence decreases -> state drops further -> I isolate myself socially in the group -> vicious circle -> if the situation is repeated again and again in different settings over time, negative beliefs may form.

REALIZATIONS:
1) Observing Christian, who is a natural extrovert, I realized that group vibing seems to fall into a number of categories – they are all light topics and something that people can easily relate to, for example:

A) Alcohol
B) The weather
C) Food
D) Weird fashion
E) Anything funny and weird
F) Something funny or weird about the surroundings, etc.

2) My game is state-dependent.

3) When I have strong eye contact with a girl and I get a feeling that I should attempt to kiss her, I should act on this.

4) I should do a number of warm-up sets where the sole purpose is to vibe and explore the dynamics of vibing. This will also raise my state.

Pick-up process: 1) Vibe with five people for the sake of vibing and to raise my state -> 2) then start to approach and vibe with girls I genuinely like.

5) I must do something about the handling-masculine-energy sticking point NOW since it has affected my social skills for two long.

QUESTIONS:
1) Can anyone offer any concrete, step-by-step techniques and tactics for handling social situations where other guys/girls are perceived as more dominant?

2) Any concrete tactics for retaining high value in situations where you feel intimidated by the people around you?

3) Can anyone offer any mindsets to effectively deal with these situations?

Thanks.

 

[Chase]

Laowai-

When I first started rolling with a wingman in D.C., I ran into this. My wingman was a sociable, friendly guy who was very loud and witty and talkative, and whenever I'd bring him in on some girls I'd been talking to, he'd quickly grab the center stage and get pushed out.

The way I eventually got around this was by getting my presence down well enough that women would gravitate to me despite his louder persona.

Think of it like this: James Bond and a really witty, chatty, attractive guy meet a couple of girls. The charming, attractive, chatty guy goes to work chatting up the girls, cracking jokes, and being fun. Bond sits there and smolders. Girls laugh at the chatty guy's jokes... he's fun. But who do you think they're more attracted to?

In my experience, if you have an equally charismatic wingman but he's the chatty one and you're the quiet one, you'll get the prettier girl. Sometimes I'll take out an inexperienced guy who doesn't know what to do with girls, and I'll have to set him up as the quiet one and I'll be the chatty one and I get the less cute girl. Friends share one another's value in girls' eyes, and girls tend to view the quieter guy as the more dominant one, unless he's acting awkward or uncomfortable. All you've got to do is hang back, chill out, and relax. Think of it like your buddy is doing all the work for you while you wait for him to bring these girls on a silver platter.

All you've got to do is pose.

When you have a situation like you did with your buddies in Copenhagen, it basically becomes a little test of how long can they keep up being Chatty Cathys, and how long can you smolder without freaking out or losing focus. I've had times when I've been out places where I was outnumbered guys to girls and I had to sit / stand and smolder for an hour or more while other guys talked talked talked talked talked. It doesn't matter though. 99% of guys (even guys with "game") talk themselves out of consideration with a girl eventually... let him talk long enough, and she'll get bored, or he will. Eventually, if you've been doing a good job building sexual tension just with your presence alone, the other guy(s) start running out of steam, and then you start coming into your own.

The other thing at play here is waiting on the periphery. If you've stayed uninvolved (e.g., not just not talking, but also not really looking at the girls or your friends either... just staring at the ceiling, or inspecting your fingernails, or cleaning your boots, or whatever, the entire time; not acting antsy - no checking your phone, for instance - but rather just kind of being there, biding your time, waiting for the chit-chatters to say their piece so you can get on with the serious business of seduction), then when the other guys lose steam and you come in, you come in out of left field and the girls are like, "Oh, who's that?!" and you're starting with a clean slate (as opposed to if you stared at them, and tried to interject, and jostled with the other guys for status, and lost, and ended up looking weak; when you just stay out of it entirely and only come in later, you're coming in as an unknown that the girls are curious about).

It's like play a sport or a game where you hang back and let everybody else tire themselves out, and then once that happens you come out in the fourth quarter and clobber them all. No competition.

The main mentalities I have in these situations that serve me well:

• I'll just let this guy talk his way out of contention
• I'm going to sit here and be a black hole of attraction
• She's sitting over there just WAITING for this guy to shut up so she can talk to me

I find they generally serve pretty well. Work on integrating these yourself, play around with how you can continually catch girls' eyes while NOT talking to them, and you should start seeing some returns from this reasonably quickly.

Chase

 

[Laowai]

Chase,
Thanks for your constructive and helpful advice, like always.

CHASE: I've had times when I've been out places where I was outnumbered guys to girls and I had to sit / stand and smolder for an hour or more while other guys talked talked talked talked talked. It doesn't matter though. 99% of guys (even guys with "game") talk themselves out of consideration with a girl eventually... let him talk long enough, and she'll get bored, or he will. Eventually, if you've been doing a good job building sexual tension just with your presence alone, the other guy(s) start running out of steam, and then you start coming into your own.

- Interesting observation. This is actually exactly the same situation I was once in: I had picked up a girl during night game, had deep-dived her and built a good connection until suddenly her ex-boyfriend and all his friends came along, including a bunch of drunk dudes who wanted to pick her up. Oh, was there much rejoicing and laughter, and I was completely ignored and left out, and didn’t know how to handle the situation. Then my more experienced wing texted me to just lean back and chill, and that saved the situation and I eventually got the girl on the day2. I had forgotten about how that situation was handled until you gave me the same advice again. Obviously, it helped a great bit that she was already attracted to me and invested in me, but as you say, if I generate the right presence it should do the trick.

From my pre-PU experience I can also think of a few examples where the quiet guy got further with the girls, but in general it always seemed that the higher energy guys were at an advantage – they were dominant and hence had more social experience and better leadership and ‘alpha’ qualities. In relation to the advice above, If I let my wing do the talking and invest in a girl whom he may eventually talk himself dry on, and if I do what you suggest and it gets me the girl, I could imagine that my wing would be fairly angry with me. Obviously, it doesn’t matter to me, if it’s a group of strangers at a bar.

You mention building sexual tension through presence here… So, basically what I would do is just be calm, be present in the interaction, have a closed-lipped half-smile, strong eye contact with people, and smile a composed smile when the other’s laugh. That would definitely be better than how things went down that evening. Would I look at the girls and project sexual emotional contagion too while doing this?

I shall have to try this out in field next time I’m in that situation.

Thanks, brother.