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- Oct 9, 2012
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@DarkKnight asked (in response to me talking about a client who refused to cold approach because he did not want to ever come in “lower value”):
Guys may not want to hear it, but it is true, generally. When you are the one who is opening, you take a bit of a value hit (DLV = Display of Lower Value).
When two guys wingman each other, the guy who does NOT open a particular set of girls generally seems higher value to the girls in it (all other things being equal). That's because he is the one who is just chilling, just hanging back, and ends up pulled into a conversation with the girls anyway. Classic Law of Least Effort: maximal results for minimal effort.
Another aspect of the "cold approach DLV" is that the higher effort the open, the greater the DLV risk. Cases in point:
A lot of guys won't cold approach at all because they sense the inherent DLV in it and their pride won't let them approach.
Much of approach anxiety might actually be distilled down to "I'm afraid of DLVing myself" even more than it is "I'm afraid of rejection."
Guys searching around trying to find the perfect opener are really trying to figure out a way to approach a girl that does not risk them looking lower value. They don't want to be the chaser, a guy who is begging for women/attention, etc.
(maybe this is also why some autism spectrum guys who get into cold approach become such relentless approach machines -- they just have no sense of "I am DLVing myself making these approaches" and so don't experience approach anxiety; downside is they also often don't learn to compensate for the DLV so end up struggling to get much out of their approaching)
Now, there are ways you can structure your openers so that you reduce the DLV by including DHVs in the actual opener. Skilled seducers are generally packing a bunch of DHV signals into their opens so they take as little a value hit as possible on opening. See this article for some examples of this:
www.girlschase.com
Really, anything where you are being forceful and sincere or else playful and having fun in the opener does a great job of minimizing the DLV of being "the guy who is starting the conversation, rather than the one who is being pulled into the conversation or having it started with him by the other party."
Others are getting people to introduce you, making your openers as casual as possible (to reduce the effort you put in, and hence the DLV), and so forth.
However, we also have a bunch of ways to compensate for the DLV of effortful opening, too.
NONVERBAL SIGNS OF "BEING DISTRACTED"
One of the ways we can even out the odds is by using nonverbal signals that a girl is slightly "losing us" early on into the approach.
You need to start out friendly and energetic to pull her into social mode and disarm her reservations.
But once you're a few seconds in, you can start using nonverbal cues that you maybe are about to exit.
One of these is "body rocking", where you are leaning back and away a bit, on your back foot, then back in, then back out a bit again.
Another is where you turn your head away from her somewhat while still keeping your eyes on her.
Anything where you are REDUCING physical attention to her, without making it so overt that you are committing yourself to actually exiting the conversation, signals that "subconsciously" you are thinking about leaving.
If a girl's not into you these signals won't have any effect.
However, if she's excited by your approach and wants you to stay, you will typically notice nonverbal chasing behavior on her part in response to your nonverbal withdrawal. e.g., she will turn her body more fully toward you, uncross her arms, straighten her posture up more / project her breasts, lean her head in more, etc.
Other ways of doing this are looking a bit distracted, seeming to check out someone else behind her (e.g., another girl), etc.
You don't want to overdo this; you just want to do it enough that she thinks to herself, "Hey! Why am I losing him!" and puts a little effort in to get you re-focused on her.
Then you are in the game.
TEASING
Another anti-DLV tech is teasing.
When you tease a girl, you are saying "I am comfortable enough with you that I'm not afraid of what your reaction will be when I tease you."
Girls who are receptive to your teases of them are accepting a frame where it is okay for you to tease them.
They will not generally accept a tease from a guy they view as lower value than them. So just by getting her to accept a tease from you, you are getting her to say, "Okay, this guy is not actually lower value, in fact."
I have a guide on teasing on Girls Chase here:
www.girlschase.com
There are more advanced forms of tease -- for less receptive girls -- such as negs:
www.girlschase.com
I have another kind of tease I call the "rug pull" tease, which functions similar to a neg. I have that one in Lush Teases (shameless plug -- you will just have to wait for the course to come out if you want that one
).
But unless you are approaching girls with very high walls (like hot girls already drowning in attention in nightclubs) or you are trying to crack closed off / impossible girls, normal teases are usually going to do just fine for you here.
CONTRIBUTION SPACE
Another way to re-take the dynamic is by leaving open space for a girl to contribute to the interaction.
Generally you need to be prepared to run the first two up to five minutes of conversation totally on your own. This is so you can handle girls who are not in social mode, girls who are very shy, girls who simply do not actively signal interest much/at all, etc.
However, a good practice to get into is to regularly leave "contribution space" open in your interactions so girls can jump in and contribute on their own.
You do that by bringing a conversation thread to a close but not opening another new one up yet, and seeing if she will ask you a question or offer anything of her own. For instance, you ask her what she does for fun, she answers, you ask her how long she's been at it, she answers, and then you tell her it's an awesome hobby. Then for a moment you don't say anything. Does she jump in to try to keep the conversation going? To ask you about your own hobbies? To start expounding on her hobby?
If so, does she seem like she's doing it out of politeness or does she seem like she is genuinely trying to keep the conversation rolling?
You don't want your contribution spaces to be that long -- maybe a two-second pause or so -- in the first few minutes, because otherwise some girls will feel too awkward and make their exit. But it is good to have these scattered in there as opportunities for girls to contribute.
Another way of adding contribution space is the pregnant pause... though these can be a bit too lengthy for the first few minutes of an interaction.
But the gist is the more she works to take over when you leave "contribution space" for her, and the more you get the feeling she is doing so because she LIKES you (and not because she just feels socially obligated to), the more you offset the initial DLV of cold approach and get back to even footing, or even higher footing, where she will start to chase you.
JEALOUSY PLOTLINES
The emergency button if nothing else works is jealousy plotlines.
If you open a girl but she doesn't respond to nonverbal distraction signs, shrugs off your teases, and doesn't fill contribution space herself, talk to her friend. Or talk to another girl nearby briefly.
A lot of the time that is all you need to return to the first girl only to find that now she is a lot readier to play ball.
WHAT ABOUT...
Screening & qualifying?
Disqualifiers?
Etc.?
These don't actually work to compensate for the approach DLV because so long as you are still in the initial "just approached DLV" phase, she does not believe these techs and views them as techs.
e.g., a guy stops you on the street as you are passing a furniture shop, strikes up a quick conversation, then disqualifies you by saying, "Anyway, you look like more of an IKEA type of guy." Yeah sure he's disqualified you, but you already know he opened you to get you to go into his furniture store, so it doesn't work as an anti-DLV.
However if he stops you, chats with you for a bit, and you're kind of checking out his store, and then he body rocks away from you, starts looking a bit distracted, tells you, "Anyway..." as he appears to be looking off toward someone else walking down the street, and you then ask him, "Anyway, what kind of furniture do you have in there?" He can then come coolly back in with "Different pieces. Some antiques, some designer stuff, some stuff for folks on a budget. A pretty wide gamut," and suddenly now you are the one chasing him, inquiring more about whether he has this or that, what his prices are, etc.
WHAT IF YOU DO ZERO ANTI-DLV STUFF?
If you have really strong fundamentals (great energy, great posture, solid fashion, etc.) it is possible to come in strong enough that a girl is looking at you thinking to herself, "Well he doesn't SEEM lower value!" and trying to figure out the mystery of a guy like you approaching a girl like her.
However, as you get better fundamentals and game you may notice it gets harder to approach less attractive girls until you start naturally doing things that add in some nonverbal signs of distraction, or light playful teases, or add in space for the girl to contribute. You make the cold approach, which is a DLV behavior, then don't give her any opportunities to chase you herself, all while seeming like you should actually be much HIGHER value than her, and she can't reconcile the incongruence and bails ("Something is wrong here. Is he tooling me?" she thinks).
It gets easier to approach increasingly hot girls without anti-DLV tech as your fundamentals and game improve. The DLV hit is less of a problem when everything else about you already screams high value. A middle value seeming guy doing cold approach maybe drops from a 6 to a 5, meanwhile a high value guy might drop from a 9 to an 8. High value guy is still looking good.
You don't have to explicitly anti-DLV. As she gets into the interaction with you, she will gradually settle into things, and all the other stuff you are doing will lead her to whatever impression of you girls normally end up with you thanks to your game + fundamentals.
Thus, anti-DLV tech is basically just for the first few minutes after the open: what are you doing to offset the value hit you get from cold approach?
WHY YOU SHOULDN'T WORRY ABOUT THE COLD APPROACH DLV HIT
Let me give you one other thing to chew on though.
Because I don't want guys with approach anxiety to read this and say, "There, see! I was right. Cold approach is lower value. Back into my shell I go!"
Yes, you take a value hit walking up to a stranger you don't know and striking up a conversation.
However... who cares?
Does it matter if Unknown Girl A thinks you are a 7 out of 10 because you did not approach, vs. a 6 out of 10 because you did?
You can't pick her up, get a date with her, or turn her into your girlfriend if you don't approach.
That "7 out of 10 non-approaching guy" is purely hypothetical. She is never going to end up in a random conversation with you where you did not approach. The 7/10 guy who doesn't approach doesn't even matter. Only the 6/10 guy who approaches does.
She will figure out you are actually a 10/10 guy, not a 6/10 guy or a 7/10 guy, once you are fucking her brains out, don't worry.
Also, a lot of the stuff I have earlier in this post you are going to figure out over time anyway once you are approaching.
Everybody hates feeling lower value. You are going to get that "she is skeptical about me, I have lowered my value by approaching" feeling when you approach plenty of girls, and you are going to turn your mind to figuring out how to not have that happen.
You will test things out and probably independently figure out that disqualifying her, screening then qualifying her, etc., doesn't compensate for the approach DLV, but nonverbal distraction signals, teases, and contribution space does (or, if nothing is working, the jealousy plotline).
Every guy I know who is good with girls does this stuff seemingly automatically. You just figure it out.
Also: the cold approach DLV hit is not very severe.
At most you are dropping a point maybe on the 1-to-10 attractiveness scale.
You will more than make up for that with your behavior with her after the approach.
If you do anti-DLV stuff soon into the approach and she bites you'll just make up for it all the faster.
Girls like guys who approach. It is bold. They respect it and it excites them. It also makes them much more open to finding out if the guy approaching them is actually higher value, and thus a lot more receptive to these anti-DLV baits than, for instance, you would be to a guy doing this stuff to you.
Chase
Guys may not want to hear it, but it is true, generally. When you are the one who is opening, you take a bit of a value hit (DLV = Display of Lower Value).
When two guys wingman each other, the guy who does NOT open a particular set of girls generally seems higher value to the girls in it (all other things being equal). That's because he is the one who is just chilling, just hanging back, and ends up pulled into a conversation with the girls anyway. Classic Law of Least Effort: maximal results for minimal effort.
Another aspect of the "cold approach DLV" is that the higher effort the open, the greater the DLV risk. Cases in point:
- You're seated on an airplane and you strike up a conversation with the man next to you. He feels higher value, at least initially. You are more worried about his reaction.
- You're seated on an airplane, but this time the man next to you is the one who strikes up the conversation. He feels lower value than he would had you been the one to open. You are probably more worried about how you are going to get away if this guy turns out to not be able to take a hint.
- You're walking down the street when a random man runs up to stop you wanting to ask you something. He feels even lower value than the airplane guy -- here he is chasing you down to try to get your attention.
A lot of guys won't cold approach at all because they sense the inherent DLV in it and their pride won't let them approach.
Much of approach anxiety might actually be distilled down to "I'm afraid of DLVing myself" even more than it is "I'm afraid of rejection."
Guys searching around trying to find the perfect opener are really trying to figure out a way to approach a girl that does not risk them looking lower value. They don't want to be the chaser, a guy who is begging for women/attention, etc.
(maybe this is also why some autism spectrum guys who get into cold approach become such relentless approach machines -- they just have no sense of "I am DLVing myself making these approaches" and so don't experience approach anxiety; downside is they also often don't learn to compensate for the DLV so end up struggling to get much out of their approaching)
Now, there are ways you can structure your openers so that you reduce the DLV by including DHVs in the actual opener. Skilled seducers are generally packing a bunch of DHV signals into their opens so they take as little a value hit as possible on opening. See this article for some examples of this:
Tactics Tuesdays: High Authority Direct Openers
Many guys open girls direct in an ‘equal’ or even supplicating way. Yet open from a place of authority and your direct openers get a LOT more potent. There are a few varying angles to use to start a conversation with a girl. You have your indirect openers (which include things like opinion...
www.girlschase.com
Really, anything where you are being forceful and sincere or else playful and having fun in the opener does a great job of minimizing the DLV of being "the guy who is starting the conversation, rather than the one who is being pulled into the conversation or having it started with him by the other party."
Others are getting people to introduce you, making your openers as casual as possible (to reduce the effort you put in, and hence the DLV), and so forth.
However, we also have a bunch of ways to compensate for the DLV of effortful opening, too.
NONVERBAL SIGNS OF "BEING DISTRACTED"
One of the ways we can even out the odds is by using nonverbal signals that a girl is slightly "losing us" early on into the approach.
You need to start out friendly and energetic to pull her into social mode and disarm her reservations.
But once you're a few seconds in, you can start using nonverbal cues that you maybe are about to exit.
One of these is "body rocking", where you are leaning back and away a bit, on your back foot, then back in, then back out a bit again.
Another is where you turn your head away from her somewhat while still keeping your eyes on her.
Anything where you are REDUCING physical attention to her, without making it so overt that you are committing yourself to actually exiting the conversation, signals that "subconsciously" you are thinking about leaving.
If a girl's not into you these signals won't have any effect.
However, if she's excited by your approach and wants you to stay, you will typically notice nonverbal chasing behavior on her part in response to your nonverbal withdrawal. e.g., she will turn her body more fully toward you, uncross her arms, straighten her posture up more / project her breasts, lean her head in more, etc.
Other ways of doing this are looking a bit distracted, seeming to check out someone else behind her (e.g., another girl), etc.
You don't want to overdo this; you just want to do it enough that she thinks to herself, "Hey! Why am I losing him!" and puts a little effort in to get you re-focused on her.
Then you are in the game.
TEASING
Another anti-DLV tech is teasing.
When you tease a girl, you are saying "I am comfortable enough with you that I'm not afraid of what your reaction will be when I tease you."
Girls who are receptive to your teases of them are accepting a frame where it is okay for you to tease them.
They will not generally accept a tease from a guy they view as lower value than them. So just by getting her to accept a tease from you, you are getting her to say, "Okay, this guy is not actually lower value, in fact."
I have a guide on teasing on Girls Chase here:
Teasing a Girl the Right Way
A reader recently wrote in to ask me why I thought his text conversations weren't going anywhere. He's been working really hard to get his game tightened down, and thought he was doing well... but here, again, he could feel this girl slipping away. The texting transcript he sent picks up...
www.girlschase.com
There are more advanced forms of tease -- for less receptive girls -- such as negs:
Tactics Tuesdays: Deconstructing the PUA Neg
You're out and about, in a high end nightclub or a top shelf retail outlet, when you spot an insanely beautiful woman. She's just gorgeous: dressed to the nines, hair flowing and perfect, and standing atop 6 inch heels. You have to meet her. So, you walk over, start talking to her, and, to bring...
www.girlschase.com
I have another kind of tease I call the "rug pull" tease, which functions similar to a neg. I have that one in Lush Teases (shameless plug -- you will just have to wait for the course to come out if you want that one
).But unless you are approaching girls with very high walls (like hot girls already drowning in attention in nightclubs) or you are trying to crack closed off / impossible girls, normal teases are usually going to do just fine for you here.
CONTRIBUTION SPACE
Another way to re-take the dynamic is by leaving open space for a girl to contribute to the interaction.
Generally you need to be prepared to run the first two up to five minutes of conversation totally on your own. This is so you can handle girls who are not in social mode, girls who are very shy, girls who simply do not actively signal interest much/at all, etc.
However, a good practice to get into is to regularly leave "contribution space" open in your interactions so girls can jump in and contribute on their own.
You do that by bringing a conversation thread to a close but not opening another new one up yet, and seeing if she will ask you a question or offer anything of her own. For instance, you ask her what she does for fun, she answers, you ask her how long she's been at it, she answers, and then you tell her it's an awesome hobby. Then for a moment you don't say anything. Does she jump in to try to keep the conversation going? To ask you about your own hobbies? To start expounding on her hobby?
If so, does she seem like she's doing it out of politeness or does she seem like she is genuinely trying to keep the conversation rolling?
You don't want your contribution spaces to be that long -- maybe a two-second pause or so -- in the first few minutes, because otherwise some girls will feel too awkward and make their exit. But it is good to have these scattered in there as opportunities for girls to contribute.
Another way of adding contribution space is the pregnant pause... though these can be a bit too lengthy for the first few minutes of an interaction.
But the gist is the more she works to take over when you leave "contribution space" for her, and the more you get the feeling she is doing so because she LIKES you (and not because she just feels socially obligated to), the more you offset the initial DLV of cold approach and get back to even footing, or even higher footing, where she will start to chase you.
JEALOUSY PLOTLINES
The emergency button if nothing else works is jealousy plotlines.
If you open a girl but she doesn't respond to nonverbal distraction signs, shrugs off your teases, and doesn't fill contribution space herself, talk to her friend. Or talk to another girl nearby briefly.
A lot of the time that is all you need to return to the first girl only to find that now she is a lot readier to play ball.
WHAT ABOUT...
Screening & qualifying?
Disqualifiers?
Etc.?
These don't actually work to compensate for the approach DLV because so long as you are still in the initial "just approached DLV" phase, she does not believe these techs and views them as techs.
e.g., a guy stops you on the street as you are passing a furniture shop, strikes up a quick conversation, then disqualifies you by saying, "Anyway, you look like more of an IKEA type of guy." Yeah sure he's disqualified you, but you already know he opened you to get you to go into his furniture store, so it doesn't work as an anti-DLV.
However if he stops you, chats with you for a bit, and you're kind of checking out his store, and then he body rocks away from you, starts looking a bit distracted, tells you, "Anyway..." as he appears to be looking off toward someone else walking down the street, and you then ask him, "Anyway, what kind of furniture do you have in there?" He can then come coolly back in with "Different pieces. Some antiques, some designer stuff, some stuff for folks on a budget. A pretty wide gamut," and suddenly now you are the one chasing him, inquiring more about whether he has this or that, what his prices are, etc.
WHAT IF YOU DO ZERO ANTI-DLV STUFF?
If you have really strong fundamentals (great energy, great posture, solid fashion, etc.) it is possible to come in strong enough that a girl is looking at you thinking to herself, "Well he doesn't SEEM lower value!" and trying to figure out the mystery of a guy like you approaching a girl like her.
However, as you get better fundamentals and game you may notice it gets harder to approach less attractive girls until you start naturally doing things that add in some nonverbal signs of distraction, or light playful teases, or add in space for the girl to contribute. You make the cold approach, which is a DLV behavior, then don't give her any opportunities to chase you herself, all while seeming like you should actually be much HIGHER value than her, and she can't reconcile the incongruence and bails ("Something is wrong here. Is he tooling me?" she thinks).
It gets easier to approach increasingly hot girls without anti-DLV tech as your fundamentals and game improve. The DLV hit is less of a problem when everything else about you already screams high value. A middle value seeming guy doing cold approach maybe drops from a 6 to a 5, meanwhile a high value guy might drop from a 9 to an 8. High value guy is still looking good.
You don't have to explicitly anti-DLV. As she gets into the interaction with you, she will gradually settle into things, and all the other stuff you are doing will lead her to whatever impression of you girls normally end up with you thanks to your game + fundamentals.
Thus, anti-DLV tech is basically just for the first few minutes after the open: what are you doing to offset the value hit you get from cold approach?
WHY YOU SHOULDN'T WORRY ABOUT THE COLD APPROACH DLV HIT
Let me give you one other thing to chew on though.
Because I don't want guys with approach anxiety to read this and say, "There, see! I was right. Cold approach is lower value. Back into my shell I go!"
Yes, you take a value hit walking up to a stranger you don't know and striking up a conversation.
However... who cares?
Does it matter if Unknown Girl A thinks you are a 7 out of 10 because you did not approach, vs. a 6 out of 10 because you did?
You can't pick her up, get a date with her, or turn her into your girlfriend if you don't approach.
That "7 out of 10 non-approaching guy" is purely hypothetical. She is never going to end up in a random conversation with you where you did not approach. The 7/10 guy who doesn't approach doesn't even matter. Only the 6/10 guy who approaches does.
She will figure out you are actually a 10/10 guy, not a 6/10 guy or a 7/10 guy, once you are fucking her brains out, don't worry.
Also, a lot of the stuff I have earlier in this post you are going to figure out over time anyway once you are approaching.
Everybody hates feeling lower value. You are going to get that "she is skeptical about me, I have lowered my value by approaching" feeling when you approach plenty of girls, and you are going to turn your mind to figuring out how to not have that happen.
You will test things out and probably independently figure out that disqualifying her, screening then qualifying her, etc., doesn't compensate for the approach DLV, but nonverbal distraction signals, teases, and contribution space does (or, if nothing is working, the jealousy plotline).
Every guy I know who is good with girls does this stuff seemingly automatically. You just figure it out.
Also: the cold approach DLV hit is not very severe.
At most you are dropping a point maybe on the 1-to-10 attractiveness scale.
You will more than make up for that with your behavior with her after the approach.
If you do anti-DLV stuff soon into the approach and she bites you'll just make up for it all the faster.
Girls like guys who approach. It is bold. They respect it and it excites them. It also makes them much more open to finding out if the guy approaching them is actually higher value, and thus a lot more receptive to these anti-DLV baits than, for instance, you would be to a guy doing this stuff to you.
Chase
"
she thinks. "I wonder what this guy wants?" 