A Guide to Nerd Guys Meeting and Dating Women: How to start talking to them Part 7
So you have the conversation started, reached the two minute point, and she hasn’t maced you yet. Kudos. Now what are you going to talk about?
Again, the main thing should be her. You need to seem honestly interested in her (and, to be honest, actually be interested in her). However, if she is somewhat reserved you will have to find some things to talk to her about.
One of the best things you can do to keep a conversation moving is give her a compliment of some kind. However, be aware there are good compliments and bad compliments. Most women are more or less looking for a reason to get rid of guys bugging them and the first thing you say that they can choose to interpret negatively is their rip cord and for the most part they will pull it.
So, as always, I will start with what NOT to compliment her on.
1. Any part of her body, especially breasts, legs, or more or less any part thereof. Even something as innocuous seeming as her hands is a huge land mine. Women are for the most part massively insecure about a lot of stuff you wouldn’t believe, and something as innocent as “Your hands are very slender and clever looking” can easily trigger her pathetic self contempt for her skinny fingers. Also, mentioning any part of her body that can be interpreted as a sexual turn on (and for most guys, that can be any part of her body) will put you permanently into the creep category. Stay away.
2. Most of her clothing. There are a few exceptions to this, but most women use clothing to hide the things they feel insecure about and mentioning it will only reminding them about it. Also, complimenting a woman on her dress is an open invitation to throw out a “Does this dress make me look fat” trap for which there is no good answer.
3. Any observed perception of what you think her religion, politics, or other agenda may be. This is all fodder for the first and second date. Don’t mess around with it.
Ok, so what can you safety compliment her on? Here are a few items.
1. A very general appreciation about her looks if she looks dressed up. “You look fabulous.” Don’t get into specific items.
2. Shoes. Women love shoes (I have a theory on this, but won’t get into it today). They seem to love compliments about their shoes, especially if it looks a little different from what every else is wearing. In my experience, if a woman is wearing boots of some kind (especially if they are unusual color boots or have tassels or something hanging off them) she is fishing for compliments on her footwear. Don’t disappoint her.
3. Jewelry. This is another category of things women wear to get compliments. Necklaces, bracelets, earrings, and rings are all open to comment. HOWEVER, if she is wearing a pendant that is combined with a really plunging neckline and some good cleavage comment on her earrings.
Hey, Diana. Nice bracelets!
(image courtesy of the Wonder Woman t shirt)
4. Handbag. This is a weird one, in that some women love handbags and will literally spend thousands of dollars on a single bag whereas others don’t really care much at all and throw their stuff into whatever sack they have lying around. However, in general the smaller the bag, the more worth of a compliment. Also, it is worth your time to go to a high end department store and learn what the logo’s of the higher end bags looks likes and compliment her on her bag by name (“Is that a Prada bag?”). If a woman is carrying around a $3500 handbag she is most likely so desperate for a compliment on it your comment will feel like the first breath of air after being trapped under the ice, if you know what I mean.
5. Hair. Women spend a lot of time on their hair, and for the most part appreciate a good compliment on it. Color (as long as it’s not gray) comments are generally well received if it is obviously an artificial color (“Your hair has the coolest green highlights”) but stay away if it looks like she is attempting to look natural, even if it is painfully obviously not her natural color.
6. Any apparent ability she has, especially if it something “fun”. Tell her she is a great dancer, runner, drinker, or whatever (“Wow, you can really hold your own on these Jager shots”). Everyone loves being noticed for some kind of ability.
That’s some good guidelines. As always, remember that things are all situational, and keep in mind that two minute rule.
Previous
Next
A Guide to Nerd Guys Meeting and Dating Women: How to start talking to them Part 6
Sorry I have not posted more recently, but I spent all Memorial Day weekend working at a gaming convention, selling shirts. Our best seller was probably this Steam Punk shirt
from our novelty t shirt section.
Anyway, I am about to impart one of the most important rules I ever learned regarding talking to girls at a party, event, or bar: the Two Minute rule. This was taught to me by an old friend of mine who, in spite of being super skinny and weird looking (think a flesh colored Kermit the Frog) used to draw women in like you wouldn’t believe.
Rather than just toss the rule out there, let me set the context. There is a huge mistake guys in general and nerd guys in particular make (I used to make it incessantly) and that is, we get to a party, start talking to a girl, and up talking to her exclusively all night long without actually getting her phone number. This works mainly because most (yes, I am sure any women reading this out there are exceptions to this generalization. Don’t hate spam me) women enjoy (and some crave) attention from guys. They will therefore happily talk to you all night long, boring you with stories about their cat(s) and some lame friend of theirs. However, remember that whole “familiarity breeds contempt” concept. By the end of the night she more or less has satisfied her modest desire to be paid attention too by you and is ready to move on to the guy who has been blowing her off all night. Also, truth be told, most bars and parties are pretty damned boring so listening to you is slightly more stimulating than doing nothing, and most women are too polite to really blow you off (typically they will go to the restroom and sneak out the back if you really are locked on).
Thus we come to the Two Minute rule. If you start talking to a women in any kind of public setting (party, bus stop, concert, etc) and, after two minutes of your best wit and wisdom, are not getting a positive response, look her in the eye, tell her “Nice to meet you” and move on.
Incidentally, a “positive response” is not her answering your questions but rather actually engaging in a conversation, asking you questions and initiating new subjects.
This works on many, many levels. The first is the fact that there is more than one (cuttle) fish in the sea, or even at whatever thing you are attending. If you spend all night talking to some chick who blows you off you might be missing the entirely cool, hot, and compatible chick 20 feet away.
The second level is, you have to adopt an attitude that your time is valuable. If you spend two hours listening to some girl bitch about her job then you have proven to her your time is worthless. You have other things you could be doing, including talking to other women, and can’t spend all night listening to random crap.
Finally, at some point you are going to run out of funny, cool things to say and the conversation will falter. You don’t want to fire off all your ammo the first time you meet her. Save some for the first date.
Now, I have had guys ask me what if she is actually into me but I didn’t actually pick up on it? The magic part is, if she actually liked you and you blew her off she will like you even more, and will resurface in your face later on. At that point you should definitely engage here and go for the number.
Next post will be on actually getting the number from her at the end of your witty flirting. That’s it for today.
Previous
Next
A Guide to Nerd Guys Meeting and Dating Women: How to start talking to them Part 5
Time to delve into a tough subject for most nerd guys. Shutting up and letting the girl talk.
This is tough for most nerd guys. We start to feel nervous talking to women and the defensive mechanism is to fill the awkwardness with examples of our wit and verve. Also, we really think we need to impress her somehow by showing her how much intellect and knowledge we have. However, this is a huge trap (thank you Admiral Akbar) that a lot of nerds fall into for most of their life.
Here is why it is a bad thing. If there is one thing most women love it is a mystery. Guys that are mysterious are by nature sexy. Women feel compelled to dig more and more until they understand the guy as well as they can (which is pretty poorly, to tell the truth, but they like to believe they have accomplished their goal). If you shut up early on and make her work for every tidbit then by the time she has you figured out you have been in a relationship with her for a couple years.
The fact is, familiarity breeds contempt. No matter how cool and put together you or any other guy is, you have things that annoy women just by having a Y chromosome. As a mysterious figure out of a romance novel she 
knows nothing about your bad habits or obsession with Boba Fett (shirt image courtesy of the Star Wars t shirt section) or any number of other things that she will have nothing but contempt for. As she learns of them your chance of seeing her naked drops.
Think of it as a score. When you first meet a girl imagine she assigns a score from 1-100 to you. If you are super good looking or super rich you are probably in the 80-90 range. If you are horribly disfigured or just the wrong body and/or facial type you might be in the 30-40s. Most of us end up in the middle range. Bottom line each girl has a minimum score they require in order to sleep with you. Every time you open your mouth you risk losing points. Granted, there is the chance of gaining points, but unless what you are about to say is “I am the owner of a multi-million dollar corporation” then I think it fair to say the odds of losing points grossly outweighs the chance of gaining points.
So bottom line, say next to nothing about yourself. If I have done well talking to a girl then I know a ton about her (fodder for future conversations) while she knows my first name and maybe a vague idea of what I do for a living. That’s it. Every thing she knows about you is less chance to get anywhere with her.
I’m not saying don’t answer her questions. That would be weird. But every time she asks you something answer with as few details as possible and turn it into a question about her. For example:
Girl: “So, Dave, what do you do for a living?”
Dave: “I run a web site. We sell t-shirts. What do you do?”
Girl: “I work in marketing.”
Dave: “Really? Have you worked on any campaigns I might have seen?”
See how that worked? I answered her question and gave her the opportunity to talk about herself for another five minutes.
Eventually she will learn all your bad habits and idiosyncrasies, but by that time you should be already sleeping with her and she will develop other relationship ties that will keep her from kicking you to the curb.
This point is kind of near to my heart, as it is the one piece of my advice I really struggle with. It is so easy to talk about myself with a girl and say too much. Just recently I was dating a girl. She caught the flu or something and was sick, so instead of sleeping together we would talk a lot via phone and text. Bottom line is she learned too much about me before we slept together and I got dumped. Remember, familiarity breeds contempt.
Next post: the Two Minute Rule.
Previous
Next
A Guide to Nerd Guys Meeting and Dating Women: How to start talking to them Part 1
Last post I talked a little about the fact that there are women everywhere, and later on I will talk about specific places that I think are particularly cool for this sort of thing. However, if I send you out into the world without equipping you with the bare rudiments of how to open a conversation with them without coming across as a total creep either you will get maced or simply be so intimidated you won’t say anything to anyone. So like a hunter headed out to catch a lion, we have to make sure you are equipped with the proper weapons to bag your game without losing any vital organs.
The first thing we should talk about is the massive fear of rejection most guys (not just nerds, although as a sub group we seem to be more paralyzed by this) experience when contemplating talking to an attractive girl. Let me say that this fear is well founded, as approaching a girl who is a total stranger in akin to crossing a mine field only to get kicked in the nuts on the other side. How, then, do we deal with this? The answer is get used to stepping on land mines and wear a cup.
By that I mean get used to rejection. There are three things you need to do to be great at anything and they are practice, practice, practice. I had a friend who helped me get over my inability to talk to and/or pick up women and the thing he did was told me to go out and get rejected. Not joke. We would go to a club or a bar and he would not give me back my car keys until I had been rejected by 25 different women. He was Batman to my Robin.
(Robin t shirt from the comic book t shirts section). Like Robin, eventually I learned enough and morphed into Nightwing, capable of fighting crime (or getting women) on my own, while my replacement got beat almost to death with a crowbar and blown up by the Joker. However, the biggest part was getting rejected so much that I developed a callous over the part of my ego that gets injured by rejection. Now I am more or less impervious to it.
Now that I think about it, I think this should be your first homework assignment. Starting tonight and until you get a girlfriend your job is to talk to 10 different women each day. You are not trying to pick them up, just get used to talking to them and not feeling bad when they blow you off. And by different women I mean women you do not actually have a legitimate reason to talk to. Coworkers, family member, friends, etc. do not count. You must talk to them for whatever reason (even if it is to ask the time, but I would put a limit of one of those per day). You can wait until tomorrow when I have posted some more guidelines, but if you are really motivated you will get out there tonight.
That’s it, as I kind of have a headache tonight. I will post more tomorrow.
Next
