Breadcrumbs

The following is a cut & paste from a guy I counsel, but he said it was cool if I posted it here for the benefit of others.

At work we’ve had a recent move around of desks and people.
In my new place I am sitting with three chicks I like.

To my left is chick 1:
she likes dogs, looks pretty and has a nice figure. She isn’t hugely confident but has been semi competing for my attention.
To my front is chick 2:
She likes horses, looks nice and has an awesome figure. She has a lot of confidence and has been attempting to gain my attention for most of the day.
To my right is chick 3:
I don’t know what she likes. She looks ok, has a nice body, has medium confidence and has not attempted to gain my attention.

I am leaving this place in a couple of weeks, leaving me open to date people from work.
Which one should I go for and why?

Which one is the hottest? That should be your intitial target and thus the one you pay the least attention to (I didn’t say “no” attention to). From your description it sounds like #2 is the likely candidate, but then, why settle for only one? If you’re getting AIs (approach invitations) from all of these girls – and yes, #3 is also interested just by social proof from the other two – why not use this to your advantage? Stop thinking like a sniper, start thinking like a machine gunner.

Now I’m sure all of the guys reading will think, “Rollo you’re such a moron, how’s this guy supposed to work all 3 of these girls simultaneously?” But remember, many times I’ve posted that women are highly competitive, more competitive than men, only they compete covertly in ways that men are generally unaware of. This guy’s only pitfall he needs to avoid is becoming TOO familiar with any of these girls, because then he’ll become another ‘one of the girls’ in the office. Don’t let on (by behaviors or words) that you in any way are seeing or have the potential to be exclusive to any of them or anyone outside the office either (you don’t have a girlfriend, neither are you looking for one, girls are looking for you). Don’t get chummy with any of them, meaning, no going off to lunch with any of them (or all of them), you have ‘work’ to do or are meeting ‘business associates’ for some ‘side project’ you’re involved in. When you get chummy with any ONE of these women you will have been diffused and they’ll consider you their brother (i.e. she’ll consider sex with you to be incest) or worse still, one of their girlfriends. If this happens your odds with hooking up with any of them is greatly diminished.

Situation Analysis

Lets take a little inventory of what these chicks know about you already. They know where you work and what you do – this is a disadvantage in that it’s a lot of information that they already have a basic understanding of and can extrapolate from. They most likely also have a common sense knowledge of your education level from either casual conversation or by implying it from your employment. Again, another disadvantage, but you can turn these to advantages with the right inferrences. I’m not 100% aware of your situation with, or the individual conditions of these girls so I can only provide you with a general sense of what to do based on all this happening in a vaccuum, but try to think of anything else any one girl, and/or all of them collectively might know about you from any conversations or appearances you presented to any of them.

For instance, how do you dress at work? That might seem innocuous enough a question, but think of what their reaction would be if you dressed more stylish or GQ all of a sudden if they were used to you dressing down for work regularly. They’d know something was up automatically and have you figured out immediately. Rather, if you want, begin gradually dressing up a bit at a time. This sends the message that something is changing with you (for the better obviously) and they’ll be curious. That’s when you can say something like, “oh, I’m working on an independent project for______ (implies extra-workplace ambition) and I’ve been doing _____ (something they wouldn’t expect or don’t know about you, but I’d suggest something artistic or that implies creative intelligence) so I guess I have been dressing a little differently (ambiguous reasoning that infers you have been so involved in your ‘projects’ that you are oblivious to the big, and ‘unintentional’, changes in yourself).” And as if this weren’t enough you ‘allow’ her to point it out to you, thus stroking her own ego and making her feel good for picking up on it and pointing it out to you.

Conversation

Scenarios like this tease interest in women, but remember, mete out your personal information to them like dog treats. The trick is to mine them for information in casual conversation while dropping ‘breadcrumbs’ about yourself in the conversation and this is all too easy to do once you get the knack for it. Keep in mind that women are naturally better with language and non-verbal communication skills than men, so again, use this to your own advantage. Getting a woman to talk about herself has got to be the easiest thing for a man to do since this is what they love most, but listening and picking up on threads in her conversation is the real skill to master. A person who talks about themself is an egoist, a person who talks about others is a gossip, but a person who can get another person to talk about themself is a brilliant conversationalist. The key to conversation is to shape it in such a way that you leave her with an emotional perception of you. It bears repeating that women communicate differently than men, but in doing so they form emotional perceptions with another person (guy or girl) as part of that communication.

Again, use this to your advantage by making her ‘feel’ you when you talk. I’m sure you’ve all heard that men are more ‘visually oriented’ that women, but women are more attuned to voice, touch and smell than men. All of this equates to an overall emotional perception of you. When you enter her environment (she hears your voice, feels your casual touch, and yes, even sees you) she recalls this emotional perception. Remember that you are creating this from your first encounter. Too many guys think that women work just like guys and figure they can easily alter perceptions based on different conditions, you can’t, or at least it doesn’t happen very easily and by then is rarely worth the effort.

Breadcrumbs – Rewarding  Desired Behavior

I also think the ‘breadcrumbs’ technique needs a bit of explaining too. Most desperate guys will more than happily tell a girl his life story, how his Mom is, what he wants from life and women and tell a girl he ‘loves’ her all in the first hour of the first date and then go home to wonder why the girl wants nothing to do with him. He sold the farm on the first date and freely gave away his mystery and challenge by believing the common myth that women want a guy to be “upfront” and “honest”, this is false. Women want challenge, not honesty; full disclosure is the kiss of death.

It’s a lot like sport fishing; if you have a marlin hooked on your line and you immediately yank the rod and reel the line as fast as you can you’ll snap the line, but if you slowly pump the rod and reel the line in gradually (while letting out a bit as needed) and play the fish, you’ll gradually land the big marlin. – breadcrumbs are a way of doing just this. ‘Breadcrumbs’ are little trails for her to follow in your conversation that lead to something about yourself that you want her to find out. If you overtly tell her “I’m studying to be a lawyer/doctor” this bludgeons her with overt information and gives her the emotional impression that you’re ‘trying’ to impress her (i.e. an egoist). But if you offer her a breadcrumb in passing about some case study you’ve just read or how hard the hours of your internship is at the hospital that leads her to a conclusion on her own that she had to make a connection for to understand.

Women LOVE making these connections because it validates their own perceptive abilities in ways men rarely realize. It gives them a feeling of accomplishment when they make these connections. Even these are pretty blatant examples, but you get the drift, the message you want to send her has to be picked up as a breadcrumb that leads her to what you want her to know. This is covert communication and something she’s naturally adept at. Most guys think women wont ‘get it’ and go over into overt communication and drop the interest or else their breadcrumbs are too obvious and then she picks up on your real intent – which is sometimes worse than just being overt! It takes practice, but the key is to err on the side of being too subtle than too ‘in her face’ with a breadcrumb.