The Natural: How to Effortlessly Attract the Women You Want (23 page)

  She’s feeling things that she would normally only feel within a committed relationship.

  She’s talking about things she would only normally talk about with very close friends, family, or a long-term boyfriend.

Breaking rapport is one of the most powerful things you can do to build attraction. When you add it to your game, you’ll see a dramatic improvement.

Breaking rapport involves disagreeing with the woman you’re trying to seduce on a particular point, or expressing a contrary view. To exemplify its importance, imagine being a hot woman for a moment. You are being approached by a string of smiling, nodding men, and you feel as if you can’t do or say anything wrong. You could say you love cats, and they’d say they love cats; you could say you like torturing cats, and they’d say, “Cool.” Okay, maybe that’s going too far, but we all know that the natural thing to do when with a beautiful woman is to go into “me too” mode, where you agree with her on everything and try desperately to connect. You assume that similarities will bring you closer. This might generally be true, but the “me too” approach is what 99 percent of men do, and you’ve probably realized from reading this book that it’s what 99 percent of men
don’t
do that brings you success.

Imagine being that beautiful woman again. Men will agree with you on everything and think everything you do is just great. You know there are things they shouldn’t like about you, but they don’t express those dislikes. This means you won’t fully trust them: you’ll think they’re after one thing only, and so their compliments won’t be worth as much.

The answer to this is to break rapport—but you mustn’t do it on big things that have an emotional connection for her. Don’t call her passion for painting lame, but you can break rapport on casual interests like Harry Potter books, independent films, etc. When you say that something she likes sucks, it makes it twice as powerful when you later say that you appreciate something about her.

If you say, “Oh, I love Harry Potter too,” “Oh yes, I love musicals,” and then say, “I have a good feeling about you; we should meet again,” you come off as fake. Better to say, “Harry Potter—I couldn’t even get halfway through the first book,” “I caught
The Lion King
but wouldn’t see another musical anytime soon,” and then, “I love your laugh.” The compliment has a much stronger effect in this latter case, because you’ve shown that you say what you mean and mean what you say.

You don’t want to break rapport too early, though. Do it after the hook point, and just enough to show that she can do something wrong and lose you. The point is not to lower her self-esteem or make her feel stupid; it’s just to show that you can disagree and that you have your own views and opinions. If you
do
break rapport, the best thing to do is quickly change the subject, to avoid turning your conversation into an argument.

Don’t be afraid to tell the truth: it actually increases trust and connection as well as dialing up attraction. Trust and honesty are keys to gaining people’s respect. Breaking rapport is a way to be honest without hurting people’s feelings. If you notice yourself “me-tooing” and not getting as much attraction as you’d like after the hook point, try breaking rapport combined with genuine compliments—and also try challenges.

Challenges are ways to establish that you’re “the selector” (a.k.a. the high-value person in the interaction). You chose her, not the other way around. Most guys will passively let themselves be selected, so if you can challenge a woman, it’ll be uniquely attractive. You need to have earned some value, however, before she’ll respond and try to meet your challenges.

Some examples of challenges you can issue are:

  “If everyone looked the same, how would you stand out?”

  “Can you cook?”

  “Are you rich?”

  “Beauty is common, so what do you have to make me more and more attracted as I get to know you?”

  “There are three things I look for in a woman. The first is
(insert quality—e.g., confidence)
, the second is
(passion)
, and the third is … no, I’m not telling you.
(She will almost certainly follow up with a question: “Why not?”)…
You might fake it.”

The above examples communicate that you’re picky and won’t date just any girl—looks are not enough. This makes you more attractive because you’re telling her, in a way that comes across subconsciously, that you’re high-value. This is the outer-game way to challenge a girl. It’s a tricky business, though: if the thoughts in your mind are about how much you want her and how you’d do anything for her, there will be conflict between your nonverbal and verbal communication.

Women are sensitive and will pick up on things subconsciously; they might not mention them or even consciously know that they’ve noticed, but they’ll be affected positively by friendly challenging. You can start with artificial challenges such as the ones listed above, but you should aim very quickly to use natural challenges—things that grow out of the conversation.

Natural, genuine challenges do far more than simply establish you as a high-value man: they draw out a woman’s character and preferences. Before I started using challenges, I got into a few relationships that were just plain wrong for me. One of the very first girls that I dated was totally unsuited for me. At first things seemed perfect because I was so happy to be in a relationship with a pretty girl (well, with
any
girl). We had romantic picnics in the park, she stayed over at my house many times, and I stayed at hers. She introduced me to her friends and I did the same. On the surface, and in my mind, things were great. But after three weeks, she became difficult to get ahold of on the phone and sent me an email saying that she thought we should just be friends. She dumped me!

We were very different: she smoked cigarettes and weed and I didn’t; she liked different food, enjoyed different music, and had a different outlook on life. Instead of being solid in my own reality, I showed her that I would change for her. I downloaded the music
she
liked to my MP3 player, and even said I’d smoke weed with her. I called her every day, and this became a problem. I was always available. She dumped me after three weeks because I liked her more than she liked me; I looked at her like I loved her, and she felt stifled.