Some girls are clueless when it comes to pick-up lines, especially if they are subtle and don’t appear to be your normal cheesy line. This point was illustrated this afternoon as a guy struck up “harmless” small talk with my girlfriend at Starbucks. Here is how it went down. As she’s walking out of the place this guy comes up beside her and comments on the odd group of loud bikers that had congregated outside of the mega coffee house. He says something along the lines of, “Did you see that group? what’s that all about?” It’s an open-ended and non threatening question. Because she found the group odd as well, she responds something along the lines of, “I’m not sure what was going on, it’s kind of weird.” And there you go, the wheels were set in motion and a conversation followed and he eventually asked her out. When she told me about the exchange I mentioned it was a good pick-up tactic on his part. She seemed bewildered by my comment and responded that “he was just being friendly.” The fact that she seemed so oblivious to this sort of pick-up technique really surprised me and got me thinking that it would be a good subject for me to write about.

The exchange with the guy from the coffee house didn’t bother me one bit. First of all, I trust my girlfriend 100%. Second, I view it as a compliment when a guy finds her attractive enough to approach her in hopes of securing a date. It makes me even more proud to be with her and reminds me of how lucky I am to be with her.

So how do I know that this was a pick-up attempt? Well, I used that technique all the time back in the day and was quite successful at it. Striking up a conversation with a girl who you don’t know is very hard if you ask her a question relation directly to her. For example, if a guy approaches you and asks you how you are doing or tells you that you are pretty, it’s easy for you to see that he is interested in you which will (if you are not overly attracted to him) cause you to go into a defensive mode. On the other hand, if you approach a girl and make a comment that has to do with someone or something else (especially if that someone/something else was out of the norm), you establish more of a common ground and takes the pressure off of her.

Case in point. While in college, I found it very easy to meet and date girls who I shared classes with. My strategy was to simply wait until the teacher or one of the other students did something that was very odd. You know, the guy in the front of the class who raises his hand every three seconds and asks one bizarre question after another. Class is dismissed and I simply say to my target, “What’s up with that guy and all of his crazy questions?” Inevitable she’d respond something to the effect, “I know, he is totally weird.” Ah ha! The ice was broken and a we begin a conversation about something we both found interesting.  From there I could later transition into asking her about herself and roll that into asking her out. It gave me a chance to interact with her and make her feel comfortable with me before I showed interest in her. This tactic of mine was applied in many different situations (at a store, a bar, wherever) and increased my odds of getting a date considerably.

So next time a guy chats you up for what you think is innocent small talk, you might want to see it for what it might really be, an attempt to pick you up. Now this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially if you find the guy attractive. However, if you don’t, you may want to get out of conversation sooner rather than later.