Dance Floor "Proximity"

This newsletter is a bit advanced, so if you haven't played with dance floor game yet, hold off in reading it for a bit until you've tried it.

As your style, dancing, state, and energy improve, you'll start to notice more and more girls looking at you and dancing next to you when you're out clubbing. "Proximity," as we call it, is an IOI demonstrated by a girl being physically close to you. It may be a few feet away, or on a dance floor it may be only inches. She's likely not directly facing you, and if she's very close, she's almost certainly facing the complete opposite direction.

Have you ever approached one of these girls that was giving you proximity, only to have her give you that classic, "Uhh whatever"-type look or hand wave or comment? How come she went out of her way to put herself close to you only to push you away when you approached?

The problem lies in that **proximity is a sub-conscious behavior**, and your failed approach was processed by her conscious mind. Essentially, you were treating the IOI like an approach invitation, but got the same result as if you made a completely cold approach (and worse, since she's usually facing away, you probably approached her from behind!). If she's very close -- so close that she's completely invading your space and occasionally bumping into you -- it gets even more tricky. Your options are to continue dancing behind her (negatively social proofing yourself, as guys that walk up to girls from behind and try to dance with them are universally AFC), open her from behind (likely to fail), walk away (beta, she just forced you out of your own space), or try to reclaim your space.

Here are some ideas:

1) If possible, get and hold eye contact, and smile. If you can get her to smile back, you now have a *real* approach invitation and an IOI from her conscious mind. From this point you can usually just walk up to her (from the front) and start dancing with her. Some girls avoid eye contact intentionally, so it might take time or work to get, or you might not be able to get it at all. Holding eye contact is difficult at first, so practice it off the dance floor first if it's new to you.

2) Open her friend first. Imagine the following scenario, with the arrows indicating the direction each person is facing:

You-> HBTarget-> <-HBFriend

She's facing away, and thus a difficult target to open, but her friend is standing facing you and now can easily be opened using the eye contact/smile above (or any other dance floor technique you like). If your target is giving you proximity, chances are her friend thinks you're cool too, so it will be an easy open. Completely ignore the target for at least 30 seconds (longer if practical).

3) Bump her -- hard. As if you were just dancing and she happened to be in your way and you didn't notice, and with enough force to put her slightly off balance (but not enough to push her over). If you do it too lightly, as if you're just rubbing against her, the effect is ruined and you're in the same category as the AFC that tried to walk up behind her and dance with her. Face away while you do it, and about a second later, look at her, smile, and continue as if you got her eye contact without bumping her. Why does this work? It's playful, she's wondering whether you did it on purpose, it gets her to think about you consciously, and it's different (or in NLP-speak, a pattern interrupt). She needs more information to decide what to think of it, which is your chance to take over.

Posted by: Affection