Below is a Holiday newsletter from the guys at The Mystery Method.

How to Score at Holiday Parties by The Mystery Method 

1. Holiday Parties

Christmas and New Year’s parties are incredible occasions to meet women. Just about everything you could want is going in your favor. People are festive and happy. They do not usually have work the next day. The season is about making connections and feeling close to people. No one likes being alone over the holidays. Barriers are down. Friends introduce friends to each other, and everyone tries to have a good time.

But be careful!

A lot of guys who aren’t experienced with The Mystery Method try to duplicate their successes in bars, coffee shops, and clubs in the same way at private parties. Don’t do this! The underlying psychological principles of attraction work the same way, but the rhythm and context are extremely different. In our upcoming book, Magic Bullets, we go over in detail how various social situations differ from each other, but it’s not coming out until January and the holidays are now, so here goes…

Let’s start with something else. Say you’re at a party where everyone knows at least one person in common, even if it’s just the host. In this situation, scripted openers may lower your status. Extreme peacocking is also often out of place. Also watch for re-using material.

Details? Let’s compare a club to a friendly party. The aim here is not to provide an exhaustive list of tactics on how to meet women at holiday parties. That could be the subject of a book in itself. What I want to do here is give you an idea of how Holiday parties are DIFFERENT from public venues where people are more likely strangers to each other. So read this for the general flavor as much as for the specific examples.

Openers

Clubs: As you know, the opener is designed to “get you in the door” without triggering many women’s automatic responses to some male stranger initiating a conversation. Approaching a woman you don’t know and asking her whether she just saw the fight outside bypasses these “automatic responses” we just mentioned. Thus, by starting a conversation with a canned opener like “Did you guys see the fight outside?” you bypass that switch and are in a conversation before she/they even realize it.

The ultimate resource on openers from is the Interview Series’ first CD, by masters Sinn and Savoy, when they discuss good and bad openings, inventing openings, and opening all-female vs. mixed sets.

In contrast, “Hi I’m Francis” makes her think about whether she wants to talk to me. She has to decide if she is attracted to me already, but she hasn’t learned very much about my personality yet. This is what Savoy called the “Am I attracted?” question (AIA) and avoiding this is a major part of opening. Details about AIA and how it works will be covered in Magic Bullets.

So, the opener might work and she might decide that she is attracted enough to continue the conversation if she’s friendly, thinks I’m cute, is lonely or bored, or is attracted to a guy with enough courage to approach her. However, in the back of her mind, she is already ‘screening’. That’s why we discourage this sort of opening.

Parties: At a party where people always have people in common, everyone is expected to meet strangers. That’s the point of a private party. So if I start with, “Hi, I’m Francis”, I’ll get “Hi, I’m Julie” and after a few seconds to give the conversation some momentum (establishing who we now in common, commenting on the great view, introducing your friend, or whatever), you can start with attraction material without activating her screening reflex.

This bears repeating: At a party there is usually no need to cut through barriers to opening. You are supposed to talk to strangers!

Starting in mid-conversation with “Hey, who lies more, men or women?” may initiate a conversation, but in the back of her mind she’ll be wondering why I didn’t introduce myself and follow social conventions. Do I not know anyone at the party and am afraid to be found out? Am I just rude? Do I lack social skills? Of course, you don’t want her thinking about any of these things. This is what we call Social Intuition (which is one of the inherently attractive characteristics for a man, and is covered in Magic Bullets).

The Social Matrix

Clubs: If you do not succeed with the first couple of women you talk to at a club, it’s not a big deal. (Failing to open, on the other hand, IS a big deal: Savoy covered this on his blog at http://therealsavoy.blogspot.com/2006/12/opening-approaching.html). Find another part of the club, and, with luck, no one will have seen your first approaches. Even if you bomb an entire club, there are more clubs. You’ll never see these people again. So you can take risks.

Parties: If you fail with a girl or a group, KNOW that everyone else saw it. In fact, anything you do while in a conversation will be reported. For example, let’s say that you start the night by talking for 10 minutes to Tanya and Peter [random names for this example]. Let’s say I’m not very good at storytelling, so I don’t get through the attraction phase and I make a bad impression. Later on, I get warmed up, and I meet Sarah. Things go much better with her. But then I call her next day and she doesn’t answer. What happened?

Probably, Sarah, Peter, and Tanya have friends in common. Now Sarah hears about my earlier rejection and that other people think of me as low value. Sarah reconsiders. Does she really want go out with someone else’s reject? Does she really want to date a low-value guy? Does she want to be the girl who dates the guy who other people were laughing at? Remember, not only Tanya and Peter know this story, but their friends might too – and a lot of mutual friends were probably at the party in the first place! Remember – a woman’s social value derives to some extent from the quality of man she is with. It’s unfair, sure, but that’s life.

Don’t peacock at parties. Sure Mystery looks great on the DVD set (see below for how you can make the DVD set a Christmas present for yourself) in all of his peacocking outfits, but he probably wouldn’t dress like that to go to a friend’s house.

So, be a lot more careful at parties. Get along with people. Have fun. Make friends. If you spot an opportunity, go for it, but don’t act like you would in a club. Oh yeah, and if you’re not any good at storytelling (most men aren’t naturally) you should check out Volume 3 of our interview series here. Future developed these skills through his training as a stage actor and Sinn – well, Sinn has developed virtually every skill that could help him with dating. That’s why he’s Sinn.

Social Proof

Clubs: Establishing social proof is vitally important. At a club, a woman knows nothing about you. At most clubs, even losers can get in if they bribe the bouncer or come really early or wait forever. So, to her, you could still be anything from a loser to a celebrity. . We’ve covered this in the OAP already.

In a party: At a private party, you have social proof. If Sarah (the girl from the previous example) is friends with Kelly, who is throwing the party, and you’re friends with Kelly, then you already have lots of value. Being too obvious in demonstrating more value will feel out of place to her, or socially awkward, or make you come across as insecure or fake.

Moreover, there’s an opportunity here! Let’s say you’re single, Sarah is single, and Kelly respects you as a friend. You can then ask Kelly about Sarah. [That, by the way, is the way to do it. Keep the screening frame, even with mutual friends. Don’t say “I like Sarah”. Say “I was talking to your friend Sarah for a while; where do you know her from?” People will understand what you mean]. Ask her what she’s like. If Kelly thinks you’d be a good match – remember, especially over the holidays, people love setting their friends up – then she may do all of the work for you. Next thing you know, Kelly and her boyfriend might invite both and Sarah to a concert together. You’ll get the girl.

Do yourself a favor and buy yourself an early Christmas gift. Magic Bullets will make the new year that much better!!!

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