Sometimes, I ask myself if anybody ever counted how often the average man finds himself wondering what to say to a girl. If you did that, you would probably get a frightening daily ratio. “You’ll share an elevator, just you two, and you’ll rise in total silence to the floor”, Rupert Holmes sings in “The people that you never get to love”, a forgotten song from 1979. “Like the fool you are, you get off, and she leaves your life behind a closing door.” And we can all relate.

I used to be desperate for any advice on how to meet girls: for a long time, I tried repeating all the funny, witty lines and routines that I’d read in books, but nothing ever got me very far. Then, one autumn evening, it hit me.

A risky move: going back to questions.

I was at a point in my studies about women and attraction where I had built up a solid personality and confidence. Practice had made me good in social situations, I had my life stories together, the social intelligence to tell them at the right moment and the enthusiasm to tell them with intrigue. So that evening, I realized that I was ready to go back to a basic concept that would have gotten me blown out of any conversation before my studies: asking questions.

You and me baby are nothing but mammals

However, before I tell you more about that, let me ask you a question: how do you think animals communicate? They don’t have words, language, phrases. They don’t have “pickup lines” and “openers”. Yet the males somehow manage to attract females – all the way to the big ol’ “f-close”. Fancy that! Now I want you to get the idea out of your head that just because we humans are more evolved than animals, we’re completely disconnected from the animal world. “You and me baby ain’t nothing but mammals”, remember that song? There’s a comic strip where you see a man getting mad at his dog, telling him in great detail why he’s not supposed to do whatever he did wrong. In the next panel, you see what the dog actually hears: “wah wah wah”. That dude is clearly doing something wrong.

Now, when you communicate with a woman (or anybody for that matter), guess what. Words are ultimately meaningless (which is why irony works, by the way). They are not what you communicate! What you communicate is your confidence, your tenure, your intention, your emotions, in effect, the whole vibe you give off.

So when I was getting ready for going out on that autumn night, I realized that I was actually really comfortable in my own skin. I had learned about the dynamics of attraction, I was largely aware of what was going on behind the scenes of an interaction, I “understood” what women were saying and what kinds of signals I was sending. In the recent weeks, much of what I’d been studying had pointed to the direction of “just be yourself”: something that friends used to tell me back in the old days when I had no game at all. “Being myself” never got me laid back then… But now that I was my improved self, I decided I would try asking more questions again. Only this time, there was a new twist:

Don’t open with a line. Open with a purpose.

Many guys tend to ask questions in a mere attempt to spark some conversation: “So where do you work?”, “What’s your name?”, “How old are you?”. The problem is, oftentimes, they don’t really know where they’re going with this: all they know is that this girl is hot and they want to be around her. The girl will sense that aimlessness, and she will lose interest. Now, when you have an actual purpose, that will show through your conversation, and it will make you interesting and attractive. When I ask girls questions now, my actual purpose is:

- I like the looks of this girl and I want to know more about her personality to see if she matches to what I’m looking for in a woman.

With that, I can be much more goal-oriented than I was before. Now here’s the thing for you: you should sit down and work out some of the purposes you would have when opening a girl. A couple of really good ones are:

- I want to have a good time (because without that, nothing will really work out).
- I want to find a friend with benefits.
- I want to meet fun people.
- I want to find a soulmate.
- I want a girl that shares my love for music.

Find out about your own intentions. Do you want a girlfriend? F-buddy? Female friend? Or simply build a social circle? Whatever it is, once you have it figured out, you’ll no longer worry about what to say to a girl. Words will come naturally, because they’re no longer the focus of the conversation. The focus is no longer on the words you utter – it’s on what you actually say.