Something I've learned of late is the importance of learning to build a connection with a girl you're becoming acquainted with.

My game's been coming on nicely in the last few weeks, and I'm now at the stage where if I go out I'm fairly confident I can get at least one number. I thought this would be half the battle won. How wrong I was. Of the 2 girls I've actually bothered to call, both have flaked (one, whom I called not one hour ago, never even picked up) and I know why. So gentlemen, I present another of my notorious theories.

Take "Alice". I met her on Wednesday night whilst out with some friends. I opened with something arbitrary like "did you see the boat race? It was shocking, my gran could drink faster than that". Alice sat, and it was immediately apparent that she wasn't good at making conversation so I launched into Kowalski's tried and tested method of saying anything I fancied and not giving a shit whether she was into it or not. She was attracted, and enthusiastically gave me her number with the promise of meeting me later in the week after 10 minutes or so.

Scroll forward to tonight and I called her to arrange a D2 and she obviously didn't pick up. The reason was simply that I didn't create a connection. I talked and told stories and got her attracted, but at no point did I really delve into either of our personalities. Partially to help the conversation along (and avoid awkward pauses) and partially because I could see that she was into it.

The fact that I didn't create a connection meant that, whilst she was attracted to me, she probably felt that she didn't really know me, and would've been shy about picking up the phone, let alone arranging a date. So how to really create this connection. It's hard to do without asking direct questions which, as a rule of thumb, I try to avoid. Instead, it's about asking open ended, inciteful questions (credit: Juggler, for a lot of these) eg:

- Ohh I love skiing. When I was younger I wanted to be a downhill skiing champion like Hermann Maier. What did you want to be when you were five?

- I can't believe I'm going into the real world next year. It's scary because I'm going to be living so far away too. What are you planning on doing after uni?

- Supposing you won the lottery. What's the first thing you'd do?

- Which sense do you want to lose the least - sight or hearing?

Other than that, telling funny stories or stories that are close to your heart (ie you opening up to her), thus encouraging her to open up to you, is a sure-fire way of creating this connection. You can be almost guaranteed that no other guy that hits on her that night will do this, so you'll stick out in her mind and when the crunch time comes and you're calling her or arranging a date, she's more likely to accept since you're the cool guy who she "clicked" with.