We have to have a proper night out soon like the old days.

Saturday

My mate did that sober-October challenge and we were off to Manchester for it. I was under the impression we would do pre-drinks around mine before heading out. After walking through the pissing rain for beer I get a phone call, "We're waiting for ya to leave for Manc, hurry!". I was pissed off already haha. Anyway I quickly drop that negativity as we're walking and get on the train, there's six of us and its quite obviously broken up into two groups of six, the two guys I was with were my good mates and that's all that mattered as far as I was concerned. Someone in the other group didn't even have ID for Manchester. . .

So to blurb the beginning of our night in Manchester; we went to a load of places he could get into whilst me and a my mate said to our Stop-tober friend "Ditch them, lets ditch them. Explain we want to go to a proper club not fucking Yates". They were going "Fuck yates is well sick mate". Yeah.

Up until this point I felt well on show if I was to approach girls, thinking my mates would think EVERY conversation I got into was me 'having a go' and then succeeding/failing. We leave Yates to go 5th and some girls are behind us, my mate says he likes one of as I get talking to the group. I end up speaking to the fat one but I didn't really mind even though out of the 8, 6 of them were pretty hot. My two mates fell into a silent disagreement as they wanted the same girl or something haha. Still got the night ahead of us boys! Into 5th I speak to some girl as we go down the stairs into it, nothing special, then we spend a while finding each other as some hassle happened at the front door. I don't think I got into many approaches or interactions. Oh apart from a five set seated by the toilets which went quite well for random banter.

From here my mate was with two girls on the dancefloor and I came over and thought I'd wing him, we go out for a smoke together, they're both fucking stunners too! Chat shit, then they're like "Let's leave early, we've got weed to smoke". Sure. I felt through-out the night we didn't escalate or break it off into two 2 sets rather than one big 4 set. A recurring thing I've noticed.

See I've been in these situations before but I've always been on the back-burner, no idea what I'm doing just maintain being in there let alone being funny or attractive or leading. This time as it was my mate who started the interaction I couldn't really lead and start escalating on my girl if he wasn't. As far as I know wing-man rules dictate the guy who opens leads also. We go to some random bar called Liar's Club and at one point I get really speaking to my girl, before it was pretty casual etc but we get into interests and shit, turns out she knew this random band I did a documentary for etc. When we're leaving it rains so we take cover and a drug dealer comes up to us and my mate is haggling him, so random. He gets more weed for cheaper.

Then we go to the Casino (the girls idea) and it goes a little sour, my mates girl randomly just switches out and wants to go home and 'not feeling it'. We still go Maccys where it turns out my girl likes rap battles and this goes into a massive conversation between all of us, except the other girl. Which is odd as before she was WELL into it and pretty much leading the interaction.

This was when I said to the girl "Yeah I know Stein" until I remembered I only knew him from a fucking PUA forum hahaha so I was like "Yeah long story, Steiny, Steinster. Great guy.". Also I bigged my mate THE FUCK up to the other girl the entire night but never heard him big me up!

Anyway I noticed and knew that we were taking too long but my mate seemed to wanna do whatever the girls wanted to do. I could see it happening but thought I'd go with his judgement. The simmer went down I think, we should have gone after Liar's club straight back to someone's house; my girl even said yes when I said "So lets all go back to yours". Dammit, I went for the number but all of a sudden its like "yeah add me on facebook. . .", dammit.

I wanted to lead my friend/the group but i didn't wanna beta my friend or cause any tension by taking over. Ahh. Still the passed 4 days have been way more consistent than usual, I haven't been too fucked either. Got a date with one girl this week. And a 'sorta date' with some girl for a night out but I don't really hold much out for that.

I think I've turned a leaf. Now I'm getting real leads on my nights out. Before if I ever got a number it was a cop-out as I didn't know what to do whilst there or too scared to escalate but now I do it as a practical way to bridge an interaction if logistics or timing is bad. I also used to never remember or know how to isolate/move etc and always felt like the 'beta' in groups, now I'm like "Someone escalate motherfucker! Lets go now now now!!" haha.

Still to work on isolating and escalating, still my goal. Also I learnt to talk more about interests and hobbies, about each other properly too. With my girl I felt the interaction 'went up' every time I got I found out about her passions and interests. Plus to big myself up more about what I like rather than being quite passive, depreciate about what I do and explain it more. Also take girls to the gay chinese karaoke bar. Can't remember if I mentioned it but there's two of them in Manchester near each other hahaha. Fuck man so close to banging a well hot girl too. It was an experience though, I guess I could have stayed in 5th and gotten a make-out/#closed or found more girls to go home with but I went to see where this went.

On reflection:

Turn a 2 set into two 2 sets of you and your mate, isolate and escalate but not too much? First time I've ever had this kinda thing btw. Usually Im by myself or being out-classed by my fellow puas.