Shah, a few points:

- sounds like you're still caught up in this drunk/sober thing, and trying to rationalize your night mainly based on that. You have done nights drunk, you have done them sober, and you should now know the pros and cons of each.

- it's good that you're trying to escalate, but when your are attracted it kinda naturally happens. It just sounds like you have a lot of 'thought processes' going on during the interaction, just let it flow.

- ALWAYS acknowledge the friends at some point, even if it's only brief. You may find that reduces the number of drag-aways.

Escalation can be very subtle, what I've started doing recently is just looking at the girl whilst talking, and thinking about fucking. Or, Phil-style, saying something like 'you're coming home with me tonight' in a semi-jokey kind of way. I like that because (1) she doesn't know if you're being serious or not, and (2) it subtly states that this is not a friend-to-friend interaction.

You're getting the attraction, but overthinking stuff too much. Just let it flow

Serendipity and SmileyK you have some interesting perspectives, I'll let them gestate before I reply. And I have two more field reports, and another one on top of that after tonight, to write up. 4 day Halloween extravaganza adventure bender brah. And then some new article to type up about where I'm at. I might even put up an article about red lobsters too.

Looking forward to reading the reports dude. Just take my comments in context. It's what I find works for me. Or rather I don't know another way. I've never been able to joke around then bounce girls out of clubs. I know a lot of guys can. Even before asking for a number I always need to feel that there's some deeper connection first. If there's not I just don't ask. Maybe that's a flaw in my game but it's just me. The advantage I think is that they're less likely to flake but I will get much fewer closes than other guys. I can accept that's the way it is. Play to your strengths as they say.

What do you mean by deep connection? What criteria is there to constitute the meaning.

I usually see if I have a boner, they've got some banter or are coy and sweet and we have fun.

Well that's good as well. I'm not sure what a constitutes the connection I'm meaning. I suppose it's a feeling I get after talking to them for a while. It's basically sexual attraction I suppose. I've got to be excited and interested enough to want to pursue it. Even if she's beautiful that might not be enough on it's own. I could still lose interest. I think it was different when I was younger though. If she had a pulse and wasn't running away that was probably enough

Okay here's three more field reports. Trying this new style of writing as I feel now I actually have more interesting nights, before I was like "Uh I stood in club drunk and scared and said Hi to girl", now I am an active protagonist in my little story, seizing the sword.

Thursday

Im dressing up as a surfer again to go to a Halloween house party, I get there and I was nervous if I would actually 'get speaking to anybody' and enjoy myself rather than maintaining conversation with anyone to look like Im having a decent time, but I've learnt time and time again that this is a natural response from me and I have the self-efficacy to turn up and make it happen.

Funny to think I do actually have anxieties about large groups, meetings and stuff like that and I love pick-up. So its chatting around, getting slightly drunkerer, a girl at the party I liked didn't speak to her much. I guess I shouldn't hit on every single girl but I had a minute long conversation with her and it was pretty mundane on my part. Bad habit of mine.

End up making a few friends over how wasted we get then me and my friends were doing Borat impersonations when this guy actually believed I was some Borat-esque person. So I spent a ridiculous amount of time shouting "I from Czech, donkey make good pet and wife! Lets heet weeman!", and he spent so long trying to teach me 'the ways of the English'. I made him neck vodka neat constantly under the threat of offending my people.

We hit town to some right shit hole of a bar which the host loves. It was absolute shite. I did two approaches and one was casual chat, could tell she was awkward when a girl I knew went "Get in there Barney", I looked at her and said "Yeah, I'll see you later". Got into an argument with the DJ as he wouldn't play NSYNC or JB and he threatened to get the bouncers to beat me up.

Then we went to an even shitter bar, like I can't even explain how shit it was, I tried to piss in the girls toilets when I said "Hi, you come here" to some girl and she's lurrvin it. Straight away she says "I think I saw you in the other club and thought you were hot",
"That sounds like me", I reply.

So we get chatting, she wants my number, I give it to her, make out, then I say lets go upstairs and she goes back to her friends and she says she'll come home with me tonight. At the end of the night, I can't see her in the club, so I go get some food and her friends see me and say "Where is she?", "Who", "Blah Blah", "Oh I dunno", then I look at the guy-friend, he's going for his phone to ring her, you can fuck right off, I whip out my phone, a contest to who can ring her first.

I look at my screen and she's ringing me, I tell her to come here and she says she's on her way. As I leave the food place to see where abouts she is when I see two passed out guys who had been fucking attacked and she was tending to them. People were shouting "MEDIC!! MEDIC!! GET A FUCKING AMBULANCE", I see the guy-friend is there obviously not wanting me to take her home.

I walk up to her, she's checking this guy's pulse, his head is on the curb, I say "He's not moving, his eyes are closed and he's not responding to anything. I'm sure he's fine, let's go". She didn't see my logic. I see the guy-friend ready to block, people screaming, her in the epicentre of it all. I just go home.

Oh and the blonde girl I mentioned in my last report who never acknowledges me is outside smoking and she's like "Ohhh because of you the common room is closed down!" smiling and laughing. The night before I smoked inside the common room drunk and it did not go down well, but she's like "I told them you didn't mean to and it was a half-accident", then the guy next to her takes a picture of me 'for evidence', I tell him to keep that for his wank bank.

Funny how doing something completely cunt-ish had her speaking to me haha, not saying she was attracted or anything but one of those things.

On reflection I could have waited it out and handled the cock-sucker, but i dunno waiting around to then deal with lots of bullshit seemed a little degrading, like 'Am I really going through this much to get a lay?', I guess it should be reframed as 'going after what you want' but she wasn't THAT hot.

I liked being Borat for the night.

Friday

Went out to meet Goodrebel for a drink and a chat as he's going off to a party later on in the night. Ends up everyone cancelling on me and I'm thinking "Am I really going to have a solo night? Fuck it okay", after a while Goodrebel shows some Oregami and I show him my one too (how fucking gay hahaha) so I tell him to do the lamest thing ever, tell girls walking by "Hey you dropped this" and hand them the flower-napkin.

We know its lame but he wanted to get approaching etc etc and I thought it was a funny thing to do in the moment; who knows where it could lead. All the ugly girls who walk passed are like "pfft whatever", the cute waitress loves it and laughs her ass off.

Then two spanish girls sit on the table next to us and I tell Goodrebel, "Do it!", I think I told him to say "Are you Spanish" or he came up with it himself I dunno. We get speaking. Its a slow burner, they were interested and all that but sexual tension and that was missing with my girl.

I was winging, so being as chill and non-threatening etc as possible. XFChris turned up out of the blue haha and all five of us bounce to some bar called MOJO. I will make it a long story short as I think I didn't really do much other than chill, chit-chat with them and that's about it.

I felt bad as I wanted to hang out with XFChris and approach too. Like a war of tug on Barney's emotions. Chris was smashed too at 11 haha. If it was my set I would have just hung out with Chris instead and not really hung out with them but I was winging. And I pride myself on at least trying to be a good wing-man. Like I will big people up to the high heavens, "he's the coolest guy, I fucking love him. He's so funny, interesting, creative, he's the natural leader of our group", I will oversell your ass to high heavens and be like "So what do you like about him", get her to join in. None of that's actually what I say but the rough direction.

We ended up at a Gay Chinese karaoke bar with the two girls and Goodrebel's friends but here it fell to shit; one ended up being paraletic and the girl I was occupying met a guy she actually liked (Me and her had good 'friendship' going but she wasn't interested in anything). But Goodrebel really killed it and re-approached when some guys were obviously going for it with them. Just his girl literally got fucking mortal.

I also think the fact we spent the whole night with them somehow spoilt the spark or fire and by the end of the night new guys and experiences are more interesting. I know it sounds stupid but that's what it felt like.

I'll type up Saturday night's later, the funniest and most interesting by far. Without sounding like a massive twat I think I single-handely made the night for me and my mates.

Don't feel bad for winging mate, you did the right thing, id been drinking since 6 so by that point id of been incomprehensible to anyone, "Diced" i believe the term is.

Im just glad i didn't get you both blown out haha. But if both your wings are talking to girls and you've no business entering the fray, then its healthy as it forces you to step up elsewhere otherwise your just a peripheral part to the nights procceedings

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.

Nice write-up.....at the same time I was also shaking my head at some points.

Since when do you need to 'wait' for your wingman to escalate? In this case, you waited and got nothing! I understand where you are coming from though as you don't want the whole thing to fuck up.....probably what would be better next time is for one of you to take your girl away - either to the bar, the dancefloor or somewhere else. Then it's just the 2 of you.

And if you feel that they're ready to be taken home, just do it!