What to Say When You Meet a Woman: The Five Stages and 30 Lines

You walk up, you say the first thing, and she answers. Then there is a pause, and you cannot think of anything to say. So you ask where she is from. She tells you. You ask what she does. She tells you. Four questions later she says she has to find her friend.

That is not a line problem. A man with a hundred lines in his phone still runs out at the same moment, because he was never asking the real question. The real question is not "what do I say," it is "what is this part of the conversation for."

An interaction has five jobs, and they happen in order:

1. Express interest. She understands why you are talking to her.
2. Create tension. The conversation does not stay purely platonic.
3. Evaluate. You find out whether you actually like her.
4. Build connection. It becomes personal instead of factual.
5. Move things forward. You make a next step instead of letting a good conversation die.

Below is each stage, what it is for, and six lines our coaches use in it. Thirty lines total. Read the purpose first. The lines only work when you know what job they are doing.

Purpose: start the interaction.

The opener does not need to carry the conversation. Its job is to make your interest clear enough to start something and give the interaction somewhere to go.

Most men over-build this part. They hunt for a line good enough to guarantee the outcome, and while they hunt, she leaves. An opener that says "I noticed you and I came over on purpose" has already done its whole job.

• I love your look, so I had to come over and find out if you're as cool as your look suggests
• You look like trouble in the most adorable way
• You look so New York (obviously could work for any iconic city depending on her look)
• Hey, you looked bored over here, so I thought I'd come over and amuse… myself ;)
• Sorry, I saw you looking at me, so I had to come over and say hi.
• Did you really just do that?! (if she does something worth teasing on near you)

Purpose: create a playful man-to-woman dynamic.

Once you are talking, you do not want the interaction to settle into two strangers politely exchanging information. Premise gives it some tension.

This is the stage most men skip, and skipping it is why the friendly conversation goes nowhere. She enjoyed talking to you and felt nothing, because nothing in it said you were a man talking to a woman rather than a man being pleasant.

• You and I are not going to get along
• I think you might be the girl my mother warned me about
• Part of me loves you and part of me hates you
• Do you know what I love about you… absolutely nothing ;)… just kidding etc etc.
• (For two or more girls) You seem (positive and nice characteristics)… you, (pause) … you're (insert more negative but charged characteristic… "trouble" "devious" etc)
• Please stop being so cute, it's distracting

Purpose: find out whether you actually like her.

Attraction works better when you are not treating her approval as the prize. Evaluation shifts the interaction toward discovering who she actually is.

There is a practical reason as well as an attraction reason. Half the women you meet are not a good match for you, and you will spend a month finding that out if you never ask anything real in the first ten minutes.

• Please tell me you're not one of those (insert type) people
• Hmm… that's actually pretty cool. Now I'm intrigued; tell me more.
• You're not so bad to talk to… are you also (insert trait/characteristic you like in a girl)
• What am I going to find out about you in about an hour that's going to totally convince me you're a bad idea?
• You're cute, but what have you got going for you besides your looks that will keep me intrigued
• If you were me, would you date you?

Purpose: make it feel like the two of you are going somewhere together.

Narrative moves the interaction beyond facts and interview questions. You are creating a shared frame, telling stories, and making it more personal.

Facts are what an interview is made of, and an interview is what a conversation becomes when neither person tells a story. She knows your job and your neighborhood and remembers nothing about you.

• Wow, I can't believe I just met you, it feels like so much longer…
• I'm really enjoying this, but I don't think we should make the sex tonight.
• Where did you even come from? I wasn't planning on meeting anyone tonight
• Tell me something about you that would surprise me
• I don't normally tell this to someone I just met but (personal story)
• Please don't fall in love with me… I'm bad news ;)

Purpose: move the interaction forward.

A good interaction eventually needs a next step: the number, another venue, a date, or continuing it right now.

Our coach's note on this stage is worth more than the lines under it:

Note… seeding the close properly matters much more than the final line you close with, but I still thought I'd include some typical lines

Seeding means the next step was already in the conversation before you asked for it. You mentioned the bar around the corner. You said she seemed like someone who would like a particular place. By the time you ask, you are finishing something you both started rather than making a request out of nowhere.

• It was nice talking to you, what's your #?
• Can I trust you? Okay, in that case we can hang out for a while longer I guess…
• You can come in, but I have to get up early in the morning, so it's just for a little bit
• I'm actually going the same way… I'll split a cab/uber with you if you promise to behave on the way
• Sounds good, what does your schedule look like this week?
• Hmm… so if we wanted to continue this, how would we do that?

Read the purpose, not the list. A man who understands that premise exists will improvise a better line than one who memorized all six and delivers them in the wrong stage.

Take one stage at a time. Most men are strong in one or two of the five and blank in the rest. If your conversations start well and die in the middle, your gap is premise or narrative, and no amount of new openers will fix it. If you have long good conversations that end with nothing, your gap is the close.

Say the line in your own words. These are written the way our coaches say them, and you are not our coaches. Keep the job, change the wording until it sounds like you.

Expect some of them to land badly at first. A line that reads well on a page is still a delivery problem, and delivery only improves in front of real people.