I haven't been on this site in a few days (currently finishing up my online dating eBook), so I was pleasantly surprised when I saw my name being used in a post - about one of my podcast, no less!
However, there was a bit of a misquote in the OP's restating of my podcast notes:
pyros said:
I was listening to this podcast of his and he insists that the right way to ask a girl out is to offer two days so she can choose, for example:
you: "hey, lets go to have a bear at his Irish pub. Monday or Thursday evening works for me."
He says that you should not only offer her one day, cause if she cant make it, then you have no date (?? reschedule maybe?) and you really should not say: "when are you available this week?" cause it makes you seem kind of desperate and with no value.
This is
close to what I said, but it's missing a few things.
I like the analogy someone used earlier about dating being similar to sales. Having done quite a few sales jobs in my life I can relate to this. I used to sell knives in people's homes back in the day (during my summer break from college one year), and while many people who do this end up selling less than $2000 worth of knives (usually within the first week), I was able to sell a grand total of over $12,000 worth of knives in the span of 2 months.
In our sales training, one of the secrets they taught us about selling was this: you always want to give the potential customer an option of choosing between buying something or buying something else. See, the human mind is already trained to make a decision between at least two things. So, if you go on a sales call and at the end of it say: "So, do you want to buy these knives or not?" The chances of you making the sale are 50% because you've given them the choice between saying "yes" to your knives or "yes" to not buying your knives - in other words, you didn't present a tangible option B, so in their head they're going to make the decision for that to be their other option.
BUT, if you say: "So, do you want to buy this knife set here or this knife set there?" The chances of you making the sale now increase to 66% or higher because you've presented them with two tangible option, giving them the choice between saying "yes" to knife set A or "yes" to knife set B. Because they now have 2 things to choose between, the third option - saying "yes" to not buying - is hardly a thought in their heads. This is why I sold so many knives and knife sets that summer - I'd always present the client with at least 2 options when I FIRST ASKED THEM FOR THE SALE. And even if they ended up not buying a whole set, most of them would still end up buying 2 or 3 knives, which was still much better than getting a "no."
This same rule applies to dating. When I used to ask girls out and only gave them one date or time to choose from, my success rate was a LOT lower. They'd either say "oh, I can't make it that day" and I'd never get to take them out, or they'd agree to the day, then call later and say "oh, I forgot I had such and such to do on that day." Now, could this be that these girls had low interest? For some of them, yes. But for others, me asking for one day only made it sound like
I wasn't able to be flexible in
my schedule. I also had to take into account that, just like I missed out on some things I needed to do as a man to show interest, there are women out there who haven't been taught things they need to be doing as well. As hard as it is to believe, not every girl knows about the whole counter-offer thing, and may not put one out there if they're feeling like you can only go on a date the one day you're mentioning.
Once I started giving the option of 2 different days that I'd be available, the number of dates I got was able to increase DRAMATICALLY. Now that I was giving them the choice between something and something vs. something and nothing, I'd get more "yes" responses from girls who would be free on at least one of the days I was mentioning. And, even if they said they weren't available on either day I mentioned, the number of girls who would then offer a THIRD day option that would work for them also increased. Even for girls who didn't learn about putting up counter-offers, by me mentioning a second day, it allowed them to see that I could be somewhat flexible on the day and they, too, would offer another day if the first 2 didn't work.
Lastly, giving the option of 2 days allows you to weed out a girl's interest in you pretty quickly. The thing I hated the most when I only offered 1 day is that, if they said "no" to it, a part of me would still believe they wanted to see me, and that I just had to keep trying and trying until they had time in their schedule. However, my B.S. radar was able to go off a LOT quicker when I offered 2 days because my head could now process their degree of like for me better based on their response. Like, no one is so busy that they can't find a single day out of the week to go out with me, so if I'm offering a Wednesday (weekday) and a Sunday (weekend) and they can't seem to find the time on either two days to see me, I could surmise they weren't that interested, and move on to someone else pretty quickly.
You have to understand, a lot of dating is psychological and subconscious, and this is one of those techniques that plays on the human mind's desire to choose. Give her the option of choice (as it pertains to the date day, not the actual date itself) and you should find that the number of first dates (and repeat dates) you get will increase.
Oh yeah - allow me to address one more comment:
pyros said:
Second, if you ask her: "when are you free this week?" you're giving her plenty of time to choose from. In this case if she declines it is obvious that she is not interested, so you can move on. However if she is interested she will tell you one day, and then you can see if it fits your schedule and arrange it.
You would think this is true, but it's not. Women don't mind making finite choices, but they don't like having the option of too many choices either. True story: I was listening to a couple talk a few weeks ago. The woman was getting frustrated with the guy, and it started off like this:
Girl: So, what do you want to do tonight?
Guy: Whatever it is you want to do.
Girl: Well, I'm cool with whatever.
Guy: Me too, whatever you decide, we'll do it
Girl: Okay, um... we could watch a movie at your place
Guy: Sure, whatever you'd like
Girl: Okay - so, what movie do you want to watch?
Guy: Whatever you want to watch
Girl: I'm cool with whatever you want to watch, anything is fine
Guy: I dunno, what do want to watch?
Girl: Geez, I wish for once you would just make a decision!
And rightfully so - do you know how many movies there are out there for a girl to choose from?? It's brain overload, AND SHE DOESN'T WANT TO HAVE TO CHOOSE BETWEEN SO MANY DANG OPTIONS. If you don't believe me, ask a couple of girl friends how they feel about having to do all this choosing for dates - I promise you, the answers you get will change your whole way of thinking.
Anyway - giving a girl the choice between 7 days is giving her too many options to have to narrow down. Furthermore, it doesn't look good on your part because it's basically telling the girl "I have no life, and I'm free whenever you're free because I like you so much and am ready to jump whenever you say jump." 2 days, however, isn't so much that she can't make a decision between them.
Furthermore, doing so is also showing courtesy to her schedule that you don't currently know about. I have found that by asking for 2 days I usually get one of four responses: one - "Either day works fine for me" (schedule is very open); two - I can't do X-day, but can do Y-day (usually women with long-hour jobs or studying for a high degree, but still interested in seeing me); three - "Those two days don't work for me, how about Z-day instead (possibly a control freak, but most likely I just picked 2 bad days - got a counter-offer, though, so still all good); or four - "sorry, I can't make either day" (no counter-offer = not interested).
That's all I got for now - hope this helps!