The Reality Method 2.0

The Basics of Rapport

Rapport is the glue that holds society together.

A bit simplistic, but true.

I’ve already mentioned the concept of rapport in the context of social freeze outs in Acquiring a Woman’s Loyalty; in this article I want to just put down the basics of the concept, as I see them.

You can look at the Dictionary definition of rapport and get a pretty good understanding of the word, without realizing just how important it is as a concept in our everyday social lives, and especially in seduction.

I’ve written a lot in the past about how Dominance is what women respond to, and a Dominant man is what women want. Well, it just so happens that rapport is a key to establishing dominance. Not the key, a key….along with others keys like subcommunication, body language, social skills, vocal clarity, physical health, and fashion.

There are two basic rapport “goals” that people generally work towards: creating more rapport with someone, or diminishing the amount of rapport we have with them, also known as “making” and “breaking”.

Making vs Breaking Rapport
When you go up to someone and say, “Hey, how’s it going? My name is [x]. How are you?” You are trying to create or “make” rapport.

That person can either respond positively, take your hand and say, “It’s going well, x, nice to meet you, I am [y], and how are you?”

Or they can respond negatively, cock an eyebrow and look at you like you’re cracked, and turn away. That’s breaking rapport.

That is making and breaking rapport in a nutshell. Anything that strengths the bond of familiarity and trust between two people is seen as increasing rapport; anything that diminishes the bond or highlights differences typically reduces it.

Rapport, then, is a double-edged sword. In the context of seducing women, you want to create enough rapport that the woman feels comfortable enough to sleep with you (i.e. she does not fear for her life) but not so much that she feels like she’s known you since second grade (which would probably place you in the friend zone).

In fact, mainstream seduction literature suggests a very careful course of application and withdrawal of rapport, carefully timed to correspond to a woman’s emotional state; breaking rapport can often cause a great deal of attraction, but on the other hand, too little rapport and a woman is likely to view you as an inauthentic fuck toy, a human dildo.

A proper mixture is necessary.

The Role of Humor in Rapport
Humor is a great tool in the diffusion of tension, and tension accumulates pretty easily in the early stages of the rapport negotiation necessary for seduction.

Sharing a sense of humor is a huge boost to rapport; and nothing breaks rapport more quickly than telling a joke that doesn’t “hit”, and therefore wrecks the vibe you were trying to create.

A humorous comment at a woman’s expense can also serve to provide a bit of a rapport break, especially if a woman is getting too comfortable with her assumptions that you are seriously into her (in the seduction community this is called a “cocky and funny” comment, or C&F).

Entire books have been written about C&F humor (the best is one by David DeAngelo, called Double your Dating; review coming soon); but it’s enough to say that it is an extremely powerful tool, without which you won’t get far in seduction.

Humour is an important “moderating device” for adjusting your perceived social value relative to a woman’s (or vice versa). Self-effacing humor can be used to indirectly gain rapport, since it humanizes you; and witty / biting humor can be used to “cut down to size” a woman who is feeling too high and mighty and acting out in the interaction.

Rapport Probing
People use what I call rapport probing to establish whether or not they can begin the process of rapport negotiation.

The most common beginning rapport probe is eye contact.

You’ve all seen it; sitting in a smoky martini bar, or the local sports bar or watering hole or restaurant, suddenly you look across the room and see someone looking at you; their eye contact says “Hello, I see you.” I’m looking at you, are you willing to look back at me and share that short moment of nonverbal communication?

The next level of rapport probing is asking friends about your friends about you; the grade-school situation “Ask Sally if Jenny knows if Aaron knows that I exist and, if so, does he like me?” or the kindergarten equivalent, passing the note that says, “Do you like me? Check [ ]yes [ ]no [ ]maybe”

If a robust friendship network doesn’t exist to support this, often rapport probing becomes “accidental”; a girl stumbling into you and saying, “Oh, excuse me,” or a girl sitting in front of you at a movie asking, “Can you see over me?” This is just a more-subtle version of girls on the playground “accidentally” rolling their balls over into your little group of boys.

For bolder and more direct people, rapport building is about walking straight up to a stranger and saying, “Hi, I’m [x], I just thought you looked like an interesting person to get to know.”

And if that works, later, when the two of you are semi-isolated at a table near the back of the party / restaurant / bar /venue, you will exchange information about childhood experiences, memories, religious and spiritual beliefs, philosophy of sex and relationships, in an effort to find common ground.

This is just the natural progression of getting to know people and building social connections; but it’s important to remember that, to really get the results you want, it’s not enough to blindly and wantonly try to establish a deep bonding rapport with everyone you meet; in fact, that approach is madness.

Rather, you want to be able to determine what effect your rapport-seeking or rapport-breaking attempts will have on the emotional and mental state of any given person; and then adjust your actions accordingly.

Let’s follow up with some general rules.

Basic Rules of Rapport in Seduction

1. Rapport is a necessary part of most seductions, because it creates comfort, and induces a woman to feel emotionally connected to you. Thus,

2. The amount of rapport required in a given seduction is directly related to and influenced by two main factors; the duration of the relationship you want and the degree to which the woman in question is slow to trust men. So,

– 2.A If you want to get a girlfriend or long term relationship, GET DEEP RAPPORT. Use stories, words and shared experiences to create a deep emotional bond with the woman that you can feel. If you can’t feel it, she won’t either. Learn to tear up on cue.

– 2.B If you are just trying for a one night stand, you can probably avoid getting rapport at all. You just need pure horniness from the girl in question and trying to get rapport (i.e. make a connection with the girl) will scare her off if she never wants to see you after the one night stand (which is common).

3. Breaking rapport is a powerful tool because it subcommunicates higher social value.

4. Trying to get rapport without a stated or obvious reason will subcommunicate sexual neediness; because women don’t trust that guys really just “want to get to know them”. They know the score; don’t insult their intelligence by saying you’re “not like all the other guys.”

5. Instead, give women a reason to believe they are different and special, and THAT is responsible for you wanting to get rapport. Like “You’re really insightful for a Long Islander. Where did you go to school?”

6. Failing #’s 4 and 5, act dominant and dismissive (mild rapport-breaking operations combined with a peppering of funny comments) and the girls will eventually become attracted enough to try to get rapport with you.

7. Oftentimes rapport is implied by the environment or social context, and starts from a pre-existing level that is pretty solid; a brief list of “rapport fixers” follow, with links to wider articles (where applicable) that discuss how to pull off solid seductions in those scenarios.

All the above can be handily summarized in the following chart, provided by John D. from Don’t Make Her Mad:

Automatic Rapport Fixers
There some situations where rapport is automatic and assumed in a social interaction. A few of these:

– Living together
– Working together
– Attending the same school
– Being part of the same or a similar (or merging) social circle
– Being in a book group, knitting circle, or other social group together

These scenarios provide ready-make rapport and comfort, requiring only the proper spark of attraction to start the long, slippery slide towards sex.

Oftentimes, things in the environment will also act as automatic rapport fixers, like paintings by a particular artist you may have in your house; if the woman loves this artist, when she sees the paintings your level of rapport with her will automatically rise. Or, if she sees her favorite kind of beer in your fridge.

The idea here is, if a woman is getting too much rapport and comfort from the environment or these other automatic rapport fixers (ARF’s), you will have to do continue to be an attractive guy with attractive behaviors in order to prevent the high, high levels of rapport and security from smothering the sparks of her sexual feeling towards you.

The Most Important Lesson
From the above, it should be pretty clear that you can almost view seduction as a delicate balance between the two opposing forces of rapport (including comfort) and attraction. It’s a pretty simplistic reduction of the field, but also useful, at least when you’re starting out.

If a woman is TOO comfortable with you, she will stop seeing you as a sexual being. On the other hand, if she’s NOT COMFORTABLE ENOUGH, she might see you very sexually and be incredibly attracted to you, but won’t fuck you. She has to be in a ’sweet spot’ of comfort where she is convinced you won’t pump and dump her, and is attracted enough that she’ll give it up, but isn’t so attracted or comfortable that she shuts down and runs away.

Concordantly, if a woman is EXTREMELY attracted to you but doesn’t trust you at all, she might give it up for a one-night-stand, but frequently will forget about you the next day (or try to) and certainly never call or take your calls, unless you can start injecting some rapport and comfort that humanizes you.

On the other hand, if a woman feels SUPER COMFORTABLE and in deep rapport with you, but no sexual sparks or chemistry, you will become her ‘new best (girl)friend’ in a nonsexual way, and essentially get stuck in the friend zone.

A couple of really simple examples to illustrate.

The Pea Coat Massacre: Met a girl in a club, took her number, called her up and took her out a few days later. We had a day-long date and at the end of it, I took her back to my place…but before we went inside, she stopped off at her truck and changed clothes. Literally, while we were out walking around, she was wearing a hot skirt; she changed into jeans and a pea coat. Of course I’m young, sitting there thinking, “WTF is a peacoat doing in my house.” Later in the night, of course, one thing leads to another and we start making out hardcore. She makes out with me for probably 3 hours while wearing a pea coat. I was so inexperienced that I couldn’t figure out what this meant, so I never fucked this girl.

Analysis: This is a girl that was so attracted to me that she couldn’t wear a skirt into my house for fear of giving it up to me; and not only could she not wear a skirt, she had to put on a fuckin’ PEA COAT to prevent anything overtly physical from happening. Hilarious, and a good example of a girl who had TONS of attraction, but not enough comfort or rapport.

Shy Country Girl Phone Shut-Out: Another girl, another club, took her number. This was a down-home country girl who had never really had any major relationships (and was still a virgin) — which I didn’t know at the time. I called her, no answer. Called her again, no answer. Since I had a number of other girls I was working on at the time, I just kept coming back to her number, calling her again. Finally she picked up, and that was all I needed; one 2-hour phone conversation later, after that she answered all my phone calls, and within a few weeks I took her to Italy and fucked her.

Analysis: This was a girl who was strongly attracted, but also so inexperienced that she was VERY mistrustful of guys — to the point that, when I was debriefing her later, she told me she deliberately ignored my calls for a week or so because she was scared and attracted. The 2-hour rapport-building conversation changed that (and it wasn’t all rapport, but a good mix of rapport and attraction) and I was able to close her in short order.

Male Temperament & Its Effect on Rapport
I think guys, overall, tend to give off different vibes, just by nature of their unique personality, personal style, and mannerisms; and in general, either they give off a more “dangerous” vibe that automatically starts girls off with more attraction and less rapport, or a more “safe” vibe that girls feel instantly comfortable around but need some attraction built.

For some guys, then, they need to work more on solidly building rapport to overcome the natural attraction girls feel for them, or work more on being attractive to move themselves out of the “cool guy / friendship” category and into the “potential mate” category in a woman’s mind.

My example for this is the prototypical Tattooed Biker Dude. He may be wild, free, tattooed, and rebellious, and therefore be incredibly attractive to a lot of women, but they’re not necessarily going to feel “safe” around him or with him — they know he’ll probably fuck them and ride on to the next town in the morning.

So while women may fantasize about this archetype, only the really horny / rebellious / liberated ones will actually fuck him and take the consequences; other women, “safer” and more “nice” conservative women (and especially scared younger women) would need to get to know him “as a person” before they opened up sexually; but, upon finding out that this particular Tattooed Biker Dude is actually an underground poet and peace activist who takes care of stray kittens, they will get sopping wet and open up sexually.

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There’s a lot to say about the topics of rapport / comfort / attraction, and hopefully this article has been a suitably concise introduction to the basics.