If you have been studying male-female dynamics for some time, you understand the importance of touching when you’re meeting someone new. 

Touching, also affectionately called kino (short for kinesthetic) by the Seduction Community, establishes a sense of comfort and trust in the person you are talking to (which in the end, makes you seem more attractive). 

A new study reinforced this notion as it reported that a man increased his success rate in getting a woman’s phone number because he touched her lightly on the arm.

So far, this was nothing new to me.  Every Pick-Up Artist (PUA) worth his weight would have told you to approach within half an arm’s length distance to facilitate kino.  Having been raised in France, touching was the most natural thing for me.  I never had trouble getting people physically comfortable around me.

However, like most guys, escalating to kissing was a tad bit more challenging when I started getting involved in the Community a long time ago.  Not only did I need to be close enough to make the kiss a natural progression in the interaction, but I also wanted to make sure it didn’t feel awkward.  What I quickly learned from theApproach’s bootcamp was the use of more incidental kino to establish greater physical comfort.  At the time, I thought this was the solution!

I did more incidental kino with more girls that I can remember.  Girls would feel extremely comfortable around me.  We’d be having fun and we’d be very close to each other but something was still missing.  Even though I would have the girl’s face no further than 10 inches from my own, I didn’t feel the desire to kiss her or perhaps, I didn’t sense that SHE wanted to kiss me.  It really didn’t matter how I rationalized it:  maybe I didn’t like the girl that much, maybe I was scared, or maybe I didn’t want to risk being rejected… whatever!  Something still felt weird.  I wasn’t getting as many kisses or makeouts as I could and I wasn’t about to try Mystery’s “do you want to kiss me?” close because I hated that line. 

Then I read Vin DiCarlo’s Escalation Ladder and his take on sexual tension.  I looked back at my experiences and remembered that some kisses I’ve had felt very natural whereas some felt like “try-hard.”  That’s when something clicked in me.  I realized that all the kisses that felt unatural were with girls I have incidentally touched all over the place EXCEPT in the face/neck/hair area.  Touching these areas would definitely make kissing simpler.

In my quest of making kisses and makeouts as effortless as they can be without using gimmicks, games or tricks, I also realized I needed to build more sexual tension prior to the kiss.  Yes, I needed to make the girl feel more aroused so that she’d want to kiss me.  Even though I have read Juggler’s sexual barriers, I admit that I have only used them sparingly.  Something about telling the girl I wanted to kiss her before doing it didn’t appeal to me as much as just doing it.  So for me, creating sexual tension through sexual state transfer and body language like Vin preached sounded like the right thing to do.

Well, I have been using sexual language and sexual tension for months now and everything is working great.  However one night, I ended up talking with my roommate about touching and kino distance.  Even though he has some shortcomings, I consider him a natural (the fact that he’s half black makes him a natural by default LOL).  He said something very simple: 

I like to talk to girls in their ears.  If you have bad breadth, they won’t notice it.  If you are in a loud club, they’ll still be able to hear you.

God damn!  Couldn’t he have told me this a long time ago?  Yes, it’s easy.  I’ve done it subconsciously before, but now I do it intentionally. 

If you like a girl and are getting personal with her, slowly get closer to her and speak in her ears.  This will create immense opportunities for you to get incidental kino in more errogeneous zones (like the breasts, the inner upper thighs or the lower waist/stomach) and for you to create intense sexual tension. 

There is something magical about being that close to her face, neck and hair.

At that distance, eye contact becomes unbearably arousing and her moist lips are only moving an inch or two away from yours.  Feel the moment and let the magic happen!

“OMG, it just happened!” …again.

Oh yeah… don’t forget to check out this beautifully written piece: 
The Kiss by Rob Overman

If you have been reading seduction or dating books for a while, you’ll notice that there’s a lot of similar but different structures when it comes to what is considered the best way to attract a woman.  After talking with my friend Pastiche, I think I have simplified my personal methodology to:  approach and escalate.  I know it sounds simple, but it really covers everything I should be focused on and what I should be doing when I meet a beautiful woman who turns me on. 

In his ebook “The Secrets of Female Sexuality.” David Shade claimed that the true intent of a man towards a woman is to “bring out the decadent, primal, carnal, insatiably hungry, ruthlessly expressive natural sexual woman in her” because the true nature “of all interactions between a man and woman who just met is sexual, plain and simple.”  He continues with something very profound:

Don’t think about getting sex. Instead, think about giving her really good sex.

This mentality alone will probably make any man more successful in his interactions with women.  By not trying to get anything from the woman, he will become free of approach anxiety and outcome dependence.  Furthermore, the intent David Shade describes truly underlines the need for creating and maintaining sexual attraction when developing a fulfilling relationship with a woman.

When I go out and socialize, I still believe in and follow the principles of VAC, but I am going to adopt “Approach and Escalate” as my new mantra for dating. 

By the way, all articles ever written by theApproach have been compiled in a centralized website at www.asktheapproach.com.  It’s probably one of the best resources out there if you are interested in learning natural game, so check it out! 

Anyway, here is a little more explanation on my little mantra:

Approach

• Approach implies action:  walk and talk to the girl.  Don’t think too much and don’t allow yourself to succumb to approach anxiety.  I actually found this video from Victor Malvado helpful if you tend to freeze in your approach attempts.  You can also read my post on the topic here.
• During the approach, have a warmly dominant and friendly vibe.  Be aware of the non-verbal communications you project (posture, tonality, mannerisms…etc).  The reason I say “warmly dominant” is because I want to convey a little bit of sexual presence.  I do not need to impress or entertain the girl for her to like me (+V).  However, I do want to check if the girl is worth my time (+C).
• Being friendly really means being approachable (+A).  I don’t want the girl to feel intimidated by me. 

Escalate

• If you see attraction as a process like I do, then you will realize that a woman will feel attracted to you through constant escalation efforts.  Always push the interaction as far as you can (Continuous Flow of Action).  The focus is always on having fun and bringing pleasure to the senses (+V).
• Escalation covers both physical and psychological/emotional/intellectual arousal.
  1.  To have physical arousal, first create comfort with incidental touching then use the Vin DiCarlo Escalation Ladder to move up smoothly to more sensual kino.
  2.  To create and build up psychological/emotional/intellectual arousal, juggle between trust and comfort and arousal/sexual tension during conversations (rapport is pre-built in all dialogues).  Trust and comfort can be achieved through relating to her stories and using disqualifications.  Slowly opening up and talking about yourself will also allow the woman to feel comfortable with who you are as a man (think credibility and attainability, +A). 
• From there, continue arousal through intrigue (+C) and complicity (+A).  There are many ways to create intrigue:  light Cocky & Funny comments, verbal reward and statements of intent (SOI), entertaining games or cold reads, push/pull flirtatious comments, sexual barriers, sexual tension, etc.  You don’t want to pull out all your cards at once.  Make sure the woman commits into wanting to know you as you open up (compliance ratio concept).
• Complicity reinforces that we should be together.  It is about developing an emotional/sexual connection.  You want to setup a “you and me VS. world” dynamic into the interaction.  It helps balance the right amount of collaborative teasing and push/pull to avoid killing the attraction when you go overboard (theApproach’s Wiley E. Coyote effect).
• By constantly escalating, you keep the interaction interesting and you avoid the platonic zone.  Escalating is similar to adding value to a conversation.  She never knows what will happen next because of the level of uncertainty you create in the interaction.  There’s a sense of discovery and curiosity.  It’s exciting!
• Escalating also means you have to lead.  Noticing Indicators of Interest (IOIs) is nice way of keeping track of the woman’s attraction level to you but in the end, you should always be the one taking the initiative.  Things won’t happen until you take a step forward.
• Not noticing and seizing windows of opportunity for escalation may also seriously trump the attraction a woman may feel for you.  She may start questionning whether you have feelings for her and may stop showing signs of interest in you.  This leads to a loss of sense of attainability for her.

How do I become good at escalating?

Most guys actually have good enough verbal game to create comfort and trust (for credibility and respect purposes).  What they really lack is the confidence to convey sexual interest to the woman in order to push the interaction forward.  I have seen guys with little or no sexual experience do very well in attracting the girl but they are unable to go past that because they don’t know how to turn things sexual (either getting the woman sexually comfortable or sexually aroused with them).  To overcome that fear, Pastiche shared with me how:

It’s about certainty. Doing things 100% certain or doing things in spite of uncertainty… or reducing the uncertainty.

Unfortunately, that kind of confidence is built from experience.  You have to take a risk and try things out.   If the fear is too deep, learn as much as you can about sex.  Just having a knowledge of what to do will alleviate the anxiety to escalate.  Go read books/websites on the topic or better, watch instructional videos on how to kiss properly and how to perform basic sexual deeds (porn does not count, but you can look for videos from Nina Hartley’s Guide to [...] collection, Art of Kissing, Ideagasms, Sensual Awakening or other documentaries).   There are some free resources available such as www.sexuality.org, www.wikiafterdark.com and some not so free like www.loversguide.com.

A lot of time, guys also psych themselves out by making the first kiss a bigger deal than it is.  Kissing is important.  It’s usually the first step towards intimacy but in all seriousness, kissing is about physical comfort with one another.  Kissing does not equate to physical arousal until you both make out. 

Anyway, once you start kissing and making out consistently with girls, you will wonder why you have waited so long   That alone will give newbies more motivation to push the interaction as they can every time they go out.

What is your take on attraction and sexual tension?

For me, attraction is the process in which your partner discover reasons to like you.  On the other hand, sexual tension is the arousal state when your partner likes you enough to want to fuck you.  Vin DiCarlo has a pretty elaborate post on that very topic and describes how to create it.  Dan Rose also commented further on his blog.

If you continuously escalate, you will create both attraction and sexual tension.  After that, on with the fun!