7 High-Risk Ways to Make the First Move

Rejection.

The very idea of getting rejected is scary as sh*t.

Having someone reject your attempt at a genuine connection can make you feel like hiding in a hole for the next hundred years.

Sometimes, though, you can make “low-risk” moves that make any potential rejection from them feel like a tickle instead of a punch to the face.

Fellow dating coach and writer Treva Brandon Scharf recently wrote a piece called “8 Low-Risk Ways to Make the First Move” (link at the bottom) where she encourages people to get out there and get their flirt on.

She says that it can be really easy to start things off with low-risk first moves such as making eye contact, smiling, saying hello for no reason, and giving compliments.

These are great daily habits that can help you meet more prospective partners than you could ever handle.

The best part? Getting rejected after making those kinds of moves hardly feels like rejection at all. If you try to make eye contact with someone but they just don’t look back at you, are you really even getting rejected?

Sometimes, though, that’s no fun.

Some of us want a bit more excitement than that. Some of us want the thrill of taking a risk. Low risk means low reward, right? We want high reward!

Here’s my list of “high-risk” ways to make the first move instead:

1. The direct approach

“Hi, I think you’re cute. My name is (your name). What’s yours?”

Sweet and simple. You can also say “hot” or “attractive” if you don’t like “cute.” Whatever directly communicates your interest from the beginning is a direct approach.

If you’re thinking, “That will never work,” just try to prove me wrong with a statistically significant sample size of 30+ approaches. Odds are that you’ll receive at least one positive response. And, the more you practice it, the more success you’ll get with it.

My girlfriend gets approached like this from time to time, and she always says that she ends up being impressed with the man’s boldness. I guarantee you she’s not alone in feeling this way.

Being bold can even make up for lack of conventional attractiveness. Demonstrating that you’re willing to take these kinds of risks can be attractive in itself.

2. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

A woman saying “I have a boyfriend” in response to a random man saying anything to her is so common that it’s become a meme.

If the very first thing you say to her is, “Do you have a boyfriend?” it does a couple neat things:

1. It acts as what’s called a “pattern interrupt.” She doesn’t expect that question out of the blue and can therefore interrupt any automatic pattern she might have like a scripted “I have a boyfriend.”
2. You both get to save a lot of time. No time wasted on trying to figure out if either of you are single or taken. Her saying “No” to that question also communicates the possibility that things might be possible between the two of you if you play your cards right.

Because this is a pattern interrupt, you will usually get an honest answer. It’s also a question that directly signals your interest, giving you the benefits of a regular direct approach as well.

Whenever I tried this myself, the majority of the women said they were single. Interesting that a lot of other kinds of approaches automatically get met with “I have a boyfriend.”

3. Leverage your talents

As a men’s dating coach, I recently had a call with a client who had a talent for drawing. Like most people, he wasn’t used to approaching women. Even though he logically knew that he should regularly approach women, trying to ease into it with low-risk approaches just wasn’t appealing enough to overcome his fears.

My suggestion to him was to pull off that classic movie moment of drawing someone and giving the drawing to her.

“It’s probably going to be dog sh*t,” he said. He’s a talented artist, but he suffers the common artistic plight of being too self-critical. I proposed to make it even more fun: on one side of the paper, draw something detailed but, on the other side, draw an actual crappy stick figure. Show her the stick figure first, then flip it around for a fun twist.

He liked that idea because it seemed fun.

If you’re good at something, why not try to leverage it in the dating game? Sometimes, it can be more fun that way.

4. Shock and Awe

Let’s get into some science about women’s sexuality.

So, how do you psychologically turn a woman on sexually? According to a 2019 study in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, three factors that increase sexual desire in women are intimacy, celebrated otherness, and object-of-desire affirmation. Don’t worry about the first two factors, though. According to the same study: “Based on the reports of 662 participants, positive correlations were found among all factors. However, in a multiple regression analysis, object-of-desire affirmation emerged as the only positive predictor of sexual desire.”

In other words, the first two factors were found to have correlations with the women being turned on, but they might not have had a causal effect. The third one, however, was causal. Object-of-desire affirmation caused women to feel increased sexual desire. Their minds were directly turned on by it.

So, what is object-of-desire affirmation? Simply put, as a few prominent sex therapists have said, “What turns women on is to be the turn-on.” It’s about making a woman feel like she is the object of your desire. It’s about making her feel like she is the star of the show. When it comes to psychological sexual arousal, she is less concerned about how sexy the man is, and more concerned about how sexy he makes her feel.

— Excerpt from Never Lonely: The Uncensored Guide on How to Attract and Be Loved by Women

A technique called “shock and awe” puts object-of-desire affirmation on steroids. There are two steps to it:

1. Directly express how attractive you find her.
2. Demonstrate that you are holding yourself back from being aggressive while playfully blaming her for being so hot.

Showing that you are struggling to maintain your composure in the second step offsets potential feelings of you being pushy, and emphasizes her feeling sexy. More specific details about this technique are too “adult” for this website, but you know where to find them.

5. The intentionally cheesy pickup line

Pickup lines suck, but that’s what makes them great sometimes. It’s the same reason dad jokes are great. Sometimes, they’re so bad they’re good.

Are you from Tennessee? Because you’re the only ten I see!
Did it hurt? When you fell from heaven!
How much does a polar bear weigh? Enough to break the ice!

I cannot emphasize enough how terrible these lines are. Say them with the awareness of how terrible they are, though, and it becomes fun.

She’s a lot more likely to have fun if you allow yourself to have fun first.

6. The purely physical approach

Don’t say a thing. Just use your body to communicate.

This is actually really easy to pull off in nighttime venues such as bars and clubs. If she’s already on the dance floor and you just “happen” to bump into each other, you’ll make eye contact for just a moment. In that tiny little moment, without skipping a beat, take her hand and guide her to do a little spin.

I’ve even done this in the middle of the street in New Orleans. Great party city. It can work in any city that has good vibes. Just make sure you’re also bringing good vibes (i.e. get out of your head and into your body).

If you’re American, giving high fives to strangers isn’t all that out of the ordinary, either. Just make sure you’re going in at approximately 5% higher energy. You’re only likely to get rejected if you’ve miscalibrated the energy and went in with either lower energy or too much higher energy.

Like with most aspects of seduction, a purely physical approach like this is about pacing and leading, a concept from neurolinguistic programming. Going in at about 5% higher energy paces the state the other person is in while allowing enough escalation to lead them toward a more fun state.

7. “Will you marry me?”

Step 1. Get ring pops.
Step 2. Propose to strangers.

It’s all about having fun and not taking yourself too seriously. Notice how some of the girls in the video are playing along, and notice how he got their phone numbers.

All in all, if you’re willing to risk rejection, to put yourself on the line, to face potential embarrassment with a smile, you’ll improve your chances in the dating game while having fun at the same time.

My usual approach is extremely low-risk.

I usually do what I like to call “planting seeds” where I make some very short small talk here and there, then go away. If I come back later, we’re better able to talk like we already met before because we technically did.

I also use something called social momentum to approach without making it feel like I’m approaching:

It doesn’t matter what your approach is, whether it’s high-risk or low risk, direct or indirect, verbal or physical. No one is going to remember the first thing you said, and it won’t even matter if people do remember. What matters is that you do something — anything — to get the ball rolling in the first place.

Your success rate will almost never be determined by your opening move. What matters is the interaction overall.

Just get out there and do something. Anything!

’s article that inspired this one:

Have you ever made a “high-risk” first move or approach? Tell me your experiences in the comments!

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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Photo credit: Jonathan Borba On Unsplash