Wednesday 4 August 2010

My day out in London. A talk on Relationships and an Organised Social

On Saturday 31st July I went to London for the day. I was there for two reasons. A few weeks ago I was sent an email about a talk that was to take place for men, about how to chat to women, how to approach and communicate and hold conversations with women in order to attract them, and find a relationship. It sounded just like the kind of thing I wanted to hear about so I booked my place, and went to London on Saturday to hear the talk.

Then after that, I planned to go to another organised social in London. The group which arranges the organised socials I go to operates in many cities across the UK, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to go an event in London, mainly for the purposes of practicing my social interaction skills.

Review of the Talk on Relationships

I arrived at the hotel at 12:30pm, I was the first one there, and it felt strange sitting on my own for 5 minutes or so in Suite 1 of this posh hotel. Eventually other guys turned up, about twenty five in total, and then the talk began at about 1:00pm.

The speaker gave some helpful tips during the talk on how I should communicate with women, and what not to do, things I definitely appreciated hearing and will take on board. However, there were aspects I did not like. Now I came to this event to hear a talk, I did not go to play games. Yet there was an element of role play involved which I did not appreciate and I basically opted-out of it.

Abuot 40 minutes into the talk, the speaker asked all the guys to stand up and greet each other in a monotonous, unenthusiastic way. Well I was fine with that, after all I hadn't really said Hello to many people I joined in. However, after that the speaker asked everyone to go up and greet everyone with energy and enthusiasm. Now this I was not comfortable with. I was getting quite tired after a busy morning travelling up to London, and I'm not really inclinded to greet people I don't know in such a way. So I basically stayed up my chair and allowed people to greet me.

Then thirdly came the tipping point, where the speaker asked everyone to greet others as they would greet someone they hadn't seen in years, like an old school friend. Now I was not up for this kind of acting, so I decided I would opt out. I did not move out of my chair at this point. There were two ladies in the room assisting, I don't know if they were hotel staff or the speaker's assistants, and they tried to greet me in such a way. I tried to explain I wasn't hear to role play I was hear simply to listen to a talk.

Then a bit later on the speaker tried to get everyone to jump up and down, to scream and celebrate, the idea being to help people get in the mood for chatting to girls, because, as the speaker said, you will impress women far more if you have energy and excitement and in a fun mood. Now there was no way I was going to do this. The speaker said "everybody stand up" and everyone stood up bar me. He tried to nod at me as if to get me to stand, but I just shook my head, so it went on with me opting out.

During the break, I tried to explain, politely of course, to one of the speaker's assistants that I did not apprecitate all the role-play, and that for me, far from getting me in the right mood, it would be more likely to make me feel uncomfortable and would distract my attention to what he may say next. I also made a clever point which is as follows. The speaker made the point that in approaching women we must act as men, and be seen to be in control of our decisions and be able to take the lead. I said to the speaker's assistant girls that if by refusing to join in I was acting like such a man, in control, doing what he wants rather than following another man's lead. They said it was a 'good point'.

There was also an element of mind control during the meeting that I did not appreciate. The speaker at times asked people to close their eyes and visualise themselves in different situations. Again I kept my eyes open and opted out. I came to the meeting for practical tips on speaking to women, for which I did get some useful tips. I did not come for any knd of psychological manipulation or role-playing games.

However I did take the opportunity afterwards to try to chat to a few women in Green Park and around the streets of London, taking on boards some of the things said, though I was genuinely too tired to do this properly.

The Organised Social

I booked by place on the organised social in the evening partly as a means to practice any skills I could pick up at the event. I'm not sure if I really succeeded in this as I was really quite tired by the evening and the place was very loud. Nevertheless it was nice being able to mix in with a different crowd, and the fact I wasn't likely to meet such people again enabled me just to attempt to experiment a bit socially (I don't think I experimented much though). It was hard as a visitor to London knowing what to say, but it was still a worthwhile time I had.

I would have liked to stay later, but I ended up leaving the organised social at 10:00pm, and eventually arriving home sometime soon after midnight (which tends to be about my bedtime anyway during the week). Needless to say, the following afternoon I was feeling quite shattered, after such a busy day with so much to take in.

1 comment:

  1. You're right that role-play seriously sucks. I was once on a job search programme where they did these exercises about plane crashes, nuclear bunkers (and have linked to other blogs about these) and having groups of us set up businesses or run an event. I just could not contribute to these well because I don't do well at thinking of things to say in these situations.

    aspiejobblog.blogspot.com

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