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Sometimes you find yourself in a situation – whether in public or alone – where you know you should kiss a girl, but the setup just isn’t right. Even if you know how to kiss a girl you just can’t pull it off properly.
You might be physically far away from her, with no smooth way to bridge the distance.
She might be putting up walls, one of those “she wants it but she’s afraid of it”-type scenarios.
You might have created a moment, only for her to pull away or otherwise disrupt it.
If you go charging in like a bull and just go for it, well… it might work.
It might also lead to her recoiling, and now you’ve got a lot more work to do to smooth things out to build back up to a kiss again – when instead you could’ve done it right from the get-go.
The way you kiss a girl right in imperfect situations like this isn’t barreling in.
Instead, it is by using the slow-build kiss – a kiss that primes her for what’s coming, building anticipation for the kiss, before your lips ever touch hers.
What the Slow-Build Kiss Is
The slow-build kiss is a kiss in which you seed the kiss before going for it, typically by either talking about kissing her in advance, or by creating multiple moments to kiss, or both.
Watch this example between charismatic seducer Errol Flynn’s Wade Hatton and Olivia de Havilland’s Abbie Irving from 1939’s Dodge City:
You can tell Abbie wants the kiss, but she also puts up obstacles to it by disrupting the moments Wade creates to kiss her in:
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She disrupts the quiet moment in the first buildup to a kiss by leaning back, declaring they’d “better be getting back”, and standing
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Then she disrupts the next moment when Wade tells her she’s afraid he might kiss her, turning abruptly and walking off as soon as the conversation quiets
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Not until the third moment does she not disrupt the kiss attempt
However, even though it took three distinct ‘moments’ to reach the kiss, each moment served as a steppingstone to the kiss: introducing the idea, seeding it, and building anticipation until Abbie is ready to receive it.
If you’ve ever tried to set up a kiss with a girl only for her to disrupt the moment you were creating and walk off or turn away, you know how troublesome this can be!
Yet, if you approach it as a slow-build kiss, it stops being troublesome – and instead, each disrupted moment only serves to further set up the kiss that is to come.
Components of a Normal Kiss Buildup
The normal buildup to a kiss has between five to seven distinct parts:
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The Setup. You need to be somewhere private, close, and intimate with her. If it’s a first kiss, you also need her isolated with you.
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The Drawdown. Conversation needs to draw down deep into something quiet and personal. You can’t be talking about the antics of her friends or your favorite fried food. It must be something about the two of you.
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Eye Gazing. You and her must stare into one another’s eyes. Don’t be afraid to gaze into her limpid pools – in fact, you must!
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High Points (optional). Not mandatory, but if you can get her to laugh once or twice in a setup like this, it helps defuse a little of her nervous tension and puts her more at ease for what’s next to come.
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Signals from Her (optional). Also not mandatory, but helpful if they’re there, are signals from her she wants you to kiss. Good signals include her inching closer, brushing her hair back without moving away, saying something about romance or kissing, or triangle gazing you (where her eyes dart from your eyes to your lips and back again… suggesting she is thinking about something relating to your lips).
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Suggestion and Pause. You say something ideally suggestive of kissing or romance… but it need not be; it can even just be something normal, but said in your seductive bedroom voice (i.e., the way you talk to a woman in your bed; which is not the same way you talk to your coworkers over lunch). Then, you pause. Just let the conversation die. And continue to gaze at her, and perhaps triangle gaze, perhaps with your lips parted.
You can see all those in that kiss example between Wade and Abbie.
Now, if she doesn’t disrupt the kiss moment you’ve created, you proceed to the natural last step: you kiss her.
But, if she DOES disrupt it (as Abbie does in the clip from Dodge City), that’s when you shift into slow-build mode.
How Slow-Build Kisses Differ
So, she popped the moment you created, like she’d just popped a balloon.
Or else you created a moment, only to realize you’d done it with her and you seated too far away.
Is it over? Not if you can create more moments.
You are generally going to need to be somewhat experienced to pull this off. Experienced enough to not let it completely throw you when your moment does not lead to an immediate kiss.
There are two ways to think about these ‘kiss moments’:
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“I created a moment to kiss. We did not kiss. It’s over.” If you think about it this way, you’ll be elated when you get the kiss, but deflated if you don’t. It’s hard to come back from a deflation like this.
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“I created a moment to kiss. She felt it. Now I just need to create another moment or two.” If you’re thinking about kiss moments this way, then instead of each moment being do-or-die, moments are instead part of a stepwise escalation to the kiss. One moment not leading to an immediate kiss does not kill your seduction; it’s simply one step on the rung of the escalation ladder.
If you’re thinking about kiss moments in that second B. way, then an obstacle in a moment doesn’t throw you off. Instead, you just view that moment as a way to build anticipation for the kiss you are building up to.
Then you create another moment.
Then another, if need be.
So long as the girl you’re with likes you, and feels comfortable with you, and is attracted to you, you will generally be building up to a moment where you can kiss her.
Not every girl is ready for a kiss the first chance you spring it on her, after all.
Where Slow-Build Kisses Really Shine
The issue with the normal kiss build-up process is that some women have much higher defenses than others:
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She might be extra cagey about romance and sex
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She might be very inexperienced and very nervous
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She may be doing things to self-sabotage a romance that she wants
Of course, if you are going for more experienced women, you’ll run into this much less.
Even still, you still may encounter girls trying to ‘turn over a new leaf’ who find themselves battling with what they want with you emotionally versus the new rules or lifestyle they want to adhere to.
This is where slow-build kisses shine: with girls who simply are not ready for a kiss the first moment you create for one, even if they like you a lot.
So, to help ease them into it, you create a moment.
Then, when it doesn’t lead to a kiss, you accept that, and then create another moment.
If that one does not lead to a kiss, not a big deal – you just create a third moment.
You can more or less keep creating moments, so long as she doesn’t leave, and creating kiss moments doesn’t start to feel stale or repetitive (i.e., inflate due to overuse).
If at any point you’ve created too many kiss moments, and still not kissed her, and you’re in danger of feeling like a one-trick pony, then take a break, do something else with her, and come back to creating kiss moments later.
It is very possible for girls who weren’t ready to kiss you when you created a moment five or ten or twenty minutes ago to become ready once you’ve spent a little more time with them.
Sometimes it is because you did something in the interim to put them more at ease.
Sometimes, however, it is simply because they needed a chance to think about kissing you, decide they’re okay with it and want to do it, and open themselves up to it the next time you offer.
Slow-Build Kiss Breakdown
Let me break down that slow-build kiss between Flynn’s Wade Hatton and de Havilland’s Abbie Irving to give you an extra clear example of how a slow-build kiss can work:
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The Setup (00:13): Wade launches into a gambit about the grazing herd of buffalo, pointing them out, telling Annie to see them, and getting the two to dismount, ostensibly to talk about the buffalo (it’s really to have some private time with her that’s not on horseback). He uses this gambit to talk about the relationship between the two of them, pacing her reality by discussing the bad beginning to their relationship, then leading that into saying what a wonderful future they’re bound to have.
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The Drawdown (00:35): Annie takes a seat herself, which is good, though it’s somewhat led to by Wade’s slack pace, which already implied he was looking for a spot to sit. Wade goes deeper into his story, continuing to lead with statements like “It may be X but it’s not Y”, “I can prove it”, and “Now look.” He tells a story about his parents’ meeting to further cement this concept (it is, by the way, a classic DHV story, as it frames his parents as both prize winners with six high value sons. If both of your parents are high value and successful, then by extension you are going to tend to be high value and successful too).
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Eye Gazing (00:51): there’s a lot of eye gazing going on between Wade and Annie. Note that when you are sitting very close, you usually are not going to have perfect continuous eye contact, because the closer people are, the more intense direct eye contact becomes. You’ll notice after they first sit at 00:38 there is a dance of Annie and Wade each breaking eye contact when the other makes it, until they settle into really gazing into each other’s eyes at 00:51. After that, they spend much of the time sitting next to each other gazing, though there are still occasional breaks made by each of them to let off a little of the extra tension that very close, intense eye contact brings.
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High Points (00:54, 01:07, 01:23): the first high point is when Abbie is intensely focused on Wade, and Wade, talking about his mother’s roses, calls them “enormous big things as big as your face – and nearly as beautiful”, throwing that compliment in almost as an aside, before continuing with his story. You can see Annie preparing to react, but Wade doesn’t give her the chance, continuing on. He just wants to make sure she knows his intentions; he doesn’t want to trigger a conversation about his compliment. The next high point is when Wade reaches the part of the story where his father’s prize pigs eat his mother’s prize roses.
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Signals from Her (01:23): when Wade concludes his story, Annie laughs. It’s not because there’s anything funny then, but because she is doing what many women will when very attracted in an intimate setting, which is laugh to signal their enjoyment. She then looks him in the eyes in a seductive manner and announces she envies “you people who’ve kissed the Blarney Stone.” Of course, it’s mentioned Wade is Irish earlier, and kissing the Blarney Stone is a very Irish thing to do. However, why, of all the things she could’ve said, did she come to something about kissing? Because kissing is what is on her mind – the laughter, the seductive stare, and the comment about kissing are her big signals here, three right in a row.
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Suggestion and Pause (01:30): Wade triangle gazes Abbie, moving his eyes down to her mouth then back up to her eyes, and says (about the Blarney Stone), “It’s cold on the lips,” continuing the conversation about kissing, and (through reverse psychology) getting her to think about what might be warm on the lips (i.e., a warm kiss with another set of lips).
At this point, Abbie signals herself by also triangle gazing Wade – but then she pulls back, raises her eyebrows quizzically, and says she thinks they’d better be getting back, ditching her seductive smile for a more generic one. She then stands.
Moment #1 interrupted.
Wade stands right up, standing right next to her, pointing his body directly at her even though she’s pointed away from him (in most circumstances, you don’t want to do this, instead mirroring her body language and level of interest; but when you are trying to create moments or force frame you absolutely need to!). After Abbie says it’ll be getting dark, Wade says to her, “Are you sure it’s the dark you’re afraid of?”
Abbie whips around to face him and immediately asks him, “What do you mean?” which is a behavior you will see from women when you reference something they are feeling but have been trying to semi-suppress.
Wade suggests Abbie’s afraid he might kiss her, making the indirect talk about kissing in the last moment a direct conversation in this second moment. She considers it, but disrupts the moment again as soon as the conversation pauses, turning and rushing back to her horse.
Moment #2 interrupted.
Wade runs after her, NOT to kiss her (arguably at this point he probably could’ve grabbed her, spun her around, and manhandle kissed her, due to how clear it is she really wants it… but they have a history and she’s shown resistance, and the two also live in a small town together, so he may just be being prudent, sticking with the extra-safe route instead) but instead to offer to help her onto her horse, which is
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A nice gesture,
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A pattern interrupt (since she is expecting him to keep chasing the kiss, but instead he actually offers to help her do something that is getting her away from the kiss), and
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Allows him to grab her around the waist, touching her in a quite intimate way,
… all three of these things at the same time.
He then moves over to his horse – and watch how he pushes his horse right next to hers; he knows he wants to kiss her on the horse, and he also knows he cannot do that from too far away.
He mounts his horse and returns to the topic of kissing by calling back the conversation about buffalo earlier, then using that to segue into talking about “one-track minds” (which implies he is of a one-track mind, thinking about kissing her).
He mentions the kiss again, and this time Abbie does not interrupt things; she simply says he seems “sure of her reaction” in a subdued tone, and he sets the kiss up, leaning in a bit closer, saying it’s something you can “never be sure about – until you’ve tried it”, then kisses her, and continues talking after, “… can you?”
Also, not entirely related to the slow-build kiss, but I just want to highlight Flynn (as Wade Hatton) repeatedly using a favorite technique of mine, “drop it and move along”, with both his compliment and his kiss:
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He compliments her face but immediately continues his story without giving her a chance to react
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He kisses her but immediately continues the conversation without giving her a chance to react
I suppose there’s an argument to be made for the alternative, letting a woman fully react… but denying her a conscious reaction by continuing to talk simply lets your action drip into her subconscious, and if you’re certain she’s going to like what you’re doing, it’s a great play, because it minimizes the chance for logical, conscious, rules-based pushback while allowing her subconscious to get all giddy at getting what she really wants.
Conclusion
A disruption or another obstacle to a kiss attempt you make need not be the end.
Instead, it can just be part of the escalation process – with the initial kiss attempt just one step along your escalation ladder; the first kiss moment of two or more, until you reach the kiss.
This might be a difficult kiss for beginners to pull off… unless they’re very cool-headed, of course.
However, any intermediate playboy on up can pull this one off. All he needs is a level head… and the ability to not get fazed when that first kiss moment he creates doesn’t lead to an immediate kiss.
If he can keep at it, and create more kiss moments after that, there’s an excellent chance he will get that kiss after all.
Chase Amante
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