Part I: Mystery’s Seven Hour Rule and LMR

In September, I closed a 20 year girl while on a trip to Japan. We’ll call her Miss Nervous. She was a “long lead” I had met in America two months earlier. All greater claims of my ego aside… fucking a girl 26 years younger than me, one that lives in another country, was a low-likelihood scenario. But over the course of another very long date (in a city where neither of us live)… it worked out well.

And it all started when an older man approached a cute girl in a shopping mall. Go #daygame. Along with the notch, my long date with her (our 2nd date) gave me some reference experiences around bringing a young, inexperienced girl deeper into sex. That is the kind of experience I want.

I’ll share the story of Miss Nervous in my next post, but to push this beyond a standard daygame lay report, I am going to tell it in the light of a claim Mystery has been pushing for years: “The Seven Hour Rule.”

First, we’ll take a good look at Mystery’s theory. And then (in a few days), we’ll use Mystery’s concept to examine the Last Minute Resistance I had with Miss Nervous in Japan.

Here we go:


While I was on that Japan trip in September, I ran into an excellent talk that Mystery gave to the Casanova Crew in 2012. I took a lot of notes.

I haven’t formally studied Mystery much, but as a proper legend in modern pickup he is hard to avoid. I own a copy of his book, but… I have never read Mystery Method.

“My influences were firstly and most importantly, the Mystery Method, the only study of game that really matters, in my opinion.”
Jimmy Jambone, from Rivelino’s interview

For a guy that has never really been a fan of Mystery, my comments below are surprisingly consistent with Jambone’s quote. And after all my time as a student of Game… I am surprised to find myself suddenly into Mystery’s stuff.

While I could be a dick and highlight a bunch of totally stupid things Mystery has said over the years (I have several lame takes in my notes), for now I admit: In that Casanova Crew talk, Mystery was full of wisdom and great moments.

The quotes from Mystery I use here (and in the next post) come from that Casanova Crew talk.


Let’s get into the controversy:

Here is one of the most controversial points ever pressed by the famous pickup artist known as Mystery.

“According to Mystery, it takes roughly seven hours for a woman to be comfortably led from meet to sex. These seven hours can take place all in one night, or over several days: approaching and talking for an hour; speaking on the phone for an hour; meeting for drinks for two hours; talking on the phone for another hour; and then, on the next meeting, hanging out for two more hours before going to bed together.”

“Waiting seven hours or more is what Mystery calls solid game.”
— Neil Strauss, from The Game

So Mystery thinks you have to spend seven hours with the girl before you fuck her… or it’s not “solid game.” Is that true?

Mystery’s Seven Hour Rule has been talked about a lot. I have laughed at it. I have argued against it. If you take it completely literally, it’s easy to know it is not true. I think we’re all on the same page there.

But I have new respect for that concept, and here’s why:

As Players, we reject Mystery’s concept because we think the “seven hours” is a comment about the Player’s skill. We think he is talking about us.

It sounds like Mystery is saying, “it’s impossible to lay a girl in less than seven hours.” Or… that it’s “only luck” to do so. It sounds like Mystery is “admitting” that he can’t close girls that fast, so he is discounting the success of guys that actually can get there in less than seven hours… calling fast sex “fool’s mate.”

“Sleeping with her in less than seven hours is known as fool’s mate: You got lucky.”
Neil Strauss (aka Style)

“You got lucky.” If you’re sensitive about your skill as a Player, that could almost sound insulting.

But what if that is all a misinterpretation. What if it’s not really about the Player at all? What if the “seven hours” are only about… her?

Let’s move deeper into the conflict:

“[T]he notion of ‘fool’s mate’ and the idea that it takes ‘seven hours’ to have sex with a women are both utterly bizarre. In fact, you can have sex with women much, much quicker. My personal best is under five minutes, and it was a regular club, not a sex party or in a swinger club.”
Aaron Sleazy

Shooting holes in Mystery’s concept is easy to do…. but that isn’t my goal with this post. I include Aaron’s POV as an example of how the Seven Hour Rule is typically interpreted.

Back to Aaron:

He says he has closed a girl in five minutes. That is a wild claim, but I believe him. But notice how he is reading Mystery’s line as a comment about his own skill (as opposed to the experience of the girl). Aaron isn’t exactly “defensive”… but it’s something like that. Aaron takes the point at the level of his own ego… as opposed to a lesson in female psychology.

And I get that:

I have pulled a girl off the street, for a drink, and then back to my place for sex in under an hour. I could use that anecdote to fuck with Mystery’s claim. But if I think about it… I know for sure that “insta-pull” was more about her than my game. And THAT… is what Mystery means by “you got lucky.” The whole concept is about the girl… not about us, as Players.

It wasn’t that I didn’t show any skill that night (March 2018… I never wrote about her). I approached that girl, I knew what to do, I led her in a solid way… But fucking her that fast was about her… not really about a test of my game… and not at all a good example of “most women.” We are zeroing in on Mystery’s point.

We all know Players that have stories like mine or Aaron’s. And they are true. Some girls move fast. Seven hours is not a requirement. But…

What about most girls? What if Mystery is trying to set an expectation. And not only “just wait seven hours, bro.” But… trying to give you the “WHY” behind his infamous rule.

More on the “why” below.


Let’s look at this point from another angle…

Here is Krauser, scolding a student on this same topic:

“Middle of the afternoon. No alcohol. Getting your dick out within an hour of some girl just on her way home.”

“There are some girls you can fuck that quick. But those are the highlights. That’s not the normal amount of game.”
— Krauser

A curious student might ask Krauser: What is the “normal amount of game?” Could it be… seven hours? And… if seven hours is a reasonable estimate… could it be that a Player might lose girls by pushing for something faster than that?

You see where this is going? I assume both Mystery and Krauser are plenty capable of escalating quickly. And they have tons of experience. And yet, check this out…

Here are some comments from Krauser about his 2015 daygame stats:

“Near misses: 22”
— Krauser

Wow. In one year… Krauser “flipped the car” 22 times. That is an amazing thing to be able to say.

“Yes. With twenty-two different girls I had a girl hot, horny, up for it and yet just didn’t manage to get my dick into her.”

“The funny thing is it wasn’t due to me suddenly losing my ability to close, but actually the reverse. I was pulling girls so fast that they were getting to the hand-on-dick-in-sex-location stage much faster than they could handle.”
— Krauser

Great comment… and very interesting to me. This whole conversation is already a step beyond typical Game-talk. We’re getting past the “just fuck her, bro” view of Game.

Back to Krauser… note: “Faster than she could handle.”

Krauser isn’t talking about himself here or “what is possible.” He is not even talking about one girl… he is talking about 22 girls in one year that “weren’t quite ready.” Krauser is pointing to the comfort level in those girls. He is talking about female psychology.

In the community we go on and on about technique and the Player’s skill, but all that is never more than half of the equation. With all his skill and experience, Krauser’s role in those near misses was mostly that… he went too fast.

Going too fast is fixable. And the reason to “fix” that is not that “seven hours” is any kind of magic formula… it’s that creating a pace that a girl can handle (that is right for her psychology and comfort level) is the essence of “solid game.”

That is Mystery’s point. And as that sunk into me this last summer… I had new respect for the man and that concept.


Here is more from Mystery on “solid game” and “The Seven Hour Rule:”

“Seven hours is average. Four hours is a little short. Four hours is one night, though.”
— Mystery

In the context of expectations for sex… Mystery’s “Rule” is a good practical guideline around female psychology and LMR. Don’t worry about your ego… just soak it up.

But we can compare Mystery’s guideline to advice from guys that assume sex must happen on the first date. There is a lot of counter-argument here in the space of men interested in Game.

Here are some examples of what we hear from guys that are hyper-focused on “fast sex:”

1.) “Don’t let her make you wait for sex, move on.”
— TheRedIntrovert

Red doesn’t like to wait.

2.) “If she makes you wait for sex… she’s actively assessing her other options. You’re not her priority.”
— TheRedIntrovert

He thinks any waiting is a sign of disrespect.

3.) “It’s 1am. Like clockwork, another girl comes up and opens him. All I see is literally about 3 minutes of back and forth. He takes her hand and just walks straight out of the club.”
— TheRedIntrovert

This post is mostly about female psychology, but notice the way Red interprets female behavior as being about the guy. It is remarkable how similar Red’s attitude is to Aaron’s response to Mystery. In both cases, the root of their commentary is ego. To these kinds of men, the concept of waiting at all has nothing to do with the girl’s comfort… it’s interpreted as a slight to the Player.

To address TheRedIntroverts comments:

She is not always “making you wait” (= your ego), she is often just not ready herself (= her psychology). Making you wait isn’t necessarily about how much she wants to fuck other guys (= your insecurity), she just needs more time (= her comfort). If she wants to fuck you based on three minutes of conversation, and actually follows through with it in the next few minutes… maybe you have radically good game (= bragging rights), or maybe she was looking for a dick to fall on and you happen to be it (= all about her, not so much about you).

“Five minute pulls” (like Aaron mentioned) are often the goal for men like Red (and lots of other guys chattering about Game). For a certain combination of guy/girl/context, maybe fast sex is the only/best solution. (Maybe she is leaving town?) But for most guys, most girls, most instances… maniacally gunning for sex is rather ridiculous… and will often actually reduce notches, and future sex, as you scare girls away by trying to fuck her the first time you get her alone.

Back to Mystery… this quote also helps to address the kind of expectations Red is pushing:

“They hit on her on the open and try to pull her to the bathroom and she says, ‘no.’ If your girlfriend of two years won’t have sex with you in a seedy bathroom, don’t expect a quality girl you just met to do that. ‘Yeah, she said ‘no,’ man.’ You just fucked that up. You could have played solid game.”
— Mystery

Sometimes Red is right… some guys have girls walking up to them at clubs, ready to go home in under three minutes… but it is a losing strategy to aim for that unless the context calls for it.

Too fast, too flashy, too self-centered.

I like where Mystery is taking us. For all of the ridiculous “Purple Hat” bullshit of Mystery’s legacy, he has some great things to say in that talk:

“You’re not after the girl once. You’re building enough comfort to be able to have sex with her three times… and hopefully 50 times… and on you go. And you enjoy each other.”
— Mystery

I like that. Fucking her once… could have been luck (or her needs). Fucking her a second time… is never an “accident.” Ongoing sex with a girl (what I call “recurring revenue”) is a sign of very solid game indeed (I think of Magnum, in particular, when I say that).

Recurring revenue (retaining girls in an ongoing relationship of some kind) leads to lots of sex. If “lots of sex” is what you’re after, Mystery’s concept of “solid game” might help your results.

How many of those 22 girls that Krauser lost in 2015 might he have closed if he was looking at something closer to “seven hours.” How many of them might have turned into ongoing action? Even at the most simple-minded level of “Locker Room” Game… a little patience has it’s rewards.

“I know how to kiss a girl. I know how to pull the fucking trigger. Really. I just also know how to, like, win… play solid game. I am not getting the girl to try to impress you… with ‘speed’.”
— Mystery

When he says all that in the video, he rolls his eyes in frustration. I bet he has had this argument so many times.

“What if slowing the game down buys you enough comfort for her finally to get naked with you and feel comfortable about that? Some guys, they go too soon. What I’d rather do is play a nice solid game.”
— Mystery

Nice “solid game.”

And there it is… we have arrived at the meaning behind Mystery’s claim. Slow it down, replace speed with some attention to where the girl is at in the seduction, and you’re likely to end up with more action.

Here he gets into my favorite topic in Game right now… LMR:

“Last Minute Resistance. One way of combating that last minute resistance is ‘seven hours.’ If you’re two hours in and you’re going for the bra, and she’s like, ‘no, no, no.’ You can get rid of the whole ‘man hands’ thing, in LMR, if you’ve got seven hours. You accumulate time. You spend the time. You may accumulate that over several days with her.”
— Mystery

Let’s assume this is for men that have the fundamentals down. Good Game is more than just “seven hours,” obviously. It’s all the leading and escalating and push-pull and charm and seduction and… seven hours to make it real for the girl (and maybe even for yourself).

I like it.

I thank Mystery for being so articulate (and patient) that I had time to finally understand what he was saying.


“Part of this whole pickup thing is epitomizing same-day-lays… fetishizing quickness, speed.”
— Jason Savage, from Seduction is a Gift

I love that talk from Jason Savage… and he is echoing Mystery’s point. Jason is right.

“Fetishizing speed” is likely part of what Krauser was doing that year when he burned all those seductions by moving too fast. Krauser was testing the boundaries of what was possible for him at the time… he was testing his skill, and… testing the boundaries of women (which is more interesting to me). If you trust Krauser (and I do)… he is showing you what “too much” looks like.

The “skill” of the Player isn’t always in finding a way to make it happen faster. There is a lot of potential for a Player to test his skill by pacing her until she is ready to open up… to “bloom” for you. Not too slow (which is a different kind of risk), but also… not too fast.

Too often we get overly excited about what Krauser calls the “highlight reel.” Those stories sound good. I like my own fast-sex stories. I get it.

But is that “solid game?” If we knew any better… is “speed” what we would do? All the time? Probably not. If you’re any good with women… you probably know this. I am still proving it out… one girl at a time.

A lot of my wins have come after the third, fourth, or even fifth date. And a lot of those “slow sex” dates… led to ongoing sex with those girls. Sex again and again and again… because I wasn’t so insistent on “right now.”

Personally, it doesn’t really help me much to know a guy’s “best story.” His “fastest pull.” Extraordinary lives begin with extraordinary expectations… that is true… but this isn’t always about us and our “skill” and our “frame.”

A seduction is a partnership, of a sort. When we skip over the details of the girl’s psychology… and assume the goal is to “fuck her within five minutes” of meeting her (or even on the first date)… we are missing a lot of the story. And while I know that kind of success is possible, hammering on those assumptions is “ego” stuff. We’ll lose (a lot of) girls that way. Krauser did… and I have too.

So in my next post, I’ll lay out a specific example… the story of how I fucked 20 year old Miss Nervous. Would it surprise you to know I needed something like “seven hours?” At this point… it shouldn’t.

Seven hours… good guideline. With Miss Nervous, it took more time than that, actually. More next time.

Viva Daygame.