Cabeceo is the art of eye contact. I came across the term and concept in tango, but it’s applicable to the art of pickup in general.

Cabeceo means, make eye contact with the girl before actually asking her to dance. And get a permission/approval, with eyes, before asking permission to dance verbally. The history of it, it seems, is that Argentinian culture is very macho and if you ask the wrong person to dance at the salon, you may end up dead, and also if the woman rejects your request to dance, that is an irrecoverable blow to your social credit and reputation. So in that culture there could not be a “no” to asking to dance – negotiate beforehand, and if it is a “no”, then do not ask at all. Seems fair and sophisticated.

Now, in America people don’t care about these things so much. A woman can ask a man to dance (never in Argentina!), and it’s completely normal for a guy to be rejected. But the concept, with modifications, still translates in a useful and meaningful way to American culture. Let’s say you strongly prefer that the girl initiates eye contact with you[T]. Now if you pursue 10 girls out of the blue, maybe one or less than one will express interest in you. From my experience, you cannot meaningfully initiate every contact, especially a cold one, without eye contact first. You’ll get burned out, and you’ll be spending time in a non-meaningful way. Having this initial contact, the cabeceo, is half the battle.

So when going out in real life to practice the art of pickup, first make sure that she’s interested in you, then do literally everything else. It should be fairly obvious. Your success rate should be very, very high with that.

Next, we’ll talk about online vs in-real dating, which is more efficient and which is cheaper (spoiler: in-real is the winner). We’ll also talk about specific locations where to practice the art of pickup in the real.