How does it work? Who decides which man is the wingman and which is the main guy? What are the benefits? The downsides? Is this a recent thing or is there a long, venerable history behind it? Do you have a wingman story? Will you tell it? I’m curious.
Pretty girl. Her unattractive friend who she’s loyal to (aka “the grenade”). You do the math.
Either the girl or the dominant guy. After all, no use for a wingman if falling on the grenade isn’t going to get him any action.
Um… the main guy gets some, and the wingman has to fall on the grenade (by either occupying or, god forbid, having sex with the pretty girl’s friend in order to free up the pretty girl to occupy the main guy), respectively.
The way I understand it is that men who cruise in bars often find women who travel in pairs. Often a man will find one woman attractive, and the other unattractive. If they are friends, it may be difficult for the man to peel the friend away from the attractive woman.
So he gets his own friend, the ‘wingman’ to hit on the less desirable girl. The wingman keeps girl #2, which in theory is supposed to improve the main guy’s chances of hitting it off (by preventing the undesired woman from hitting on him/getting in his way/etc)
I guess the pros of this is that both guys have a chance of hooking up, although actual sucess in this technique is highly doubtful- it is a well known tactic and so chances are the women know exactly what is going on. In fact, these days, you can hire wingwomen, with the idea that having a woman along will be more effective than a male companion for meeting other women.
Having been the less attractive woman in this little game more than once (in my youth), I’d like to point out that once both women wise up to the manipulative nature of the men who pull this kind of stunt, the women are likely to be very angry, and possibly vengeful. I know I was.
Okay…this is BS. This is the same reason while mildly attractive women always “go out” with an extremly less attractive “friend”. Women have been doing this since the invention of ladies nights…Its the same as a used car lot. Anything looks better when it’s parked next to a Yugo.
Come on, being a wingman isn’t always like that.
I mean really. Its just helping a fellow guy out with a girl that he likes. An effective wingman must, however, be good at the whole deal himself. I once had a gay guy be my wingman. We were friends, and he wanted to help me out? Who was I to say no? A gay guy makes a really good wingman, because you have no worries that he wants the girl, and he will also help out by doing stupid and funny things that a straight guy could never get away with.
Another good thing is going to a gay bar with a gay friend with a girl you want. Because you know you’ll have no competition, that is, heterosexual males. Its always gay men and lesbians. But its usually a lot of fun.
But one thing about being a wingman, in my opinion, is the giving of a second opinion. This helps out a lot because it is so easy to determine if someone is attracted to someone else if you aren’t actually one of the two people. I like to do this a lot by watching people. I’ll pay close attention to any kind of flirting situation because its really interesting to read body language. Its so easy to tell. If you get a wingman like this, he can easily point you out to the girl that is really interested.
Who decides who is the wingman? Anyone that I know that would be my wingman would have to be a good enough of a friend to realistically judge who has the best chance, and any good wingman will know who actually has it, and that it is stupid to try to engage in an uphill battle for the girl. In all of the situations that I’ve worked as a team, its pretty obvious who has the advantage and who should do the support. If you’ve got a pretty evenly matched friend then you end up taking turns, more or less, because any educated guy will know only to try for someone who is already receptive.
But yeah, I’ve even been wingmanned by a girl before. I was a little surprised! I didn’t know that girls operated in the same way.
But if you want to know the “nature” of the phenomenon, its more of a teamwork effort than anything else. All of my true friends that I have, who I would consider helping, would also consider helping me. I mean, shouldn’t friends care about helping their friends? I know I sure do. A lot of people really try to diss their friends to become the dominant one, but I think that is stupid. I try to pass on any opportunity to assert dominance even though it is evident. If you have self-respect, you don’t need to assert dominance, and that’s where me and my friends are.
In theory everyone benefits from this arrangement. First, everyone travels with a friend, which gives you some social contact regardless of the romantic prospects, gives you a source for moral support and tactical advice, and makes you appear to be a more approachable person. Now on to the specific details:
Alpha woman - She looks better in comparison to beta woman. So her attractiveness is increased.
Beta woman - She’s in the social circle with alpha woman. Men approaching alpha women must be default also approach her - so she is effectively “borrowing” the attractiveness of alpha woman.
Alpha man - Like alpha woman, he appears more attractive in comparison to his beta counterpart. Plus having a partner makes it much easier for him to approach the female alpha-beta pair.
Beta man (the wingman) - Like alpha man, he needs a partner to approach a female pair. Like beta woman, he appears more attractive because of some spillover from his alpha partner. Plus he gets a shot at beta woman, who if not quite in the alpha category is still better than gamma woman hanging out by herself or omega woman who only exists in his imagination after he goes home alone.
Merk points out another advantage of traveling in pairs - a partner can be used to present someone’s good points in a way that person couldn’t do themselves. If a friend says “My friend Merk is too modest to talk about the time he saved a busload of schoolchildren” or “Merk, why don’t you tell these ladies that funny story about the drunk chimpanzee” it sounds okay. If you do it yourself, you sound arrogant.
Am I the only person who opened this thread thinking it was about fighter aircraft combat tactics?
As a guy, my experience has been that women tend to hang out with other women that are similarly attractive; pretty girls usually don’t run in the same crowd as ugly girls. You might see an “8” girl with a "7’ friend, but very rarely with a “4” or “3”
Consider this - how many times have you seen photos of groups of women online, grinning and hugging, where the image seems to say “OMG! Look at me and my hot friends!” They’re EVERYWHERE. Now, look for one where hottie Christine on the town, hugging her best friend Bertha. Rare indeed.
I don’t doubt that the wingman phenomenon exists, but it’s probably less common than one would imagine. It’s just not needed, because the times you’re going to encounter Christine with Bertha are going to be very rare. Just my opinion.
Before a certain Beer commercial popularized the term, I used “wingman” in a way like Little Nemo describes in post #9.
That is: Maus and Best Friend go out for an evening on the town. They hit an Irish pub; Maus like Guiness, and Best Friend like irish pubs in general. They see a Pretty Girl at the bar.
Maus engages Pretty Girl in conversation. **Maus ** is like that. If you get a few pints of Guiness in him, and he’ll talk to anyone. Because Maus has no interest in actually picking up Pretty Girl *, **Maus ** brings Best Friend into the conversation, and gradually passes Pretty Girl off to Best Friend.
At the end of the evening, **Maus ** goes home happy, because he had a good time with Best Friend. Best Friend goes home happy because he has Pretty Girl’s phone number. Pretty Girl goes home happy (we hope), because she had a pleasent conversation with two guys who were not being jerks.
- **Maus ** has Mrs. Magill at home. Who would want to pick up Pretty Girl, when he has Mrs. Magill at home, who no only allows Maus to go out with Best Friend, but encourages it? Duh.
No! How disappointing that it’s all about dating strategy. Let’s hijack this and talk about something much more interesting.
Wingman tactics:
How do these play out as bird pulling senarios?
I did winggal with a friend of mine. We are very different types of women, I am a wee little cute chick who looks like you could bring me home to mom and she is an amazon who sweats “I like sex” from every pore. We are attracted to drastically different men as well–I like tallish geeks with not too much meat on them, she likes linebackers who wear nascar shirts. I think we may have both found the same guy attractive about 3 times in the 4 years we have known each other. It’s perfect–no fighting over men, no men having to choose which one of us to go for. We just play up how great the other lady is to the man of choice.
Now that I’m engaged, I’m the winggirl all the time. She gets the boys, I get the booze…Everybody wins!
I think everything can be looked at from both ends of a spectrum.
One end if the entirely mercenary end.
The other end is “It’s easier to talk to people with another person there, so when you go to a bar, go with a friend.”
I mean, if i was stolen away by someone who didn’t like me so her friend could hit on my friend it’d suck. But it’d be better than not talking to ANYONE, wouldn’t it? And you never know, it might be interesting anyway.
The wingman is also there to prevent colossal stupid mistakes by the alpha male.
This usually happens later in the evening, after large quantities of alcohol have been consumed. Alpha male engages hot chick in conversation. Wing man’s job is to make sure
a) hot chick is not wearing a ring, or has huge boyfriend six feet away glaring at alpha male
b) hot chick is not talking about really, really wanting to have a baby as soon as possible
c) hot chick is not carrying the severed head of a bunny rabbit in her purse
Should any of those scenarios present themselves, the wingman’s sworn duty is to get the alpha male out of there in one piece.
I have been a wingman (we call it ‘fullbacking’ - blocking for the runner, so on) on numerous occasions, mostly in college 10-12 years ago (but occasionally still in the ‘mature married friend’ role).
It was always win-win for me since I preferred sex w plain girls to getting shot down by hotties and in college Survey had less confidence than Maverick after Goose died. So we’d usually play it like this - me, generally the less attractive of the two, would somehow initiate contact w the beta female, ideally leading to a introduction of my star running back and the alpha female.
Whether he got action or not was not my responsibility (the guy I usually teamed up w had an OUTSTANDING closing move, though, and generally was successful); I was frequently busy interacting w someone who frankly wasn’t used to that much attention. Far and away my three greatest sexual encounters in college came about via this technique (well, three of the four - there was a smoking hot 51 year old married corporate type that I hooked up w when I was 20 that taught me more in four hours than I learned K-12, undergrad and grad school combined, but thats a different thread).
Nowadays the role has changed to where I’m trying to convinced the ‘married/recently and bitterly divorced/otherwise engaged/hates all men at this time’ beta female that my friend is single just because and not due to major economic/psychological/physiological/social issues, and that its GREAT that he’s interested in alpha female.
Outstanding closing move?
Please, please, tell us.
True Blue Jack
one other thing - most guys lack the nerve to approach someone they consider attractive alone while that person is w her friends. Fullbacks breed courage.
This works both ways, I think. Its been so long since I’ve actually been hit on (at least I think so - having been married for five years, exclusive w her for four years before that, I doubt i can even tell at this point) that I’ve forgotten a lot of it.
Well, ok. Understand that we’re primarily dealing w some very, very drunk young ladies here (to be fair, we were ripped, too) in their early 20s. Very, very drunk young ladies in the kinds of clubs/bars we frequented would usually go apeshit for a guy who could dance, and this dude is the best guy dancer I’ve ever seen. I mean its not even close, and I’m not talking about being able to grind real well, successful slow dancing, that sort of thing - he could flat-out dance.
So that usually got them pretty worked up. He coupled the dancing w a certain, um, ‘physical prowess’ (read: he was/is(?) hung like a whale) and managed to almost always get the girl he was dancing w to realize that - causing the ‘accidental’ hand brush across the pant front was his favorite move. Often, it seemed the curiosity to see what was under the hood was enough to get them home, and away they went. Frankly, some of the noises you’d hear from behind that closed door in our apartment were upsetting - nothing makes you question yourself more than when your roomie has a smoking hot girl screaming things such as ‘its like a steel rod!’. ‘holy shit!’, etc.